Charter Membership programmes

For many CEOs and their families, it's an annual question: Go skiing in the Rockies for spring break, or bask in the sun someplace south?

Then again, some do both. That was the case this year with the CEO of a commercial real estate firm in New York. Along with his wife, their four children and a nanny, he flew first to Vail, where the family skied for a week. Then they took off for Mexico and a then week of snorkeling in Cabo San Lucas.

Each time, they flew on a private jet--an eight-seat Citation X provided, along with a pilot, by Marquis Jet Partners, one of several companies now selling memberships for private-jet travel. 'Without his Marquis plan--25 flight hours a year for about $200,000--the CEO says his family never could have pulled off their lavish two-week trip.

As any CEO who has hopped on a corporate plane knows, traveling by private jet is a world apart from taking even a first class commercial flight. There are no snaking lines at the airport, no tedious layovers and no threats of lost luggage, to say nothing about security and reliability.

Seizing on this untapped market, companies such as Sentient, Delta AirElite and Marquis are offering private-jet charter memberships. For a minimum of about $100,000, you can buy prepaid blocks of time on jets that seat from six to 14 people.

The response has been strong. Sentient, the Boston-area company that pioneered the concept some years ago, has more than 1,200 members. Its single-year sales increased 78 percent last year, says CEO Mark Stone. Marquis says it sold 500 memberships in 2002, its first year in business. This year, the New York-based company expects to at least double that.

The jet services companies insist they've only begun to penetrate the market of charter membership. Delta AirElite offers a slightly different package. A Cincinnati-based subsidiary of Delta Air Lines, it sells 25-, 50- and 100-hour plans. The 25-hour memberships cost from $99,500 to $245,500. The company has a fleet of more than 300 jets, most of them owned or operated (or both) by Delta, says Cameron Gowans, director of sales and marketing. Delta AirElite doesn't release membership figures, but Gowans says it has already received more than 1,000 inquiries.

Sentient, formerly eBizJets, has a different model: It sells debit cards for $100,000 to $500,000. A $100,000 card can yield up to 49 hours of roundtrip flights on a small jet, such as a six-seat Beech Jet 400.