A midsize business jet, professionally crewed and hangared, costs between $700,000 and $1.2 million a year before it burns a single gallon of fuel. That is the fixed block alone, and it arrives whether the aircraft flies 40 hours or 400.
Add the flying and the number roughly doubles. Add depreciation, the largest single cost of ownership and the one most often missing from the spreadsheet, and the first year can cost more again than every operating line combined.
The figures below draw on cost breakdowns published by operators and management companies in 2026, fuel survey data from the Aviation Research Group, utilization data from JETNET, compensation data from the National Business Aviation Association, and current United States tax guidance. They describe a typical aircraft at typical utilization. They are not a quote.
Why Published Ownership Costs Disagree
Search for the annual cost of a midsize jet and the answers range from $500,000 to $2.7 million. The spread is not sloppiness. It is three different questions being answered with one number.
The first is direct operating cost, the money spent per hour flown. Jet Linx, the aircraft management company, puts a midsize jet at $500,000 to $1 million a year to operate when all expenses are counted. The second is cash cost of ownership, fixed plus variable, which is where the $1.2 million to $2 million range for a well-used midsize aircraft comes from. The third is economic cost, which adds depreciation and the cost of capital tied up in the airframe, and which is the only figure that describes what ownership actually took from the balance sheet.
Most published guides answer the first or second question and label the answer the cost of ownership. Anyone comparing ownership against a charter card or a fractional share needs the third.
The Fixed Block
Fixed costs are the ones that do not care about flying. For a midsize jet in a professional Part 91 operation, the 2026 breakdown published by Private Jet Nation runs as follows.
| Fixed cost | Annual range (USD) |
|---|---|
| Captain | $150,000 to $220,000 |
| First officer | $80,000 to $130,000 |
| Recurrent simulator training, two pilots | $50,000 to $90,000 |
| Hangar | $36,000 to $240,000 |
| Hull and liability insurance | $60,000 to $120,000 |
| Manufacturer maintenance programme | $96,000 to $240,000 |
Crew is the single largest fixed line, and it is still climbing. The National Business Aviation Association's 2025 Compensation Survey, now in its 39th year and built on data from 415 member companies covering 4,421 flight department employees, found bonuses adding an average 13 percent on top of salary, and pilots flying ultra long range aircraft paid over 36 percent more than the average pilot. Pilots with ten or more years at the same company earn 22 percent more than average, which is the price of the retention that keeps a two-pilot operation stable.
Hangar is the line with the widest spread, because it is really a property cost wearing an aviation label. A metropolitan facility can run $10,000 to $20,000 a month or more, while a regional field can be a fraction of that. Insurance is more predictable: the aviation insurance broker BWI puts hull coverage on turbine aircraft at 0.6 to 1.2 percent of hull value a year, with a $5 million aircraft carrying full hull and $5 million combined single limit liability landing near $40,000 to $80,000.
If the aircraft is professionally managed rather than run by an in-house flight department, add a management fee. Jet Linx quotes $3,000 a month for a light jet rising past $10,000 a month for a heavy or ultra long range aircraft, and notes that the fee typically represents 10 to 15 percent of total annual operating cost, with other expenses passed through without markup.
Where the Money Goes: A $10 Million Midsize Jet, 200 Hours a Year
Annual cost in the first year of ownership, using published 2026 midpoints
Depreciation alone exceeds every other line combined. Flying, crew, hangar, insurance and training total $1,188,000. The value the airframe sheds in its first year is $1,400,000, and it is the one cost that never appears on an invoice.
Midpoints of published 2026 ranges. Flying covers fuel, engine reserves and a five year average of airframe maintenance per OMNIJET's direct operating cost guide, so maintenance is counted once rather than split across fixed and variable schedules. Crew, hangar, insurance and training ranges per Private Jet Nation. Depreciation per published first year loss estimates. A managed aircraft adds a management fee on top.
The Variable Block, and the Fuel Problem
Variable cost is where 2026 has moved fastest, and most published ownership models have not caught up.
Jet-A averaged $8.31 a gallon across more than 200 United States fixed base operators in August 2026, according to the Aviation Research Group survey reported by Aviation Week. That was up 70 cents on July and $1.70 on the same month a year earlier. The regional spread is wide enough to matter to a flight plan: $9.09 a gallon in the Western region against $7.36 in the Central region.
