LAS VEGAS—Wheels Up and Marquis Jet founder Kenny Dichter is back in the aircraft business with the launch of Real Jet, a boutique private aviation brokerage firm.
“We’re looking for a third championship: a three-peat,” Dichter said of his return during the first press conference of NBAA-BACE 2025 on Oct. 13 here. The goal is to grow the firm to a $500 million to $750 million company in 3-5 years.
Dichter founded Marquis Jet, a jet-card business, in 2001, selling it to NetJets’ Richard Santulli. He founded Wheels Up in 2013. Real Jet opened Aug. 4 at the DeKalb-Peachtree Airport outside Atlanta in Chamblee, Georgia, offering on-demand private flights. In its business model, the company will focus directly on the customer and not on owning assets.
“We can partner with the top 100, 150, 200 operators in the world,” Dichter said. The goal is not to be a 500-flight-per-day business, “but what we are trying to do is have incredible customer experience,” said Robert Withers, Real Jet president. “We were fortunate enough to have an incredible team that came with us.”
Within its first 60 days or so, the company has completed about 100 flights. “And I can attest in my 20 years in the industry, the customer feedback is the highest I’ve ever seen,” Withers said. “It is consistent. The customer really resonated with what we are doing.” In choosing its operators, the company conducts a three or four-step vetting process for safety, he said. “We do detailed, detailed feasibility; we do very in-depth communications from A to Z with the customer, and I’m pleased to sit up here and say that it seems to be really working,” Withers said.
Real Jet’s ambitions are to go global, and the good news is, “No one needs to introduce us” to global operators, Dichter said. Artificial intelligence will make the process easier, but Dichter said, “There’s no substitute for what I call HI—Human Intelligence … The No. 1 asset here is our relationships with our operators [and] our relationships with our customers.”
One area of opportunity is in the cryptocurrency industry, which has produced more than 250,000 millionaires in the past few years. “I think that is just beginning,” Dichter said. Private aviation customers are younger today than in the past.
