What it costs
How much does light jet detailing cost?
The honest answer is that a light jet detail is priced by the hours it takes, and the hours are set by the aircraft in front of you rather than by the model on the registration. Two of the same type, hangared at the same field and flown the same legs, can be a full working day apart in labour. What follows is the machinery behind that: what adds hours on a light airframe, what the work actually consists of at this tier, and the questions that tell you whether a quote is real.
Why there is no number on this page
We quote against a written scope, and the scope comes from the aircraft rather than from its class. That is why nothing is published here. Light jets cover a wide span of condition and use: an owner-flown airframe that lives in a hangar and flies a few legs a month is a different job from a charter jet that turns three times a day. Publish a figure and it is wrong in one of two directions. Too low, and it gets revised once the crew is standing at the aeroplane. Too high, and you are paying for someone else's neglect. A vendor who quotes without seeing the aircraft, or photographs of it, is guessing and planning to correct the guess on your invoice.
What actually moves the number
The airframe is smaller. The edge count is not.
Surface area scales down with the aircraft. Detail work does not. A light jet carries close to the same number of door jambs, seat rails, table mechanisms, cupholder wells, window reveals and trim transitions as something twice its size, packed into less cabin. Flat panels come off fast. The hours live in edges, seams and mechanisms, and a light jet has nearly all of them.
A cabin you work in on your knees
Most light jets are not stand-up cabins. Crew work kneeling, braced against a seat frame, reaching across a club to get an extraction wand or a light where it needs to be. Every task takes longer than the same task in a cabin you can walk through. A quote built around a walk-through cabin has been built for a different aircraft.
Where the engines are hung
Light jets nearly all carry their engines on the aft fuselage, and the few over-wing exceptions move where the plume lands rather than how much work it makes. Deposits settle on the aft fuselage and pylon fairings, and on a T-tail they climb the fin and wash across the horizontal. Turbine soot bonds to the finish under heat, so a wash lifts the loose top layer and leaves the shadow underneath. Removing it means staged treatment with real dwell time, then correction of the finish the deposit has already marked. On a hard-flown airframe this is the largest exterior variable there is.
What the last vendor left behind
Leather conditioned until it went tacky has to be stripped back before it can be treated properly. Silicone dressing on sidewalls has to come off. Carpet extracted with more moisture laid down than recovered wicks soil back to the surface and needs doing again, correctly this time. A coating applied over contamination has to be removed before anything good can happen underneath it. Undoing someone else's work is slower than doing it once.
Hangar, shared hangar, or open ramp
Light jets often live at satellite fields — Cobb County McCollum (RYY), Gwinnett County Briscoe (LZU), the smaller Georgia strips — where hangar space is shared and tight. An aircraft wedged nose to tail between two others leaves no working arc for stands, extraction gear or a polisher. The crew spend the day moving equipment rather than using it. Outside, wind and sun flash product off before it can be removed properly, and that is where most of the streaking people blame on chemicals actually comes from.
How low it sits
Short gear puts a light jet's belly close to the ramp. Belly, gear legs and wheel wells are not less work than on a larger aircraft. It is the same work done flat on a creeper, with no room to get a lit stand under the wing root, and with product choices constrained by what may safely go near corrosion-inhibiting compound and gear seals.
The deadline, and what it cannot buy
A compressed window does not remove work. It adds people, and that part is straightforward to quote. What a deadline cannot buy is chemistry. Stain treatments need dwell. Polish has to be worked and then removed properly. A coating rushed onto a panel that has not flashed off will high-spot and have to come back off again. A crew told to make an early departure will either cut scope or leave you something to fix.
Cleaning, correcting, protecting — three different products
The step from cleaning a finish to correcting it is the step from hours to crew-days. Machine correction on aircraft paint is measured work on a film with a finite amount of material to give, done by someone who knows when to stop. Polished alloy is a separate multi-stage discipline on its own schedule, and some light jets carry more of it than owners expect. Coating is a third job again, and it is only worth doing over a surface that has been properly prepared.