Most ownership cost guides in circulation still model fuel at $6.00 to $7.50 a gallon. A midsize jet burning 200 to 250 gallons an hour at those older assumptions costs $1,200 to $1,875 an hour in fuel. At August 2026 prices the same aircraft costs closer to $1,870 an hour at the midpoint of that burn rate. Over 200 hours, the gap between the modelled figure and the current print is around $70,000 a year, which is roughly a hangar bill that nobody budgeted.
Taken as a whole, OMNIJET's 2026 direct operating cost guide puts a midsize jet at $2,500 to $3,500 an hour covering fuel, engine reserves and a five year average of airframe maintenance, against $1,500 to $2,500 for a light jet and $5,000 to $8,000 for a large cabin or ultra long range aircraft. Note that maintenance appears in both the fixed and variable columns depending on whether it is billed as a monthly programme enrolment or reserved per hour. Adding both schedules together without checking which structure applies is the most common way an ownership budget double counts itself.
Depreciation Is the Biggest Line
An aircraft loses most value in the year it is least likely to be examined. Published depreciation analyses put the first year loss at around 14 percent and as much as 18 percent, settling to 5 to 8 percent a year through the following several years.
On a $10 million midsize jet, a 14 percent first year loss is $1.4 million. That is more than crew, hangar, insurance, maintenance programme and a full year of flying combined.
It also varies far more by model than buyers expect. An analysis of more than 3,000 secondary market transactions published by GlobalAir found one midsize family depreciating at 4.6 percent a year while another in the same cabin class shed 6.2 percent. Over a decade that difference is worth more than the entire fixed cost block, and it is decided at the point of purchase rather than managed afterwards.
Current market conditions are unusually supportive of values. As AVNET reported on the second quarter preowned market, just 6.5 percent of the active jet fleet was listed for sale at the end of June against a historical average of 8.1 percent, the leanest reading since August 2023. Tight supply holds residuals up. It also means buyers are paying a premium to get in.
The Tax Offset, and Its Conditions
For United States taxpayers, the depreciation arithmetic changed materially. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 permanently reinstated 100 percent bonus depreciation for new and used aircraft acquired and placed in service on or after 20 January 2025, replacing the phase down that the 2017 tax act had set in motion. The Internal Revenue Service followed with Notice 2026-11 on 20 January 2026, clarifying that a written binding purchase contract signed on or before 19 January 2025 can still qualify even where delivery came later.
The conditions are not trivial. Eligibility turns on the qualified business use test in section 280F of the Internal Revenue Code, which generally requires business use above 50 percent of total use and a detailed annual analysis to support it. Recovery periods under MACRS run five years for Part 91 operations and seven years for Part 135. "Business aircraft owners require a detailed factual analysis in order to present accurate tax returns," said the association's David Shannon in NBAA's guidance on the notice.
None of this applies outside the United States. An owner based in the Gulf, Europe or Asia is carrying the full depreciation curve without the federal offset, which changes the ownership case considerably.
Utilization Decides Everything
Every fixed cost is divided by hours flown, so utilization is the whole argument.
JETNET's mid-2026 analysis puts wholly owned jets at roughly 200 to 400 hours a year, against 800 to 1,200 hours for aircraft in fractional fleets, three to four times the owner-flown rate. Fractional fleets have grown 65 to 70 percent since 2019.
Run the division. An all-in cash cost of $1.5 million spread over 200 hours is $7,500 an hour. The same aircraft flown 400 hours costs $3,750. Against that, AVNET's 2026 charter cost benchmarks put a midsize charter at $4,000 to $8,000 an hour with no capital at risk and no residual exposure.
At 200 hours a year, an owner is paying a premium over charter for control, availability and a specific aircraft. At 400 hours the economics invert and ownership wins on cost as well. The threshold sits somewhere between, and where exactly depends on the depreciation curve of the model chosen more than on any operating line.
The market appears to know this. JETNET found that 10 to 20 percent of owners who fly their own aircraft also hold fractional shares, about half of them using the share to add capacity rather than replace the aircraft. Fewer than 10 percent of operators surveyed planned to eliminate their flight department. Ownership is not being abandoned. It is being supplemented at the margins, which is what a rational answer to a utilization problem looks like.