The words on a charter quote.
Twelve terms recur in every charter conversation, and most quotes use them without explanation. Here is what they cover, and what each one actually changes for your flight.
- Empty leg
A repositioning sector flown without passengers, resold 50 to 75 % below the charter rate.
An empty leg is a flight the aircraft has to make anyway: it dropped a client in Nice and must reach Geneva for its next mission. The operator is already paying for fuel and crew, so the sector sells far below the normal price. The trade-off is rigidity: date, time and route are fixed, and the leg can disappear if the paid mission behind it moves. It is the only mechanism that brings private aviation close to a business-class fare.
- FBO (Fixed Base Operator)
An airport's private terminal: lounge, customs, aircraft parking, ground handling.
The FBO is business aviation's terminal. You arrive fifteen minutes before departure, the car drives to the foot of the aircraft, checks happen on the spot and no bag touches a belt. The large European names — Signature, Universal, Jetex, Sky Valet — run several FBOs per airport. Which FBO you use changes the handling cost and sometimes the time spent on the ground: it is a line on the quote, not a comfort detail.
- ACMI
Leasing an aircraft with crew, maintenance and insurance provided by the operator.
Under ACMI the client rents the aircraft and its crew by flight hour; the operator keeps technical and insurance responsibility, while the client pays fuel, fees and taxes separately. The structure comes from commercial aviation and mostly serves airlines absorbing a traffic peak. In business aviation it shows up on VIP airliners and long missions; for a one-off flight, ordinary all-in charter remains the norm.
- AOC (Air Operator Certificate)
The national approval that lets an operator carry passengers for payment.
Without an AOC, no paid flight is legal. The certificate is issued by the authority of the State where the operator has its principal place of business — the DGAC in France, under the EASA framework — and requires an operations manual, crew minima, a maintenance programme and regular audits. When a broker offers you an aircraft, the useful first question is the AOC number of the operator flying it: that document, not the broker's name, carries responsibility for the flight.
- Repositioning
The empty flight that brings the aircraft to the client's departure point, billed in the quote.
An aircraft based in Geneva and requested out of Nice must first reach Nice: that sector is billed. It is the main reason two quotes for the same route can differ by thousands of euros — one starts from an aircraft already there, the other flies it in. A same-day return avoids a double repositioning and therefore often costs less than a one-way spread over two days.
- Altiport
A mountain airfield with a short, sloping runway requiring a specific crew qualification.
Courchevel (LFLJ) and Megève (LFHM) are altiports: under 600 metres of runway, a marked slope, a one-way approach with no go-around beyond a certain point. Only light aircraft and altiport-qualified crews may land there. In practice most clients land at Chambéry, Geneva or Grenoble and finish by helicopter or car — the altiport stays the preserve of turboprops and light aircraft.
- Curfew
The night hours during which an airport bans movements, for noise reasons.
Le Bourget closes from 22:15 to 06:00, Geneva from midnight to 06:00, Cannes-Mandelieu from 22:00 to 06:30. A curfew is not negotiable: a dinner that runs long can turn a same-evening return into a hotel night, or move the departure to a neighbouring unrestricted field. It is the constraint that most often decides the real flight plan, before the choice of aircraft.
- Jet card
Prepaid flight hours at a fixed hourly rate, with guaranteed availability on notice.
The jet card sits between on-demand charter and ownership: you buy a block of hours (typically 25) on an aircraft category, at a locked rate, with a guaranteed call-out time. You gain price predictability and skip negotiating each flight; you lose the ability to shop the market every mission. The tipping point is around 25 hours a year — below that, ordinary charter stays cheaper.
- Fractional ownership
Buying a share of an aircraft (1/16 to 1/2) that entitles you to an annual hour quota.
You buy a fraction of a specific aircraft, then pay a monthly management fee plus an hourly flight rate. The share is sold back at the end of the contract, typically five years, at a market value that is not guaranteed. The structure becomes relevant beyond fifty hours a year; below that, the fixed fee outweighs the hourly saving.
- PPR (Prior Permission Required)
Advance permission demanded by certain airfields before any landing.
A PPR field will not accept an aircraft that shows up without prior agreement: a request must be filed, sometimes hours ahead, sometimes the day before. The rule is common at altiports, military fields open to civil traffic, and airports saturated in high season. It is one of the reasons a private flight is prepared in hours rather than minutes, even when the aircraft is free.
- Slot
The time window allocated for a take-off or landing at a coordinated airport.
At saturated fields — Nice in summer, Geneva during the Motor Show, Le Bourget during the air show — movements are allocated in slots. A missed slot is not recovered: another must be requested, and the wait can exceed an hour. During the Cannes Film Festival or the Monaco Grand Prix, slots at Nice and Cannes-Mandelieu are booked weeks ahead, before the aircraft itself.
- ARGUS, Wyvern, IS-BAO
Three private audit programmes that rate an operator’s safety beyond the regulatory minimum.
The AOC is the legal minimum; ARGUS (Gold, Gold Plus, Platinum), Wyvern (Wingman) and IS-BAO (three stages) are voluntary audits examining crew experience, safety history and procedures. They are neither compulsory nor cheap, which is what makes them a real signal. Asking for the operator's audit level — not the broker's — is the most useful question before a first flight.
- MMo (maximum operating Mach number)
The certified maximum speed of the aircraft, as a fraction of the speed of sound.
MMo is the certified operating limit: Mach 0.925 means 92.5 % of the speed of sound at cruise altitude. It is not the speed the aircraft normally flies — long-range cruise sits well below it, and that is what sets real flight times. In a comparison table MMo separates two aircraft on very long sectors, where a few hundredths of a Mach turn into tens of minutes; on a European leg it changes almost nothing.
- Nautical mile (nm)
The aviation unit of distance: 1 nm = 1.852 km. Manufacturer ranges are published in nm.
A nautical mile is one minute of latitude, 1,852 metres, which makes it the natural unit of navigation. Manufacturers publish range in nautical miles; the site prints kilometres with the nm figure in brackets, without an intermediate conversion, so a page stays comparable with the original documentation. A published range always assumes conditions: passenger count, reserves, no wind.
- Category rate
A published hourly band for a class of aircraft, not for one specific model.
The hourly bands quoted on the site come from published broker rates and apply to a whole category — light, super-midsize, ultra-long-range. Two models in the same category therefore carry the same band, which is the honest reading: nobody publishes a reliable model-by-model rate. The firm price depends on the specific aircraft, its base, the season and empty repositioning, and it is confirmed by quote. Every band carries its source and the date it was read.
- Listing configuration
The actual layout of an aircraft for sale, which usually differs from the model’s certified maximum.
A model page gives the certified maximum: the number of seats the airframe can take. A specific aircraft on the market has its own layout, almost always trading density for living space — a Global 7500 certified for nineteen commonly flies with fourteen seats, a stateroom and a dining area. When the two figures diverge, the listing page says so rather than leaving two numbers to contradict each other.