What the work actually consists of
A full interior and exterior on a light jet is crew-days, not an afternoon. Exterior first: a controlled wash by whichever method the field allows, then belly, gear legs and wheel wells degreased, then exhaust staining treated in stages with real dwell time rather than forced in one pass. Correction follows where the paint can spare it, measured and panel by panel. Brightwork is its own multi-stage sequence, done last outside. Inside, every material is treated as a separate problem — leather, Alcantara, veneer lacquer, stone or composite galley surfaces, plated fittings, acrylic transparencies — with chemistry matched to each. Carpet is extracted with more moisture recovered than laid down. Two or three people, working the sequence in order, because order is what stops one stage undoing the last.
Questions to put to any vendor
Including us. If a vendor cannot answer these plainly, that tells you more than the number at the bottom of their quote.
- Are the belly, gear legs and wheel wells inside this quote, or excluded? On a light jet the belly sits close to the ramp and is awkward to work, which is exactly why it is the first thing quietly left out. A quote that stops at the waterline is not cheaper. It is smaller.
- What happens if the aircraft is in worse condition than I described? The answer separates a vendor who reprices openly from one who quoted low on purpose. You want any change agreed in writing before work starts, not discovered at the bottom of an invoice.
- Which wash method are you proposing at my field, and how do you handle runoff there? Wash-water runoff is a compliance matter that varies by field and by ramp. A vendor who only offers one method will eventually tell you a job is impossible when the real answer was a different method.
- How do you protect static ports, probes, vents and drains? This is the fastest way to find out whether someone details aircraft or details cars. A specific, unhesitant answer here tends to predict the quality of everything else they do.
- Are you correcting the paint or cleaning it, and how do you decide how far to go? Aircraft paint film is thin and finite. You want a vendor who talks about what the paint can spare and is willing to stop short, not one who promises a mirror on an airframe that cannot afford one.
- What are your aviation liability limits, and can I have a certificate naming the FBO? Cover at limits an FBO will accept is a real cost carried inside a real quote. If a certificate cannot be produced the same day, you have learned something important before anyone touches a winglet.
- Who is on the stands, and is this priced in hours or in crew-days? It tells you the scale of the job the vendor has actually costed. A number built on a few hours with one person is a wash wearing a detail's name.
Questions we get
- Why won't you give me a ballpark over the phone?
- We will give you a real number quickly, usually the same day, once we know the type, the field, the condition and the deadline. What we will not do is guess and then revise it once the crew arrives. A ballpark that moves is worse than no ballpark.
- Is a light jet cheaper to detail than a midsize?
- Less exterior surface, yes. But the hours sit in edges, seams, jambs and mechanisms, and a light jet has nearly all of them. Add a cabin you work in kneeling and the difference is smaller than the size difference suggests. Condition moves the number further than class does.
- How long does a full light jet detail take?
- Plan on crew-days rather than a single shift for a full interior and exterior with correction and brightwork. A trip-ready reset between legs is hours. Compressing a full detail into an overnight means more people, not less work, and coatings have dwell and cure times that will not be hurried.
- Is a ceramic coating worth it on a light jet?
- On a hard-flown airframe with aft-fuselage engines, usually. Exhaust deposits have far less to hold onto on a coated surface, and routine washing becomes substantially more effective afterwards. On an aircraft that flies rarely and lives in a hangar the case is weaker, and we will tell you so.
- Is AOG or after-hours work quoted differently?
- Yes, and it is agreed before the crew rolls, never added afterwards. Calling people in outside normal scheduling carries a real cost and we state it up front. What should never happen is a line appearing on an invoice that was not on the written scope you agreed.
- Will you quote from photographs?
- Yes. Send the cabin from both ends, the galley and lavatory, a close frame of any seat you are worried about, the aft fuselage and tail, and the belly if you can get under it. That is usually enough for a firm number against a written scope.
Send the tail number, the airport, the type and the date it has to be ready. Add photographs: cabin from both ends, aft fuselage, belly if you can get under it. You get a written scope with the exclusions stated plainly and a firm number against it, and nothing reaches the invoice that was not on the quote. Metro Atlanta and out across Georgia, seven days a week.
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Get a number against your actual aircraft
Tail, airport, aircraft type and your deadline. That is enough for a written quote against a written scope.
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