Guide
Jet fuel: the only cost line with a public price
Updated
One line in a jet's operating budget has a public, dated, checkable price attached to it. Everything else is a private commercial term.
What is actually published
The US Energy Information Administration publishes the US Gulf Coast kerosene-type jet fuel spot price FOB in dollars per gallon, daily, weekly, monthly and annually (EIA). In the series released on 12 August 2026, the weekly price for the week ending 7 August 2026 was $3.431 a gallon, and the monthly average for July 2026 was $3.403.
That is a wholesale bulk benchmark at a refining hub. It is not a price you can buy at. An FBO's posted retail price adds into-plane fees, storage, handling and margin, and varies airport by airport and by whether you are on a contract or a fuel programme. Use the EIA series to track the direction of the market and your own uplift receipts to set the number in the model.
The arithmetic that matters more than the price
Fuel cost per hour is burn rate times price. In the worked example on this site, 250 gallons an hour at $3.43 is $858 an hour, which at 200 hours a year is about $171,500. Move the price a dollar and the annual bill moves $50,000. Move the burn rate 50 gallons an hour and it moves about $34,000. Both matter, and only one of them is under your control when you choose the aircraft.
| Burn rate | At $3.00/gal | At $3.43/gal | At $4.50/gal | At $6.00/gal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 150 gal/hr | $450 | $515 | $675 | $900 |
| 250 gal/hr | $750 | $858 | $1,125 | $1,500 |
| 350 gal/hr | $1,050 | $1,201 | $1,575 | $2,100 |
| 450 gal/hr | $1,350 | $1,544 | $2,025 | $2,700 |
What the fuel line hides
- Mission profile. Published burn rates assume a cruise profile. Short legs spend a disproportionate share of the flight in climb, where burn is highest, so a jet flown on 45-minute hops burns more per hour than its book figure.
- Tankering. Carrying cheap fuel past an expensive airport saves money on the invoice and costs money in burn, because the extra weight burns fuel. Whether it pays is arithmetic, not habit.
- Contract and programme pricing. Volume commitments and fuel programmes change your effective price materially at the airports you use most, and change nothing at the ones you visit once.
- Sustainable aviation fuel. Where used or mandated, SAF has typically carried a premium over conventional jet fuel. We do not publish a premium figure here because we found no official source that publishes one.
The fuel figures on this page are dated because they go out of date. The EIA series is updated weekly, so check the live series rather than relying on a number printed on any page, including this one.