The headline number from JetNet IQ’s quarterly market report, released on 21 January 2026, is unambiguous: combined fractional and jet-card sales at NetJets, Flexjet, Wheels Up, and VistaJet grew 31% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2025. What’s more interesting is who is buying.
Historically, the U.S. fractional-jet market has been concentrated in two groups: ultra-high-net-worth individuals using the aircraft personally, and a small number of Fortune 500 corporates flying directors. According to the JetNet IQ data, those two cohorts now account for roughly 54% of new memberships — down from 78% in 2019. The growth has come almost entirely from a third group: senior executives at mid-cap firms with revenues between $500 million and $2 billion.
“It’s the COO of a regional bank, the CFO of a software company doing $700 million in ARR, the CEO of a private-equity-backed industrials business,” said Lauren Pulido, JetNet IQ’s senior analyst, on a Business Travel Today call on 23 January 2026. “Five years ago these executives flew commercial business class. Today they’re buying 25-hour jet cards or quarter-shares in a Phenom 300E.”
Three forces appear to be driving the shift. First, the pricing gap has narrowed. Flexjet’s 25-hour Embraer Praetor 500 jet card lists at $209,500 in the most recent rate sheet (published 5 January 2026), or roughly $8,380 per flight hour. A premium-cabin transcontinental round-trip on a major U.S. carrier, including premium-economy positioning legs and a high-status ground product, can cost $9,000 to $12,000 per traveler. For a flight carrying three executives, the math on the jet card is no longer absurd.
Second, the post-pandemic compression of corporate travel calendars has made schedule reliability worth more than it used to be. Executives are flying for shorter trips, often two or three cities in two days, and a missed connection at O’Hare costs more than the empty leg.
Third, mid-cap boards have, somewhat quietly, begun approving private-aviation policies that 2019-vintage governance committees would have rejected outright. According to a March 2026 survey by the National Association of Corporate Directors, 41% of public mid-cap companies now permit a defined volume of private flying for the CEO and one tier below — up from 18% in 2019.
The operators have responded. NetJets reported in its January 2026 owner letter that it has added 47 aircraft to its fleet since the start of 2024, the largest expansion in the company’s 60-year history. Flexjet announced on 11 February 2026 a new “Red Label Mid-Market” tier targeting exactly the buyer JetNet IQ describes — a 25-hour minimum, fixed-fleet, no-positioning-fee card priced at $189,000 for the Praetor 500. VistaJet, the European-headquartered operator, said in late February that it will base eight additional Bombardier Challenger 850s in Dallas, Atlanta, and Salt Lake City over the next nine months specifically to serve the mid-cap demand.
Whether the trend is durable depends on a question that nobody in the industry yet has a confident answer to: what happens when the next economic downturn forces boards to revisit the private-aviation line on the corporate expense ledger? Pulido, the JetNet IQ analyst, was characteristically direct. “We don’t know,” she said. “But for now, the order books are full and the deliveries are running into 2028.”