What does a private jet broker do?
A broker doesn't own aircraft — it sources, vets, and negotiates them for you from the operators that do, then stands behind the trip. The product is judgment: which airframes to trust, at what price, and what to do when something goes sideways.
In the US, nearly every private flight is operated by an FAA Part 135 certificated carrier — the company that owns the aircraft, employs the crew, and holds the operating certificate. A broker (formally, a Part 295 indirect air carrier registered with the DOT — that's what JetNine is) sits between you and roughly 5,000 of those operators. For any mission, dozens could technically fly it. The broker's job is knowing which of them should.
The work has three layers. Before you ever call: vetting — auditing operators' certificates, insurance, pilots, maintenance, and safety records, and dropping the ones that fail. When you request a trip: sourcing — pulling real availability from the vetted network, negotiating the rate, and returning specific airframes with all-in pricing (ours come back within 30 minutes). And after you book: accountability — trip-level checks before wheels-up, and a remedy in writing if the operator fails the call-out. We publish ours: substitute aircraft at no charge, commercial first-class, or flight credit.
What separates brokers is how seriously they take the first layer. Anyone can resell the same 5,000 operators; our vetting funnel approves 380 of them, re-audits every twelve months, and holds a one-strike policy on safety events. A broker that displays certification logos but can't tell you its floor is a travel agent with a nicer website.
The honest caveat: a broker adds a margin. What you're buying with it is the vetting, the negotiating leverage of repeat volume, the 24/7 desk, and someone whose problem it is when fuel spikes or an operator cancels. If you fly the same tail on the same lane every week, a direct operator relationship can make sense — and a good broker will tell you so.
— Start a quote
Question answered. Price the trip.
Route, date, and passenger count — live indicative pricing in four steps, from the desk that wrote this answer.
The rest we answer live.
Anything this page didn't cover goes straight to a senior dispatcher — average pick-up under twenty seconds, every hour of every day.