Berkshire Hathaway's latest quarterly filing contains one sentence that no fractional brochure will ever print. Aviation services revenues rose 15.5% in the first six months of 2026, and among the four reasons Berkshire gives for the rise is "average prices."
Berkshire owns NetJets, the largest fractional operator in the world, and reports it together with FlightSafety as aviation services inside its Service group. The Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2026, filed on 8 August, states that the revenue increase from aviation services "was primarily due to increases in the number of aircraft in shared ownership programs, in-flight hours flown, training hours and average prices."
Three of those four drivers are volume. The fourth is price. It is the only place in a public document where the company that effectively sets the reference price for fractional ownership acknowledges, under securities law, that the reference price has moved up.
The Rate Held Still. The Terms Did Not.
Change in guaranteed jet card terms between the second quarter of 2025 and the second quarter of 2026. The headline hourly rate is the only measure that barely moved.
What the filing does not say
Berkshire does not break out NetJets. There is no NetJets revenue line, no NetJets earnings line, no fleet count and no flight hours anywhere in the document. Aviation services appears only as a percentage growth rate and as one contributor among several to a group total. Any figure presented as NetJets revenue for the first half of 2026 has been constructed by somebody outside the company, because the disclosure that would support it does not exist.
What is disclosed is the Service group, and the Service group is not the aviation business. Its revenues were $6,874 million in the second quarter of 2026 against $5,677 million a year earlier, and $13,308 million across the first six months against $11,170 million. Pre-tax earnings were $879 million in the quarter against $729 million, and $1,664 million across the half against $1,377 million.
Those totals are dominated by TTI, an electronics component distributor whose revenue rose 26.5% in the half on accelerating customer demand and inventory cost-based price increases. Reading a Service group number as an aviation number overstates the aviation business substantially.
The figure being misreported
Several write-ups of this filing have stated that aviation services revenues were up $287 million to $2.9 billion, a 20.8% increase. That sentence is wrong in more than one direction, and it has travelled widely enough to be worth naming.
The $287 million and the 20.8% are the increase in pre-tax earnings, not revenue, and they belong to the entire Service group, not to aviation. The $2.9 billion is $2,904 million, the combined pre-tax earnings of Berkshire's whole manufacturing, service and retailing arm, which includes McLane, retailing and Pilot alongside the Service group. None of the three components of that sentence describes NetJets. The single aviation-specific number in the filing remains the 15.5% revenue growth for the half.
Costs are moving on the other side of the ledger
Berkshire names the pressure in the same paragraph that names the growth. Earnings increases from aviation services were "primarily attributable to increased revenues, partially offset by higher flight crew and instructor costs and higher maintenance, fuel, subcontract and other variable costs."
That is the mechanism behind the price line. Crew, maintenance and fuel are the three largest variable inputs in a fractional programme, and all three are named as rising in the same six months in which average prices rose. The operator is passing through cost inflation it is absorbing itself. Private Jet Card Comparisons counted 872 aircraft in the NetJets fleet at the start of August 2026, excluding managed aircraft, so the pass-through is being applied across a very large book of contracts.
The sticker price is not where the increase appears
The published market rate suggests almost nothing is happening. Private Jet Card Comparisons put the average guaranteed jet card rate at $11,314 an hour at the end of the second quarter of 2026, down 1.0% on the first quarter and up just 0.4% year on year. On that number alone, 2026 looks like a flat pricing year.
The terms attached to the rate tell a different story. Average daily minimums reached 92.9 minutes in the second quarter against 83.7 minutes a year earlier, an increase of 11.0%. Average peak days climbed to 45.4 from 35.6, up 27.5% and close to double the pre-pandemic level. Non-peak callout stretched to 65.9 hours from 63.2. A buyer paying a headline rate that has not moved is buying a shorter list of days on which that rate applies, and paying for more minutes than were actually flown on short sectors.
Fractional contracts are structured differently from cards, but they are exposed to the same inputs and negotiated against the same benchmarks. AVNET's guide to fractional ownership, jet cards and charter sets out where each structure carries its cost. The filing suggests the share programme is where the increase is being taken most directly.
Where the owner meets it
The renewal quote is the point of contact. A fractional share is bought once and repriced repeatedly, through monthly management fees, occupied hourly rates and the terms of the share renewal itself. An owner who signed in 2021 or 2022 is renewing into an operator that has told its shareholders that average prices, flight crew costs, maintenance costs and fuel costs have all risen.
Demand is not the offsetting argument it might appear to be. Fractional flying has been the growth engine of the market, and AVNET reported earlier this year that business jet departures climbed as fractional activity accelerated. A programme adding aircraft, hours and customers has limited commercial reason to hold its pricing.
Berkshire's third-quarter filing is due in early November and will supersede these half-year figures. Until then, the 15.5% growth rate and the four words that explain part of it are the most reliable pricing signal the fractional market has published this year.