Premier Private Jets

Premier Private Jets represents a distinctive model in the Part 135 charter landscape: a founder-led, pilot-originated operator that has scaled through organic fleet ownership rather than managed aircraft aggregation. Josh Birmingham, the company's founder and CEO, built the operation from a dormant Part 135 certificate acquired in March 2013, bringing no inherited aircraft, personnel, or infrastructure. Starting with leased and managed aircraft before purchasing a Cessna Citation CJ1 in 2015, Birmingham grew the fleet to a peak of 18 company-owned jets — spanning Citation Bravo/Ultra, Hawker 400XP, and Hawker 800/850XP types — employing approximately 50 pilots by the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. A post-pandemic rationalization trimmed both headcount and type diversity, with Birmingham consolidating the fleet to reduce operational complexity. The company has since re-entered a growth phase, currently operating 15 owned jets with roughly 45 pilots, a trajectory that signals deliberate, controlled expansion rather than speculative scaling.

The ownership structure of Premier's fleet carries meaningful operational implications for the pilots and crews who work within it. Operators who own their aircraft rather than aggregate managed or leased inventory tend to maintain tighter standardization across maintenance cycles, avionics configurations, and operational procedures — factors that directly affect crew familiarity, dispatch reliability, and recurrent training demands. Birmingham's decision to pare back aircraft types after COVID reflects a philosophy increasingly common among mid-size Part 135 operators who learned during the pandemic boom that fleet diversity, while attractive for charter flexibility, creates disproportionate maintenance, training, and scheduling burdens. For pilots considering employment with Premier, the consolidated type structure and 15-aircraft fleet suggest a relatively stable platform, though the ongoing addition of three jets in the past year indicates that type ratings and upgrade timelines may be in active flux.

The leadership team assembled around Birmingham reflects an intentional effort to professionalize the operation beyond its charter origins. COO Jeff Lee, who came through agriculture, real estate, and construction before transitioning into aviation operations, is developing proprietary scheduling and quoting software — a move that signals Premier is investing in operational infrastructure typically associated with larger fractional or airline operators. The deployment of JetInsight and X1 for performance data analysis alongside in-house metrics positions Premier within the growing segment of Part 135 operators applying data-driven operational oversight to trip reliability and cost control. Director of Flight Operations Brian Hutira, who joined in April 2026 with a background spanning brokerage and executive charter sales at Jet Access Aviation, brings a commercial awareness to flight operations management that is increasingly valued as Part 135 operators compete on service consistency as much as aircraft access.

The safety architecture at Premier, overseen by Director of Safety Lazaro Bravo, reflects the maturation of Safety Management Systems adoption across the broader business aviation sector. Bravo's 24-year Marine Corps maintenance background, combined with academic credentials in occupational safety and environmental management and prior service at Million Air, positions him to implement structured SMS frameworks across charter, MRO, and FBO operations simultaneously — a technically demanding task given that each operational unit carries distinct regulatory and risk profiles under FAA oversight. His use of separate SMS platforms for charter operations versus FBO and MRO functions acknowledges that unified safety governance across mixed certificate holders requires differentiated tooling rather than a one-size approach. The unannounced audit cadence and zero-tolerance posture are consistent with IS-BAO and ARGUS/Wyvern audit expectations that many corporate flight departments and charter customers now treat as baseline vendor qualification criteria.

Premier's broader footprint — extending from Part 135 charter into FBO and MRO operations — places it among a segment of regional aviation companies pursuing vertical integration as a competitive and financial hedge. For Part 91 and Part 135 operators evaluating service providers in south Florida, this structure means Premier can theoretically support aircraft handling, maintenance, and charter under coordinated management rather than fragmented vendors. The strategic risk, well understood by operators who have watched similar integrations, lies in ensuring that safety culture and operational standards propagate consistently across all three business lines as the company grows. Bravo's mandate to treat line crew vests and radios as brand-standard indicators — not administrative afterthoughts — suggests Premier is attempting to institutionalize that consistency from the ground up rather than retrofitting culture onto a mature organization.