A business jet is an aircraft designed and certified to carry a small number of passengers point to point, on the passengers' schedule rather than an airline's. Manufacturers, regulators and operators all use the term: Gulfstream, Bombardier, Dassault and Textron sell business jets, the FAA and EASA certify them, and an operator's fleet list calls them that whether the people on board are a board of directors or a family going skiing.
"Private jet" describes exactly the same aircraft from the customer's side of the transaction. There is no certification, no size threshold and no cabin feature that makes one aircraft a business jet and another a private jet — the words differ in who is speaking, not in what is flying. "Corporate jet" narrows it slightly, usually implying a company-owned aircraft rather than a chartered one, and "bizjet" is the trade shorthand.
What actually separates one aircraft from another is the class. A very light jet carries four passengers 1,200 nm; an ultra-long-range jet carries fourteen 7,000 nm and costs roughly four times as much per hour. Between them sit the light, midsize, super-midsize and heavy classes, plus the bizliners — airliner airframes finished as private cabins. Turboprops are not jets at all, but they compete for the same short-leg trips and are sold through the same operators.
Business jets are not usually owned by the people flying in them. Most charter aircraft belong to an owner who places the tail with a Part 135 operator; the operator holds the certificate, employs the crew and sells the empty days. That structure is why the same aircraft can quote very different prices depending on where it is and what the operator needs it to do next — a business jet already positioned near your departure airport prices very differently from one that has to fly in empty.
The Yond app lists 4,900+ real aircraft with photos, year built, range and speed, shows where each one was last seen, and breaks every estimate into cost scenarios per tail.
