Farnborough
Nice
Two Quotes Hidden in One Itinerary: The Wait Branch and the Return-Home Branch
Adding one night to a Farnborough to Geneva trip on a Citation XLS+ raises the quote by £3,360, even though the client's two flights have not changed. What changed is the aircraft's behaviour: it stops waiting and starts flying home empty. Any itinerary with a gap between outbound and return contains both versions of the trip, and villiersOS prices each before it shows a number.
The wait branch keeps the jet and crew at the destination: outbound leg, nights on the ground, return leg. The return-home branch sends the jet back to base and positions it out again, which makes four legs, two of them empty.
The worked example throughout is EGLF to LSGG, about 1.5 hours block each way, on an XLS+ at £3,800 per flight hour. Each revenue leg costs £5,700 (1.5 hours × £3,800), so the two client flights cost £11,400 in either branch. Operator rate cards for midsize jets commonly run from £3,400 to £4,400 an hour; these are working assumptions, not published tariffs.
The XLS+ typically seats eight, in a cabin 5 ft 6 in wide and 5 ft 8 in high, so it suits a party of four to six with skis or golf bags. Everything beyond that £11,400 separates the two branches. That is the core of multi-leg charter pricing: the flights are the constant, and the overnight decision is the variable.
For a one-night stay the wait branch costs £5,020 against £13,400 for the return, so waiting wins by £8,380. At three nights, waiting costs £15,060 and the advantage reverses by £1,660. The sections below build each figure from its parts.
A broker holding two quotes for near-identical itineraries that sit thousands of pounds apart is often looking at two different branches, not two different margins. One operator has priced the wait; the other has priced the return.
What Waiting Actually Costs: Daily Standing Charge, Crew Hotel, Per Diem and Overnight Parking
A parked XLS+ costs £5,020 a night at Geneva before it has turned a wheel. Four lines build that figure, and villiersOS holds each as an editable parameter per aircraft and airport.
The standing charge is £3,000. It compensates the operator for an aircraft that earns nothing while insurance, crew salaries and maintenance reserves keep running; midsize jets typically carry £2,500 to £4,000 a day, usually from the first night away.
Crew hotel adds £520, for two rooms at £260. Per diem adds £200, at £100 for each of the two pilots. Both lines scale with crew size: a Gulfstream G450 flies with a third crew member, so each grows by half.
Overnight parking adds £1,300 at LSGG for a midsize jet. That figure is an estimate, and peak-season apron charges at Geneva move, so the current airport notice should be checked before a quote is released.
The total is £3,000 + £520 + £200 + £1,300 = £5,020 a night: £10,040 for two nights and £15,060 for three. A Phenom 300E, with £2,200 standing and £1,000 parking, comes to £3,920 a night on the same arithmetic (£2,200 + £520 + £200 + £1,000).
Waiting also carries a benefit that costing does not capture: the client's own aircraft and crew are the ones that return for them. villiersOS records that continuity but does not put a price on it.
What Returning Actually Costs: Two Positioning Legs, Landing Fees, Handling and Fuel at Both Ends
Flying empty from Geneva to Farnborough and back again burns 3.0 hours of aircraft time before the client has gone anywhere. At £3,800 an hour, the two positioning legs cost £11,400.
Airport charges form the next layer. A second landing and handling at EGLF adds about £700, and a second landing and handling at LSGG adds about £1,000, since Geneva's charges run higher than Farnborough's. A further £300 covers the fuel price gap between the two airfields plus any slot or prior-permission charge, because the quote buys fuel where it is cheaper rather than assuming one price at both ends.
The extras total £2,000, so the return branch costs £13,400 (£11,400 + £2,000) on top of the client flights. The all-in trip is £24,800, whether the client stays three nights or ten. For scale, Farnborough to Geneva on the XLS+ typically prices at £5,500 to £6,500 one way, so the cost of returning home is more than twice a revenue leg.
Not every operator prices an empty leg at the full revenue rate. At 80 per cent of £3,800, positioning falls to £9,120 (3.0 hours × £3,040), the branch's extra cost to £11,120, and the break-even moves from 2.7 to 2.2 nights (£11,120 ÷ £5,020). villiersOS therefore stores the positioning rate per operator instead of reusing the hourly rate.
Positioning also adds crew duty hours, but the sharper duty problem sits in the wait branch.
