PrivateJetSky / Guides / What is actually inside a charter quote.

What is actually inside a charter quote.

A charter quote is one number standing in for about twenty decisions, and the person who made them is selling you the flight. Two quotes for the same trip can differ by a third and both be honest, because they include different things. Until you know which things, you are not comparing prices. You are comparing presentations.

This page is the anatomy. Once you can see the parts, the Quote Audit will check a specific number against a published model and list what yours has not answered.

The parts, in the order they appear

1. The hourly rate for the aircraft class. The headline. It varies enormously by who is publishing it, which is the subject of our cost index.
2. Billed hours, which are not flight hours. Block time runs engine start to engine stop, and most operators apply a daily minimum of about two hours. A 50-minute hop is commonly invoiced as two hours, and that single rule can double a short trip.
3. Positioning. If the aircraft is not where you are, someone pays for it to get there and, often, to go home. Sometimes it is a line. Sometimes it is inside the hourly rate. Sometimes it appears after you accept.
4. Federal excise tax and segment fees. On US domestic charter, 7.5% plus a per-segment fee on every takeoff in the itinerary. Some quotes include both. Many present the pre-tax number and add them at invoice.
5. Crew costs beyond the flight. Overnights, per diems, and duty-day extensions on trips that keep the crew away.
6. Ground and handling. FBO fees, ramp and parking charges, landing fees, and international handling, which is where quotes on the same trip most often diverge.
7. Catering and cabin. Standard provisioning is usually included; anything you would recognise as catering usually is not.
8. Contingencies. De-icing in winter, billed at cost and genuinely unknowable in advance. Fuel surcharges where the contract allows them.

A worked example

New York (TEB) to Palm Beach (PBI) is 902 nm great-circle. In a light jet, our model puts block time at 2h 29m, bills 2.48 hours, and produces a base aircraft charge of roughly $7.4K–$12K before tax and fees. Apply the US domestic tax and fee factor and the all-in estimate becomes EST $8.8K–$14K.

Now the useful part. A quote for that trip at the bottom of the band is not automatically a bargain, and one above the top is not automatically a markup. What separates them is whether positioning is inside the number, whether tax is inside the number, and which aircraft is actually turning up. Those are three questions, not a negotiation.

What you are owed, and can simply ask for

Four of the questions worth asking are not favours. Under the US rules governing air charter brokers, a broker must disclose, before you contract, the corporate name of the direct air carrier that will hold operational control, the capacity in which the broker is acting, and whether it holds liability insurance covering you and your passengers along with the limits. On request, it must also disclose the total cost including fees and taxes, any third-party fees you will pay directly, and any relationship with the carrier that might influence which carrier gets chosen.

THE RULE 14 CFR 295.24: required broker disclosures ↗ law.cornell.edu read 2026-08-31

A broker that answers all four in writing without friction is telling you something useful about how the rest of the trip will go. So is one that does not.

How to compare two quotes that are not comparable

• Normalise to all-in. Add tax, segment fees, positioning and handling to every quote until each one is the number that will leave your account.
• Fix the aircraft, not the class. "Light jet" spans a 2015 airframe and a 1998 one. Ask for type, year and tail number.
• Fix the billing rule. Ask how many hours you are being charged for and what the daily minimum is. This is where identical-looking quotes separate.
• Read the cancellation ladder before you compare, not after. A cheaper quote with a punitive ladder is a more expensive quote wearing a disguise.
• Verify the operator once. Fifteen free minutes, and it only has to be done properly once per operator: the walk-through.

Next steps

If you have a quote in hand, run it through the Quote Audit: it places the number against the model above and generates the outstanding questions as a memo you can forward. If you have not asked yet, the RFP Desk writes a brief that demands all of this up front, which is a considerably shorter conversation than extracting it later.