A CEO of a Small Private Aviation Company Sounds Off in a Big Way

Jet Agency, a private aviation company based in Naples, Florida, is an upstart: incorporated in 2019, it had its hard launch in 2023. The company is not well known outside of southwest Florida, but CEO Jordan Brown is trying to change that. With notable candor, he spoke to BJT about Jet Agency’s entrance into the market, as well as aircraft safety and Boeing’s well-publicized product issues.

First, can you describe Jet Agency’s business model?

Our model is membership, so we utilize certified Part 135 [charter] companies.

What personnel have you brought on to bolster your expertise?

We brought on Jan Brown [formerly of ONEflight International and Outrigger Hotels] and Lance Tweden [formerly of Exclusive Resorts], industry veterans in the membership space, and they've taken the past year to design the program from all the things that we've learned as veterans in private aviation.

What destinations does Jet Agency focus on?

Throughout North America and around the world, but our sweet spot is east of the Mississippi, two-and-a-half-hour flights—Chicago to Florida, New York to Florida. Caribbean as well.

Let’s talk about air safety. When private jet owners saw Japan Airlines Flight 516 engulfed in flames after colliding with a smaller aircraft a few weeks ago, the first thing to cross their minds likely was fire safety on their own aircraft. The shell of Japan Airlines’ Airbus A350-900 provided enough of a barrier to keep the flames from entering the cabin, which seems incredible.

That remains true in private aviation as well. The FAA mandates a burn test, so if they remove a seat on the aircraft and they want to put in a new seat, those materials have to go through a burn test: How long does it take for that seat to disintegrate? Any material that's on the inside of a private aircraft has gone through the burn-rate test.

How can passengers have peace of mind about safety, given the high-profile incidents that seem to be blanketing the news?

In the private aviation space, we talk about pedigree a lot, and I think that's true with the airlines, too. We’re talking about manufacturer pedigree, but to me, pedigree also encompasses who's on the aircraft, who's worked on it; those two things are huge for us. Pedigree comes together with safety. In Florida, if you drive down I-95, you're much more likely to get killed there than in a private aircraft. We are regulated by the FAA just like the airlines, and everybody who’s working on these aircraft is certified. You're flying around in aircraft that are typically 10 or 15 years old in the charter market, or maybe a little bit newer on the fractional side, and we have proven aircraft models like the Cessna Citation X, which has been in production for almost 25 years. The crew has set training on how to evacuate the aircraft, and we talked about the burn rate earlier, the materials that are in the aircraft. You're just going to have a lot of control over that safety environment.

You’re implicitly contrasting the pedigree of popular private aviation models with the aircraft used by commercial airlines.

With the airlines, they're pumping out these new models and Boeing continues to have issues, as we've seen. It sounds like they did a lot of self-conformity; they didn't have a lot of oversight from the FAA, and that's going to be a problem for the manufacturer. [The Alaska Airlines door-plug incident] wasn't a routine maintenance issue—this was certainly a manufacturing issue.

You're saying there wasn't enough oversight from the FAA?

Boeing, in my opinion, seems to have created an environment where there's not a lot of oversight from the FAA—they've kind of been given free rein to do their own approvals.

It's such a powerful company that the FAA has kowtowed to them?

Sure. Absolutely.

Boeing produces private jets as well, but in private aviation, I think what you’re saying is that there are other players without that kind of clout and influence?

We also have a little bit of older, proven aircraft. We don’t necessarily see Gulfstream having manufacturing issues that you might see on a large scale as with Boeing. Aviation is safe today, and private aviation is the safest it’s ever been. We've always had issues in aviation; I think they're just being reported more frequently now, with the way that data and information flows in our world today. But private aviation remains one of the safest modes of transportation. It's certainly a much more intimate situation with the crew and it's easier getting out a couple people compared with evacuating 300 passengers.

Have you ever seen this door-plug defect in a private jet as we saw on the Alaska Airlines flight?

I have not. We do have the exits right at our windows, which you see on airliners, so that's very common.