The Duty-Hours Wildcard: When a Crew Limit Turns a Cheap Wait Into a Crew Change
A crew reporting at 06:30 for a same-day Geneva trip has until 19:30 under a 13-hour limit, and a client dinner that runs late makes that deadline impossible. Thirteen hours is the typical maximum flight duty period for a two-pilot crew starting between 06:00 and 13:29 on one or two sectors under EASA rules; each operator's approved flight time limitation scheme governs, so villiersOS reads it per operator.
Here is the scenario in UK time. The crew reports at 06:30, departs EGLF at 07:30, waits in Geneva, departs LSGG at 20:00 and lands at 21:30, with 30 minutes of post-flight duties. Duty ends at 22:00, which is 15.5 hours after report and 2.5 hours over the limit. A commander's discretion extension exists for unforeseen events, so a quote cannot plan on one.
The cheap day wait therefore becomes one of three costed options. An overnight stay resets the clock after rest, at £5,020 for the night, with the return flown next morning. A second crew sent out to fly the evening return costs roughly £2,000 to £3,200 in travel, hotel and day rate, which is a villiersOS working estimate. Flying home empty costs the £13,400 above. At the top of its range the second crew wins, £3,200 against £5,020 and £13,400, and the engine keeps whichever legal option is cheapest.
Duty is also tracked across days. EASA caps duty at 60 hours in any seven consecutive days, and villiersOS flags a crew at 46 hours, which leaves 14 hours of headroom: one maximum 13-hour duty day plus an hour for delay. Minimum rest is typically 12 hours at home base and 10 away, so a crew finishing late may not make an early return slot the next morning.
Moving the Return Date by One Day: How the Live Quote Reprices and Where the Break-Even Flips
On the XLS+ example, nights one and two favour waiting and night three favours flying home, so the date change that moves money is the one that crosses the break-even.
| Nights away | Wait branch total | Return-home total | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | £16,420 | £24,800 | Wait |
| 2 | £21,440 | £24,800 | Wait |
| 3 | £26,460 | £24,800 | Return |
| 4 | £31,480 | £24,800 | Return |
Read it row by row: the wait branch adds £5,020 with each night, and the return branch never moves. The break-even is £13,400 ÷ £5,020 = 2.7 nights. Once the client passes it, the quote stops rising and sits at £24,800, which surprises people who expect every extra night to cost more. That holds only while the positioning aircraft is free.
Category moves the break-even by tenths of a night. A Phenom 300E at £3,100 an hour comes to £11,300 for positioning (3.0 × £3,100 + £2,000) against £3,920 a night, or 2.9 nights. A Gulfstream G450 at £7,200 an hour, £5,000 standing and £1,500 parking costs £24,200 to position (3.0 × £7,200 + £2,600 extras) against £7,580 a night (£5,000 + £780 + £300 + £1,500), or 3.2 nights.
Base distance moves it by whole nights. Bases about 1.0 to 1.75 hours from the destination land at roughly two to three nights: for the XLS+, a base 1.0 hour away gives 1.9 nights and one 1.75 hours away gives 3.0. At 2.5 hours away, positioning costs 5.0 × £3,800 + £2,000 = £21,000, so waiting wins until night 4.2 (£21,000 ÷ £5,020).
A one-day move makes the engine rerun both branches in one pass. It recounts standing days, hotel nights and per diem, applies the parking tariff for the new dates, which may fall in a weekend or peak band, and rechecks the duty-hours and seven-day totals. It also checks that the positioning aircraft is free on the new return date and that slots or prior permission exist at both airports. If the XLS+ is committed elsewhere, the return branch may disappear or move to another operator's aircraft, and the whole quote reprices.
That live recalculation is why costing a multi-day itinerary cannot be a spreadsheet filled in once. The broker sees which branch was chosen, what the runner-up would cost, and how many nights remain until the choice flips.
The working method has four steps. Check duty hours first, because a breach removes the wait branch. Divide the return branch's extra cost (positioning hours × positioning rate, plus extra airport and fuel costs) by the nightly wait cost to get the break-even. If the client's nights fall more than half a night from it, quote that branch alone. Within half a night, quote both branches and the date at which each flips; half a night is the swing between an 80 per cent and a full positioning rate (2.2 against 2.7 nights), so inside that band the operator's rate decides the answer.
