San Francisco Jet Charter arranges three broad kinds of flight out of the Bay Area: passengers, cargo, and medical transport. Which aircraft suits your trip comes down to how far you are going, how many people are traveling, what baggage is coming with you, and the runway performance at both ends. Your advisor will narrow the options and send you a short list to choose from.
Passenger Air Charter
This covers most of what we arrange from San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland: executives moving between offices, families traveling together, and groups heading to an event on a schedule that commercial service does not fit. The aircraft range from piston twins and turboprops through light, midsize and heavy jets, up to VIP airliners for larger groups.
Above nineteen passengers the trip leaves FAR Part 135 and calls for an airliner-size aircraft, operating under FAR Part 121 or a foreign equivalent. Part 121 and its equivalents generally carry stricter crew and operating requirements than both Part 91 and Part 135. Tell us the group size early and we will tell you which set of rules your trip falls under.
Air Cargo Charter
We arrange freight charters for loads that will not wait for scheduled service: production parts, oversized equipment, and sensitive or time-critical shipments. Smaller consignments can sometimes travel as belly cargo on a passenger aircraft, which is usually the cheaper answer when the load is light enough.
Send us the dimensions and the weight along with the pickup and delivery points. Your advisor will check both against the aircraft available and the loading method, whether that is ramp, nose or door loading.
Medical / Air Ambulance
We arrange medical flights and air ambulance flights worldwide, and our team has the contacts and relationships to move quickly. Whether you are carrying an oxygen tank for yourself and want privacy, or you are the person responsible for getting a patient to a hospital, we can assist. We offer quick response times.
Which Category Fits a Bay Area Trip
Most of what leaves the Bay Area is short-haul. The routes that come up again and again are Southern California, Las Vegas, Seattle, Scottsdale and Aspen, and those are one to two hours in the air. That puts very light, light and midsize jets at the center of this market rather than at the bottom of the list. For two or three passengers on a run down to Southern California, a light jet is usually the sensible answer and the cheaper one.
Midsize and super midsize aircraft earn their place once the passenger count climbs or the trip stops being a short hop. Heavy and long-range jets come into it for Hawaii, transpacific business travel and the coast-to-coast runs, where cabin size over five or six hours matters as much as the range does. VIP airliners handle groups that outgrow a heavy jet.
Trips into the Sierra work differently. Mountain airports sit at high elevation, and density altitude and terrain determine the aircraft choice far more than the distance does. A Tahoe trip in January is a different conversation from a Las Vegas trip of similar length, and your advisor will talk you through what the operator can do on the day.
At the smaller end, turboprops and piston aircraft reach the fields that jets cannot use. San Carlos and Palo Alto are both short single-runway airports suited to light aircraft, which is why a Palo Alto client flying a jet departs from San Jose or Hayward instead.
Choosing Between Them
If you are not sure which of these fits, call us and describe the trip. Runway length at your preferred Bay Area airport, tower hours, and whether the flight needs to clear customs all feed into the answer, and those are easier to work through on the phone than off a web page. Reach an advisor at +1-888-987-5387, or send the details through our contact page.