Career Highs: From My First Private Jet Flight to Stratos CEO
I remember my first private flight with my dad like it was yesterday. I was 12. It was 8 am, and my dad pulled into the school parking lot and hollered, “Joel, we’re going for lunch.” I said, “But dad, it’s like, eight o’clock in the morning.” “Do you want to complain and stay here, or do you want to go for lunch?” he replied. So, I got in his car, and then his plane, a 1963 V-tail Bonanza M35. I still remember the tail number, 9860-Romeo. We flew to the Bahamas, and had lunch. When he dropped me back at school, he said, “Now don’t tell your mother.” And I didn’t. It was the first of many $100 hamburgers, or so we called them—the excuses to fly somewhere, anywhere not too far, for a burger. My dad wasn’t a commercial pilot. It was his hobby. And soon, it was mine. I spent summers riding my bike to the local airport to hangout with my dad and to be near the planes hoping he’d take me up in the traffic pattern. I helped my dad change the oil, check the tires. I learned how to talk flying on ‘First Fridays’—a monthly event at the airport where pilots and other aviation enthusiasts would get together and tell stories over, you guessed it, burgers. I guess I’ve had a lot of burgers over the years, and a lot of great conversations with pilots from all walks of life. I’ve been lucky.
I’ve had a lot of great conversations with pilots from all walks of life. I’ve been lucky.
When it came time to go to college, I followed the footsteps of my older brother and worked towards a finance degree. My girlfriend then was an executive assistant for the owner of a major sports team, and one afternoon she called and said she needed help to arrange a private jet rental for her boss. I happened to be at the airport and connected her to a carrier who could do the private jet flight. A few weeks later, perhaps at one of those ‘First Fridays,’ the carrier called out, “Hey, Joel, I’ve been looking for you.” “Oh?” “Yeah. Got something for you.” And he slid me a check, my cut of the private jet flight I had inadvertently brokered. Not long after graduating from college, I got a job working for a national investment firm, and I was doing well, but I never felt like they were invested in me. A friend of a friend happened to be working for a firm that provided private jet charter services, but he spoke often about how so many in the industry seemed dishonest and out for themselves. Because I had a deep understanding and passion for what the ideal private jet experience could be, I thought about what a better private jet broker company could look like, and realized I could really raise the bar. So, with money from the house I bought in college and a loan from family, in 2006, I founded Stratos Jet Charters.
Joel Thomas, Stratos CEO & President, at the company’s head office in Orlando. Early in the business, Joel realized his standard of private jet charter services would be welcome well beyond Florida.
Stratos Jet Charters President & CEO Joel Thomas was proud, on the company’s 10th anniversary in 2016, to say that Stratos’s first client is still a client.