NetJets and Flexjet Are Both Building Terminals Only Their Own Owners May Use

NetJets has announced three new private terminals in the United States and a move to a larger one at a fourth, all for the exclusive use of its own owners. The largest is a complex of nearly 114,000 square feet at Dallas Love Field, built with Signature Aviation and due to open in late 2028. The announcement, made on 12 October 2026, arrives a month after Flexjet opened a $34 million terminal at Farnborough that only its customers may enter. The two largest fractional operators are now competing on buildings as well as aircraft.

What NetJets announced

Every figure below is NetJets' own, from its release of 12 October. No cost was disclosed for any of the four sites.

• Dallas Love Field, Texas. A NetJets only complex of nearly 114,000 square feet, combining a private terminal developed with Signature Aviation and a second NetJets Service Hub hangar, alongside a maintenance hangar the company opened there in 2021. Opening is set for late 2028. NetJets says its flight activity at Dallas is up more than 25 percent since 2022.
• Washington Dulles, Virginia. The first two floors of a three storey Signature Aviation building become more than 14,000 square feet of NetJets space, with a lounge, a family room and private suites. Construction starts in early 2027. NetJets says Dulles is consistently among its top five owner destinations.
• Rifle Garfield County, Colorado. A 6,000 square foot terminal and a new hangar, built from the ground up with Vantage Aviation and expected to be operating by early 2027.
• West Palm Beach, Florida. A move to a larger exclusive use terminal with Signature Aviation at the airport NetJets calls Donald J. Trump International, growing from 10,000 to 15,000 square feet with more parking and ramp space. NetJets says it is the company's fourth busiest airport.

Patrick Gallagher, president of NetJets Aviation, said the company is investing in the infrastructure to deliver an unmatched experience.

Rifle is the clearest case for owning the ground

The Colorado site shows the logic most plainly. Aspen/Pitkin County Airport will close from 4 April to 19 November 2027 to rebuild its runway, according to the airport's published schedule, with no commercial or private flights and no terminal access during the works. Every owner flying to Aspen in that window has to land somewhere else, and Rifle is one of the obvious alternatives. NetJets has timed a terminal and a weatherproof hangar to be ready before that traffic arrives. An operator that waits until the closure begins to look for ramp space will be negotiating against everyone else who had the same idea.

The Flexjet half of the story

Flexjet's Farnborough terminal opened on 10 September 2026. It covers 2,098 square metres, or 22,580 square feet, and carries dedicated security screening and immigration, an owners' lounge, a full size replica of a Gulfstream G700 cabin and the company's European headquarters. Beside it stands a maintenance hangar of 3,530 square metres, larger than the terminal. Chief executive Michael Silvestro called maintenance the unsung hero of the strategy, saying owning an aeroplane does no good if it cannot be kept flying. Corporate Jet Investor described the building as the first dedicated private terminal of its kind in Europe.

Farnborough also explains why the ground has value. The airfield operates under a planning limit of 50,000 movements a year, set in 2011, and handled 29,702 flights in 2024, according to the airport's consultation material. Its current planning application asks to change when flights may take place, not to raise the cap. A terminal on that ramp is a claim on a fixed amount of space.

Flexjet's American network is further along than its European one. In May 2025 the company said it already ran exclusive terminals at Teterboro, White Plains, Dallas Love Field, Naples and Van Nuys, and listed Scottsdale, Bozeman, Palm Beach, Miami and Las Vegas in development. The Scottsdale building, a $36 million project with Atlantic Aviation, was scheduled to open in late 2026.

Two of those names now overlap with NetJets. Both operators will have their own building at Dallas Love Field, and both have chosen Palm Beach. The partners split along the same line as the money in the FBO market: NetJets builds with Signature at three of its four new sites, while Flexjet's Scottsdale terminal is with Atlantic, the network that Apollo and Singapore's GIC bought into in August at a valuation Bloomberg put near $10 billion. The FBO chains supply the land and the lease; the operators put their name on the door.

What it changes for the owner

For a fractional owner or a jet card holder, a captive terminal improves the slowest part of the trip. Private screening removes a queue, a dedicated ramp shortens the walk, and a hangar the operator controls should return an aircraft to service faster than one waiting on a third party's schedule. The Dallas complex puts a second service hub on the same site as the terminal, which suggests NetJets reads the building the way Silvestro does: the hangar matters more than the lounge.

The other side is a switching cost. A building that only one operator's customers may use is an advantage only while flying with that operator, from that airport. As both companies add sites at the same busy fields, the terminal becomes part of what an owner gives up by moving.

The open question is who pays for the buildings. Neither operator has said what the four NetJets sites cost or how they will be recovered, so their effect on an hourly rate cannot be calculated from what is public. What is on record is that prices are already moving: Berkshire Hathaway's half year filing recorded a 15.5 percent rise in aviation services revenues at NetJets and named average prices among the reasons. Owners comparing programmes this year are now comparing ground networks as well as fleets, and a terminal opening in 2028 is part of what the price buys.