Caution! Slight thread creep!
Me thinks that there might be another point of view to the Fractionals vs. Charter business model...
You guessed it, it's the independent charter viewpoint!
The Fractionals have a clever and expensive marketing campaign and I give 'em credit for that, but look at it from a different angle:
A card owner or regular owner with NJE, NJ or all the others, has to put a lot of money down, fixed for a period of time and no early exit strategy that isn't financially devastating to both, the operator and the himself. Why is that? Because at first it seems to have a tax benefit for the customer, but what if you suddenly need cash? The operator has a early exit penalty, let's say it is 30%, so the customer is stiffed for 30%, but in order to keep himself afloat (e.g. not bankrupt) he needs to bite the bullet and rather loses the money.
The fractional operator you think made out on that deal? Wrong! Because the value of his assets - the aircraft - has plummeted to up to 50%!
First time I heard about the free reposition - that seems very attractive for the customer, but as far as the operator goes, how many revenue flights across the pond would he have to make to compensate for one repo flight? Sounds too good to be true - I'm sure there are provisions in the fine print, like "free of charge, only if we have a matching one-way for the return"?
AFAIK here in the US NJ owners still pay for repo legs and monthly maintenance charges, making it almost as expensive as regular charter, but with the lump sum of money invested in an asset with rapidly diminishing value.
I stand to be corrected.
FWIW, I agree that if you have no operator who can charter your personal aircraft a few hours a month, fractional ownership seems to be the way to go. Definitely as far as flexibility goes.
So, back on topic... isn't it possible for Lufthansa to just charter when needed instead of own their own fleet?