NetJets stops selling jet cards to new customers
The largest operator in private aviation has closed its card and lease products to new buyers for the second time in five years. Existing customers keep their renewal rights.
NetJets has stopped selling its jet card and 25-hour lease products to new customers, according to reporting by Doug Gollan in Forbes on 2 August. The decision was communicated internally on Friday 31 July. It is the second time in five years that the largest operator in private aviation has closed the front door on its entry-level products.
In a statement quoted by Forbes, the company framed it as a capacity decision rather than a retreat:
We continue to see record-high retention rates, alongside increased (fractional) owner and market demand. Our aim every day is to provide exceptional travel experiences with the level of safety and service that only NetJets can deliver. To focus on our core business of shared ownership and ensure that we do not compromise service delivery to existing (fractional) owners, we continue to take a disciplined approach to our sales.
What it means if you already hold a card
It does not affect you, and NetJets moved quickly to say so.
Reporting by Private Jet Card Comparisons on 5 August set out the renewal position: current card owners will have the opportunity to purchase a renewal card, and current 25-hour lease holders can either renew the lease or move across to a 25-hour jet card. The restriction applies to prospective customers, not to the existing book.
No renewal deadline or expiry window has been published. That is the detail worth watching, because it is the one that would turn a sales pause into an orderly wind-down, and neither report establishes it either way.
Why "again" matters
NetJets did this before. In August 2021, during the post-pandemic demand surge that overwhelmed capacity across the industry, it suspended its card programme. That closure ran into late 2022, and when the product reopened there was a substantial waiting list.
The 2021 episode is why the current decision reads as a capacity signal rather than a strategic exit. The pattern is the same: demand for the core fractional product rising faster than the fleet and the crew base can absorb, and the card programme — which sells access to that same fleet without the commitment of a share — being the flexible valve that closes first.
There is a structural logic to which product gets cut. A fractional owner has bought a share in a specific aircraft and holds contractual availability guarantees. A cardholder has bought hours against the fleet. When the fleet is tight, honouring the first set of promises means limiting how many of the second you sell.
The competitive opening
Rival programmes moved immediately to say they were absorbing the demand, and several put numbers to it in the Forbes report.
Magellan Jets said its jet card revenue was up 14% in the first half of 2026, with renewals up 18%, new clients up 55% and total revenue up 25%. Jet Linx Aviation said jet card sales were up 65% year on year. Sentient Jet said it sold more than $500 million in jet cards during 2025, and that growth had continued.
These are companies reporting their own performance to a journalist in the week their largest competitor stopped taking new customers. The figures are unaudited, the comparison periods are the companies' own, and they are exactly the sort of number a business volunteers when it is winning. We report them as attributed claims, because that is what they are — and because the direction they all point in is informative even where the magnitudes cannot be verified.
What a card shopper should take from this
If you were about to buy a NetJets card, you now cannot, and the alternatives are a fractional share with NetJets or a card with somebody else.
If you are shopping the wider market, this episode should sharpen what you test a programme on. A jet card's headline hourly rate is the least durable part of it. What determines whether the product works in the year you own it is the contract architecture underneath: how many peak days the programme declares and what happens on them, whether the rate is locked for the term or can be repriced, how fuel is charged, what the callout notice is, what the availability guarantee actually guarantees, and what happens when the operator sources your flight from a third party rather than flying it themselves.
Those terms are where programmes differ most and where they are compared least. A market in which the biggest provider has just stopped selling is a market where the remaining providers have more pricing power than they had a month ago, and where the pressure to sign quickly will be higher. That is precisely the moment to read the contract slowly.
We will report changes to programme terms as they are published. Where a programme changes its peak-day calendar, its surcharge structure or its renewal terms, that is a change affecting money already spent, and it belongs on the record.