A good story today by Candace Jackson in The Wall Street Journal (sub. required) about how the private jet industry is reacting to the surge in demand for jet time, driven mostly by the growing popularity of jet cards and membership programs.

Essentially, fractional owners have enjoyed great service and the lowest cost of flying per hour since owners make the biggest capital outlay and buy a share of a plane. But in the last several years, owners have started to complain that service levels have slipped in some programs, due to the demand of successful card programs which offer fliers access to the fractional fleets at entry prices of around a $100K.

Industry reactions include:

• Existing fractional programs, like NetJets, are buying or leasing more planes to handle peak demand, and keep their owners happy – as well as place some restictions on their Marquis Jet cardholders to ease holiday travel congestion.
• Adjustments to fractional programs to encourage off-peak usage, such as Citelines, the new program from CitationShares.
• Card programs are also offering discounts for off-peak travel, such as Flight Options’ new pricing for their JetPASS Ultimate Travel program.

Bottom line: the growth in card and membership programs has brought new private fliers to the industry, and the effects will be good for the industry and consumers. Some short-term stresses to capacity will be mitigated by new programs, better pricing and better service levels.

Market share leaders like Marquis Jet will not rest on their laurels. At the same time, innovative programs, like the “defined fleet” card program from Sentient will also gain share.

But some of the innovations have less value than others. According to Jackson, one charter program, Blue Sky Jets, is offering reward points that can be redeemed for Coach handbags. Who cares?

We suggest that you chose your provider based on things that matter – turnaround time for flight requests, quality of crew and plane, saftety records and so on. For a complete list of what’s really important in choosing your own private jet provider, get our guide.