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Ballast/Acquisitions desk/No. 10

Compare · Acquisitions desk · 3 minutes

Charter, Fraction or Own

Owning the machine is a business: crew, berth or hangar, insurance, depreciation, and capital standing idle between trips. Whether you want to be in that business depends on one number — how much you actually use it. This instrument prices all three doors at your real utilisation and prints the break-even where ownership starts to pencil.

Currency-agnostic · symbol only Rules version 1.0 Reviewed July 2026

The manifest — your numbers

Sets the unit of use. Aircraft are metered in flight hours; yachts in days aboard.

Σ

The machine, delivered and fitted.

% of price / yr

Crew, hangar or berth, insurance, management, scheduled maintenance. The 10% rule is a fair opening bid for both machines.

Σ/ unit

Fuel, handling, consumables — what one more hour or day directly burns.

units / yr

Last year's real number. Ambition is not utilisation.

Σ/ unit

All-in retail for the equivalent machine.

Σ

The share purchase for a programme covering your usage.

Σ/ mo
Σ/ unit
% / yr

Straight-line on the machine's value. Fractional shares wear the same, plus a resale haircut.

% / yr
years

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The reading

Charter.

$12,402 / h

cheapest true cost per hour of use, at your utilisation

Three doors, one horizon

CharterFractionOwn
Capital committed on day one
All-in cost per year
Value recovered at exit
True cost over the horizon
True cost per unit of use

Three levels of actually going

If you fly / sailCheapest doorPer unit

What moves this result

What would sink this reading

Charter's hidden line is availability: peak weeks, repositioning legs and short-notice premiums can add 20–30% to the rate you entered. Owners never wait; that convenience is what the fixed costs buy.

With yachts, the crew is the product. A badly run boat at half the cost is not half the boat — budget the fixed line generously or the comparison flatters ownership.

Fractional exits are soft. Shares resell into a thin market at the operator's mercy; the model's 30% haircut on residual is a convention, and reality has been known to undercut it.

Questions people bring to this desk

How many flight hours a year justify buying a jet?
The classic industry threshold is 200–250 hours a year before whole ownership beats chartering; below roughly 150, charter or fractional usually wins. This instrument computes your exact break-even from your machine's price, fixed costs and the charter market, rather than quoting the folklore.
What does a yacht cost to own per year?
The working rule is about 10% of the purchase price annually — crew, berth, insurance, maintenance, management — before fuel and before depreciation. On a $9M boat that is roughly $900K a year whether it leaves the marina or not, which is what the per-day figure above makes visible.
Is fractional ownership worth it?
Fraction sits between the doors: less capital than owning, guaranteed availability charter can't promise, but management fees and occupied rates that never sleep, plus a soft resale market for the share. It tends to win in the band between about half the ownership break-even and the break-even itself — the table shows where your usage falls.
Methodology — the formula, printed

Everything below is calculated from your inputs except depreciation and market return, which are assumptions you control. All flows are future-valued to the horizon at the market rate, so the three doors are directly comparable.

g = (1+r)^n ann = (g − 1)/r own_cost = P·g + (fixed + var·use)·ann − P·(1−dep)^n fraction_cost = B·g + (12·mgmt + rate_f·use)·ann − 0.7·B·(1−dep)^n charter_cost = charter_rate · use · ann break_even_use = (P·(r + dep) + fixed) / (charter_rate − var)

The gauge reads your usage against the ownership break-even, parity at 100%. Below roughly 55% of break-even the house says charter; between there and parity is fraction territory; past parity, ownership pencils. The verdict names the cheapest door outright and flags margins under 10% as a line-ball.

Limitations. Charter assumes rates hold across the horizon; fractional programmes differ wildly in fees and exit terms — read yours, then correct the inputs. Crew quality, availability and the pleasure of the thing being yours are outside the arithmetic, where they belong.