I have a similar story. Larger Charter/Management Co's have been calling us for quotes in our "Light jets" that we Own & Operate. They take our quotes to their "Midsize" owners and tell them that this is the price that they need to compete with in order to get the flight. Their owners want income of any variety, even at a loss at times, so the owners say okay to the flight. The Managment Co's are letting their Owners take the hit.
I always figured that the "entry level" Charter jets, such as a Learjet, would always be busy, I have found just the opposite. The larger aircraft has the ability to fill the shoes of the smaller jet, but the smaller jet cannot fill the shoes of the larger.

Interesting. We have noticed just the opposite in our operation. We operate 3 CJ3's and they are flying almost non-stop, even in this interesting economy. We have offered our product to brokers and retail clients interested in midsize jets, but time and time again our quote and aircraft performance seem to seal the deal more often than not, even if it is considered a light jet.

It just goes to show that YMMV.

[shameless plug]
You wouldn't be looking for a 2 for the certificate, would you?

Or perhaps a contract pilot?
[/shameless plug]
:D

-mini

Haha, I wish!

I'm going in for recurrent (.297) Monday....just sayin. ;)

-mini

We have also found that are midsize are selling more then our large aircraft. The mid / super mid market seems to be doing the best right now, they can do the long haul 3000 plus NM and have a low DOC.

My guess would be that a company such as XO Jet doesn't use the original way of flying charters to generate income. It appears they are using the aircraft as their assets and hope to get some revenue for them. A high utilization plan can offset some of the costs of their assets. I sucked at economics, however someone with transportation asset management experience can chime in. They do the same thing with ships. Someone buys them, then leases it to a company which uses it then gives it back at the end of the lease. They can keep using it or turn around and sell it when the market is right for the given asset. The guys that own the asset see a nice profit.

As you know these beautiful corporate jets are nothing more then a big write off for the owner. Unlike the airlines we can't sell these aircraft for profit. My D.O. and I sat down and worked out some numbers for our CL-601 to actually make money on ownership thru chartering, the number was around 8000 per hour. Nobody in their right mind would charter an Cl-601 for that when you can charter it for around 4000 per hour. As an owner of a corporate jet it is impossible to make money with these assets, the best you can hope for is to slow down the bledding of the DOC on the aircraft.

I've come to the same conclusions about aircraft ownership. It'll never make money, but you can off set the cost of ownership through charter.
Right now, I get a lot of customers that are interested in buying, but can't financially justify the cost. They just don't really understand the production vs cost argument.