Costco Is Selling a Private Jet Membership for $17,500

Picture this: you’re cruising down the aisle with your shopping cart at Costco, shopping for bulk goods like cereal, sports drinks, and toilet paper, when all of a sudden, you stumble upon a $17,500 private jet membership for sale. That’s right: Costco sells a private jet membership.

It’s not the discount warehouse club’s only travel offering—it actually has an entire Costco Travel division dedicated to everything from luxury cruises to hotel-and-flight packages to car rentals. But the $17,500 private jet membership, which is valid for 12 months, is in a league of its own.

The membership is to a private jet charter company called Wheels Up, which grants members access to a large fleet of private jets. All they have to do is request a flight as little as 24 hours in advance, then roll up to the airport to board their aircraft. But here’s the kicker: the membership only provides access to private jets, not the flights on them. So if you want to, you know, actually travel, you’ll be billed a few thousand bucks per hour—or more.

All that said, the membership does come with a $4,000 flight credit, plus a $3,500 Costco Shop Card, which is basically a gift card, knocking down the net price of the membership to just $10,000. That’s not actually the worst deal, especially if you fly private jets regularly. (If you fly 100 hours per year, for example, that’s just a $100 per flight fee for the membership.)

So if you’re in the market for an extravagant Christmas gift, why not consider the $17,500 Wheels Up membership sold through Costco? A private jet membership card would sure be a nicer stocking stuffer than candy or socks.