Wet Rate vs Dry Rate

Wet and dry rates are the two standard ways to price aircraft rental and instruction time by the hour.

Under a wet rate, the quoted hourly price — usually billed against Hobbs time — includes the cost of fuel and oil. The renter pays one number per hour and the operator absorbs fuel costs. Wet rates are the dominant convention at US flight schools renting trainers like the Cessna 172, because they are simple to bill, simple to compare, and remove any incentive for a renter to economize on fuel in ways that affect safety, such as leaning aggressively or carrying minimum reserves.

Under a dry rate, the hourly price excludes fuel entirely. The renter either fuels the aircraft themselves at their own cost or pays the operator separately for the fuel consumed. Dry rates are more common in flying clubs, aircraft partnerships, leaseback arrangements, and turbine operations, where fuel is a large, volatile fraction of the operating cost and the parties prefer to pass it through at actual cost rather than build an assumption into the hourly rate.

The practical complication with wet rates is the away-from-base fuel purchase. A renter who flies a cross-country and buys fuel at another airport has paid out of pocket for fuel the wet rate already covers, so operators reimburse the purchase — commonly capped at the home-base fuel price per gallon — against a submitted receipt. Handling these reimbursements cleanly is a recurring administrative task at any school that sends students on cross-country flights.

The choice between wet and dry pricing also shifts fuel-price risk. A wet-rate operator who sets prices annually absorbs every fuel price increase until the next rate revision; some operators protect themselves with a published fuel surcharge that floats with the local fuel price. A dry-rate operation passes the risk to the renter automatically.

For flight schools and flying clubs, the wet/dry decision is a billing-architecture decision. Wet rates simplify the student experience but require the operator to track fuel costs against revenue per aircraft to know whether the rate still covers reality — and to process fuel reimbursements for cross-country flights without leaking money on missing receipts or above-cap prices. Dry rates make each invoice more complex but keep fuel a pure pass-through.

The distinction also appears in instructor and examiner billing, where the aircraft portion of a lesson may be wet while the instructor portion is a separate line item, and in club equity structures where members pay a dry hourly rate plus a fuel levy. Comparing two schools' quoted rates without confirming wet or dry is a classic renter mistake — a $165 wet Cessna 172 can be cheaper than a $130 dry one once fuel is added.

Aviatize's billing module supports wet and dry rate structures per aircraft and per booking type, with itemized invoices that show the aircraft, instructor, fuel, and fee components as separate line items. Fuel reimbursements for away-from-base purchases are captured against the flight record with receipt upload, so cross-country fuel credits flow into the same invoice as the flight instead of a manual ledger.

Because Hobbs and tach times feed billing directly, a school can run wet rates on its training fleet and dry rates on leaseback or club aircraft side by side, and the real-time accounting sync maps each component — rental revenue, fuel costs, reimbursements — to its own GL account in QuickBooks Online, Sage Intacct, or Exact Online.