You know this gap. The airplane sold faster than the replacement search finished. Or it's on the ramp at the paint shop, or in the shop for an avionics upgrade, for six to ten weeks. Or the new delivery — the one you budgeted and staffed around — slipped a quarter, the way they do. Your flight department still exists. Your crew still has currency to keep up. Your principals still need to fly. You just don't have an airplane between now and whenever the gap closes.
This is the one situation where charter's per-hour convenience turns into a real number, and where a dry lease earns its keep fastest. Here's the decisive version.
Why months of charter is the expensive option
A single charter trip is fine. Charter for four to six months, at your actual utilization, is a different animal: retail hourly rates, no volume relief, fuel surcharges, and — because it's air transportation — 7.5% federal excise tax stacked on every invoice. Run your own numbers rather than take ours on faith: the honest math on dry lease vs. charter walks a single round trip line by line, and the gap only widens the more hours you fly across a bridge period. A flight department that flies 30, 50, 80 hours during a gap isn't buying convenience anymore — it's absorbing a second aircraft's worth of margin, paid to someone else's operation, for an interval you already know the end date of.
A dry lease on a specific, known airframe — our Citation CJ1 — flips that. You pay direct costs: our published block or pay-as-you-go rate, fuel, and whatever you pay your own pilot. No retail markup, generally no federal excise tax on a true dry lease (confirm the specifics with your tax advisor), no per-trip renegotiation. Model your actual bridge-period hours in the estimator and compare it against what the same hours would cost chartered — most people are surprised by the size of the gap once it's not a single trip but a season.
What a 30-day-notice lease actually looks like
This is not a long-term commitment dressed up as flexibility — it's genuinely short. Term length is whatever bridges your gap, and either side can end it on 30 days' notice. No multi-year minimum, no balance-sheet entry, no early-termination penalty engineered to look like savings. You sign the lease, you're the operator of record for the term, and when your own aircraft is back on the line — repainted, upgraded, or delivered — you hand back the keys and the arrangement ends cleanly. See exactly how the structure works before you call: operational control, the paperwork, and where the legal line sits between this and a charter.
Paperwork moves fast for exactly the reason a bridge lease exists: you already know how to do this. A flight department that has run Part 91 operations before isn't starting from zero on insurance, pilot records, or operating procedures — they're transferring what already exists onto a new tail number. That's the difference between a lease that takes days and one that takes weeks: sophistication on the lessee's side compresses the timeline more than anything we do on ours.
Your crew flies it — not ours
To be precise about the one point people assume wrong: this is a dry lease, not a crewed charter. You bring your own pilots. Your insurer has to add the CJ1 to your policy and sign off on the specific pilots who'll fly it — that step is theirs to complete, not ours, and it's the real gate on timing. Once your insurance carrier has approved your crew on this airframe and the lease paperwork is signed, a flight department that's ready can realistically be flying within days. We're not estimating that loosely to make a sale; it's simply how fast the mechanics move once the insurance piece clears, and that piece is the one part outside our control and yours alike.
If your pilots need a name to call while your policy gets amended, we can share a list of independent pilots familiar with the type — people you'd choose, hire, and pay directly, the same as any pilot on your own aircraft. We don't assign or approve anyone; your insurer does that.
Availability, stated plainly
One aircraft means honest limits. Bridge-lease requests are non-exclusive — you tell us your dates and term, we confirm what's open — and because bridge situations tend to book in clusters (paint shops and avionics shops run on their own seasonal backlogs), the earlier you call once a gap is even likely, the more term flexibility we can offer. If the CJ1 isn't available for your exact window, we'll tell you that directly rather than let a maybe turn into a scheduling problem later.
If this is your situation
You don't need an education on dry leasing to use this — you need a fast, clean answer. Look at the CJ1's specifics and rates, then call. Tell us your gap dates, your rough hours, and where your insurance stands, and we'll tell you the same day what's realistic. If a bridge lease turns out not to fit your situation, we'll say that too — better that than a lease that doesn't actually solve your gap. And if what you actually need is someone else flying the trip for you rather than an airplane you operate yourself, that's a charter question, not ours to answer: we'll point you to a certificated Part 135 operator instead.
This article describes a typical bridge-lease scenario; actual timelines depend on your insurer's approval of your aircraft and pilots, completed lease documentation, and aircraft availability, which is non-exclusive and confirmed on request rather than guaranteed. Figures referenced elsewhere in this cluster are illustrative estimates, not quotes. Tax treatment should be confirmed with your own tax advisor, and lease terms with qualified aviation counsel. Palm Aero Group is not a charter operator and holds no Part 135 certificate — here's exactly how a compliant dry lease works. New to the terms? Start with dry lease vs. charter, explained or browse the full resources library.