The real cost of a 25-hour jet card

The headline on a 25-hour midsize card from Sentient Jet’s SJ25+ is $235,850 — $9,434 per blended hour for the midsize cabin. That number is the start of the conversation, not the end. Three line items get added between the deposit and the first leg. One of them is a federal tax the published-rate category prefers to disclose only at quote time.

This Field Note runs the math, then sets the resulting all-in hourly next to the equivalent Oneways Range tier: $217,190 for 25 hours of mid, super-mid, and light interchange. Same cabin scope. Different posture.

Line item one: the 7.5% Federal Excise Tax

Internal Revenue Code §4261 levies 7.5% on the amount paid for taxable transportation of persons by air. The 2026 segment fee, published by the IRS through NATA, is $5.30 per passenger per domestic segment and $23.40 per international facility use. Both apply on top of the 7.5% ad valorem.

Sentient’s SJ25+ contract treats FET as pass-through: the rate card is FET-exclusive, and the tax debits the card balance at quote time. On a $9,434 blended hourly, that is roughly $707 per hour — about $17,675 over 25 hours, plus segment fees of $26.50 for a four-seat domestic round trip.

Oneways prices FET into the card hourly at sale time. The $5,338 EUR canonical (rendered $5,775 USD at the 2026-04-30 ECB close) midsize hourly is FET-inclusive. The segment fee is absorbed and remitted by Oneways as the operating broker. On the statement, the line reads card hourly. Nothing else.

Line item two: the fuel surcharge

JetCards.org tracks fuel surcharges across the published-rate category quarterly. As of Q1 2026 the typical published surcharge is $625 per hour for light, $800 for midsize, $850 for super-midsize, $925 for heavy. Unhedged; if Jet-A spot moves above the trigger band, the surcharge moves with it. No published cap.

On the Sentient SJ25+ midsize card, the $800 surcharge applies per flight hour — $20,000 against the deposit over 25 hours. The contract reserves the right to revise the surcharge with 30 days’ notice.

Oneways absorbs the fuel exposure at sale time. The card hourly is locked for 24 months from deposit. We hedge the fuel position with the operator at card sale; if Jet-A spikes, the spread comes out of membership margin, not the member’s balance. The rate is the rate. We do not reserve a right to revise it with notice.

Line item three: the peak-day surcharge

BlackJet’s analysis, alongside the published rate sheets at Sentient, NetJets, VistaJet, and Wheels Up, converges on a 5% to 40% peak-day surcharge over the 12 industry-standard peak days. Thanksgiving Wednesday and Sunday, Christmas Eve and Day, New Year’s Eve, the Sunday after the Super Bowl. The surcharge applies to the card hourly, not the deposit; over 25 hours flown predominantly on peak days, the load is non-trivial.

Sentient’s SJ25+ peak-day surcharge runs at the higher end of the band. Magellan’s 25-Hour Card absorbs the peak-day, but adds fuel and de-ice as separate line items. flyExclusive’s Jet Club 2026 — the April 2026 relaunch with all-in pricing — is the bar to clear in this category, and the closest comp to what we are doing.

Oneways does not surcharge peak days. The card hourly is the card hourly on December 24th. What we reserve is lead time on the Long-Range tier, where the call-out window extends from 48 hours to 96 hours on the 12 declared peak days. The price does not move. Availability is constrained earlier.

The Range tier comparison

Oneways Range is a 25-hour card with mid, super-mid, and light interchange. The deposit is $217,190 EUR canonical, rendered $235,000 at 2026-04-30. Cabin scope is broader than Sentient SJ25+‘s midsize-only; on a per-hour basis, the canonical rate is ~$8,688 per hour at deposit and stays there for the 24-month term.

Set against the Sentient line items: $9,434 base + $707 FET + $800 fuel + ~$471 peak-day blend (assuming 25% of hours on peak days at the midpoint) = $11,412 per hour blended all-in. Range hourly is $8,688. Delta: $2,724 per hour, or $68,100 over 25 hours.

The 12% to 18% saving claim from the research doc §9 lands in this range. The lower bound (12%) assumes no peak-day usage; the upper bound (18%) assumes the typical Q1 mid-corporate cadence with two of the 12 peak days flown.

The escrow line — the comparison no one runs

Every analysis in the published-rate category compares card hourlies. None compares custody.

Sentient’s contract is silent on what happens to the $235,850 between the wire and the first leg. There is no escrow, no segregated trust, no per-leg release at wheels-up. The deposit funds working capital. If the operating position is healthy, this is invisible to the member. If it is not — and the category has recent precedent — the deposit becomes an unsecured creditor claim in a Chapter 11 filing.

Oneways holds the deposit in a DOT-compliant third-party escrow account at a regulated trust. Per-leg release on wheels-up confirmation. The funds are the member’s property until the wheels leave the runway; only then does the per-leg amount release to the operator’s settle account. The flow is documented at /jet-card#escrow; the legal posture at /trust.

The cost of escrow custody is real. A setup fee — typically under $400 — and 25 to 50 basis points the trust takes on the average daily balance. We absorb both into membership margin. The member sees the card hourly. The category prefers to treat custody as an amenity, or to leave it out of the conversation entirely. We treat it as a balance-sheet primitive.

The audit math

Stated cleanly:

• Sentient SJ25+ midsize, 25 hours, all-in (FET + fuel + 25% peak-day): ~$285,300
• Oneways Range tier, 25 hours, all-in (mid + super-mid + light interchange): $235,000

The headline-to-all-in ratio for Sentient is 1.21. For Oneways it is 1.00. The 12% to 18% saving claim is the spread between those two ratios, normalized for cabin mix.

Three things to note:

1. The blended hourly assumes 25% of hours on peak days. Zero peak-day usage compresses the saving toward 12%; half peak days widens it to 22%.
2. The Sentient comparison assumes Q1 2026 published surcharges. Both fuel and peak-day surcharges revise with notice in their contract.
3. Range tier interchange is broader than midsize-only. A member who never flies super-mid is paying for capability they do not use, which makes the Light tier the closer comp ($124,770 deposit, light + turboprop interchange) for that profile.

The point of the teardown is not that Oneways is cheaper than Sentient on every leg. It is that the published rate is the rate the member pays. Reading a card contract should not require running a model on the surcharge stack.

Reading list

• Sentient SJ25+ rate sheet — published rates, surcharge schedule, contract language.
• flyExclusive Jet Club 2026 — the April 2026 relaunch with all-in pricing. The category bar.
• Magellan Jets 25-Hour Card — absorbs peak-day, line-items fuel and de-ice. Round-trip 10% off.
• NATA: IRS 2026 FET rates — the segment fee published rates referenced above.
• JetCards.org fuel surcharge tracker — quarterly survey of published surcharges by category and provider.

The next Field Note in this series — Escrow is not an amenity. It’s a balance sheet. — picks up the custody thread and runs it against three category-defining failures in the last seven years.