Federal Excise Tax is the US government's tax on air transportation. For domestic charter it has two parts: a 7.5% percentage tax on the amount paid for the transportation, and a flat segment fee of roughly $5 per passenger per leg, indexed annually. Flights that begin or end outside the US skip the 7.5% and instead carry a per-passenger international facilities fee in the low twenties of dollars each way. The operator collects the tax from you and remits it to the IRS — it is a pass-through, not operator revenue.
In practice the 7.5% applies to essentially everything you pay for the flight: the base charter price, fuel surcharges, peak-day premiums, and in most structures the repositioning built into a one-way price, since the IRS view is that you are paying for transportation as a whole. On a $20,000 domestic trip that means $1,500 of FET plus segment fees — about $40 for four passengers on a two-leg itinerary. A handful of carve-outs exist: pure international legs, some Alaska/Hawaii segments taxed differently, and certain small-aircraft exemptions that rarely apply to jet charter.
For the customer, FET is mostly a comparison hazard. Two quotes for the same trip, one stated "plus FET" and one "all-in," differ by 7.5% before you have compared anything real. Reputable operators state the tax treatment explicitly on the quote; if a price seems oddly sharp, the first thing to check is whether tax is inside it. The estimate ranges on our route pages include applicable taxes, and when you contact an operator about an aircraft you found in the Yond catalog, ask for the quote broken out with FET as its own line — any professional back office does this by default.
Edge cases catch even experienced flyers. Catering, ground transport, and de-icing billed at cost are generally not taxable, but the same items bundled into an inflated "trip package" can become taxable — one reason itemized invoices are standard. Empty legs and discounted repositioning flights are taxed on the discounted price actually paid, not the notional full fare. Jet card and membership deposits typically have FET carved out of each flight's value as you fly. And FET applies to who pays, not who flies: a US company paying for a domestic flight owes it even if the passengers are foreign nationals. None of this changes what you should do — just confirm, on every quote, whether the number you are comparing is before or after tax.
