A new California-based company claims to be the first to resell jet card or fractional memberships on the open market, giving sellers a better return on their investment.

"Selling a jet card back is like selling your car back to the dealer," says LeRoy Young, founder of Liquid Jets. Young, who previously sold whole aircraft, started the web-based company a few months ago after being asked by his sister-in-law, a bookkeeper for celebrities, to find buyers for partially used jet cards belonging to two actors - Harrison Ford and Cameron Diaz.

Under fractional programmes, buyers purchase shares in an aircraft, typically as small as 1/16, then pay monthly and hourly fees to a management company that provides crews and aircraft services. With jet cards, the purchaser typically buys 25h of flight time on business jets at a fixed cost. Bombardier's Skyjet, for example, sells 25h jet cards starting at $94,000, and claims to have no cancellation fees on its website. The company says it has never known a customer to trade in a jet card.

Young, however, says jet card members often cannot use the hours on the card and end up, in the case of Ford and Diaz, giving away the service to family and friends, a practice that bothered the bookkeeper. "My sister-in-law said, 'This is stupid!'"


Source: Flight International

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