NetJets: How It Invented Fractional Flying

Few companies can claim to have invented an entire category, but NetJets can. Based in Columbus, Ohio, it created the modern fractional ownership market and, decades later, remains the largest and best known name in private aviation. To understand how most people fly private today is to understand the model NetJets built.

Two Ways to Fly

NetJets offers two main paths. The first is NetJets Share, its fractional ownership program, in which a client buys a share of a specific aircraft and receives a set number of flight hours each year. The second is the NetJets Card, a jet card that lets a traveler prepay a block of hours at a set rate without owning anything. Between them, the two programs cover most of the ways a frequent private flyer might want to commit, from full fractional ownership to a simple prepaid card.

The Advantage of Scale

What sets NetJets apart is size. Because it operates one of the largest private fleets in the world, it can promise availability that smaller operators cannot, guaranteeing an aircraft with reasonable notice even on the busiest travel days. That scale also lets it keep renewing its fleet. NetJets recently signed a record agreement to add up to 1,500 Cessna Citation jets, including the new Citation Ascend, which means many of its owners will fly the newest aircraft in the sky without ever choosing one by name.

Why It Still Matters

NetJets set the template that the entire fractional industry followed. Its combination of shared ownership, guaranteed access, and a large managed fleet became the model that rivals from Flexjet to VistaJet defined themselves against. For a traveler weighing how to fly private, NetJets remains the reference point, the company that turned private aviation from something you owned outright into something you could share.