Sentient, using a different pricing model, sells travel cards for US$100,000 to US$500,000, and then debits them at US$3,100 to US$7,100 a flight hour, depending on the size of the plane and whether the trip's length is short enough so that the pilot can wait for the return.
On a small jet, Sentient's US$100,000 card can buy more than 32 flight hours of one-way trips or nearly 49 hours of round trips. Sentient says it needs booking notice of only five hours.
For all the companies, the most popular destinations are the Northeast, California, Florida and the Caribbean, but they occasionally fly farther overseas, through affiliate charters.
Stone of Sentient predicted that revenue from private-jet membership services would overtake those of fractional jet ownership, a fast-growing business itself, in five to seven years.
But John Olcott, the president of the National Business Aviation Association, a trade group for the private-jet industry, disagreed.
"To expect the same level of service and efficiency as in a corporate or private jet," he said, referring to private aircraft owned by the traveler, "is probably unrealistic," he said.
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