To make elite private aviation accessible to a wider public, JSX co-founder and CEO Alex Wilcox has to stay one step ahead of federal regulations.
As if it were an awkward joke by his grumpy character from the series Curb Your Enthusiasm, writer and actor Larry David has arrived at the wrong airport—Los Angeles instead of Burbank.
“Hold on a second!” says JSX co-founder and CEO Alex Wilcox. We’re sitting in a conference room at the company’s headquarters in downtown Dallas, with a view of a massive hangar housing several Embraer jets. He calls Burbank Airport. “Hey, Aria, are you there?” he asks, and an affirmative answer comes through the phone. “Turns out Larry David mixed up the airports, can you hold the plane until 8:05 or 8:10? But not later than 8:10.” Ending the call, Wilcox smiles, his face showing a hint of irritation that suggests he’s had to deal with demanding clients more than a few times in this business.
The moment almost perfectly captures what JSX is—founded in California in 2015, it is a public charter airline that, in regulatory terms, is neither a commercial carrier nor a private jet service.
In recent years, JSX has gradually added routes and built a loyal customer base and reputation. Although the company’s name is not widely known, Travel + Leisure has ranked it the most popular domestic airline. This has largely been possible because the company offers a service reminiscent of luxury travel, but at a much lower price point—though still several times more expensive than economy fares on traditional commercial airlines. JSX employs about a thousand people and in 2024 operated around 36,000 flights. While the company does not disclose revenue, estimates suggest it is firmly in the nine-figure range.
JSX is expanding just as air travel, with all its delays, high costs, and strict security rules, is ripe with the same kind of socially awkward moments that kept Curb Your Enthusiasm alive for 12 seasons. (In one episode, David, having missed his flight, is forced to fly economy, helps himself to someone else’s seat, and gets an earful of grumbling comments about his behavior from fellow passengers.)
JSX does things differently. For one, there are no gate agents herding passengers and no security checkpoint queues. In fact, no checkpoints at all. Domestic passengers show up 20 minutes before departure, settle into wide seats with plenty of elbow room, order drinks from a carefully curated cocktail list, and use fast, stable Starlink Wi-Fi. There are no dreaded middle seats on board.
The routes are different as well. JSX mainly flies out of fixed-base operators (aviation slang for general-aviation areas at airports that house corporate jets and flight schools). It typically avoids big hubs like JFK and Denver International in favor of smaller airports, such as New York’s Westchester County and Colorado’s Rocky Mountain Metropolitan. No wonder David accidentally went to the wrong airport. Instead of flying coast-to-coast, JSX routes are usually short and focused (for example, Burbank–Las Vegas).
While the name JSX comes from a related company, JetSuiteX, the current brand centers on the phrase “joyfully simple Xperience.” That is precisely what’s missing from the services many airlines offer, Wilcox says.
“This idea that we have to build such a massive structure between your car and the airplane,” he says, adding: “Why do we make airports so complicated?” A pilot himself, he speaks with mild anger. “Somehow, the average speed of air travel has gotten slower every decade. Everything is slower, everything is more complex, and that’s the opposite of what the future was supposed to be. That’s what we’re trying to fix.”
Of course, there’s no denying that all these strict rules have made commercial flying safer than ever in the decade leading up to the helicopter crash in Washington. In 2023 there was just one serious incident out of 1.26 million flights. Still, Wilcox argues that some safety measures no longer make sense. “No one—except that one bad guy who can’t afford a longer ladder—really cares whether the security fence is eight feet or ten feet high,” Wilcox says.
Through JSX, Wilcox has found a way within the industry’s regulatory framework to offer some of the less-regulated private-aviation experience to a broader public. In that sense, he sees himself as a populist fighting not only the government, but also industry heavyweights such as American and Southwest Airlines.
He waves a well-worn copy of Clayton Christensen’s iconic book The Innovator’s Dilemma. “My conclusion is this—when you reach a certain level of growth, you become the person you once inconvenienced,” Wilcox says, expanding on the thought with a quote from the Batman movie The Dark Knight: “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Few would disagree with his claim that commercial flying has become overly complex. The real question is whether his solution is fair—or cynically opportunistic.
“It appears JSX, through a previously unimagined business plan for the Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration, is exploiting government-mandated safety procedures,” former TSA administrator John Pistole wrote in an opinion piece for Travel Weekly.
JetBlue founder David Neeleman, a JSX investor and one of the most respected innovators in the airline industry, calls this criticism “extremely irritating.” He admires Wilcox’s skills. “When you think of all the airlines that are losing money and all the ones that have gone bankrupt, it really is remarkable that his company not only survives but thrives.”
In Dallas, Wilcox gets a text—Larry David made his flight. For now, all is well. But JSX—an ambitious upstart in a traditionally unstable industry whose business model relies on operating within very specific regulatory parameters—may yet face much rougher air.
Spend enough time in airports and airlines and you’ll notice people don’t usually end up in this industry by accident. Aviation attracts enthusiasts and dreamers. “There’s a very high likelihood of failure if you’re just a hired manager—this is not the industry for you,” Wilcox says.
Wilcox grew up in New York, the son of an American father and Swiss mother, and regularly flew to Europe to visit his grandparents. “The colors we chose for JSX are not very different from Swissair’s colors,” Wilcox notes. He earned his pilot’s license at 17 and, while studying English and political science at the University of Vermont, he fueled planes at Burlington Airport. In the early ’90s, during an unpaid internship at Southwest Airlines, he met the company’s legendary co-founder Herb Kelleher. Later, under Richard Branson, he worked at Virgin Atlantic, where he met Neeleman, who founded JetBlue in 1998 and hired Wilcox as his first employee. “I learned from three people who basically did the impossible—started an airline,” Wilcox says.
After helping build India-based low-cost carrier Kingfisher, Wilcox returned to the U.S. and began planning a new private-aviation venture in Las Vegas. That led him to run JetSuite, but the market contracted sharply during the pandemic. The experience left him with a genuine distaste for private aviation, which he calls “a horribly awful business.” He says the industry is full of “brilliant examples of companies that look great at the start and then simply run out of money.” What bothered him most was the inefficiency. “Almost half of all private-jet flights are empty. They drop someone off at point A and then fly to point B to pick up the next passenger.”
Another aspect of the private-aviation business caught his eye. He watched people pay thousands of dollars for a 45-minute flight, while Southwest was charging $200 for the same trip. And he asked himself why that flight was worth that much money. “I don’t want to take off my shoes, I don’t want to wait for 160 strangers to get on and off the plane, I don’t want to spend an hour and a half at the airport.”
That’s how JetSuiteX was born—with the goal of creating a private-aviation-grade experience at prices closer to commercial fares. The company launched in 2016 with just two routes: Concord, California–Burbank and Burbank–Las Vegas.
JSX now has 46 aircraft flying between 25 destinations. The way the company chooses those destinations is straightforward. JSX tries to follow the money. For example, flights between New York’s Westchester County and Boca Raton, Florida. “I couldn’t care less about my market share. All I care about is whether I can fill my airplanes and make money,” Wilcox says.
Another niche JSX has carved out consists of destinations no other airlines serve. One example is Taos, New Mexico, whose Taos Ski Valley–owned airline went bankrupt last year, leaving the town without service to Denver, Colorado. The Taos airport does not have the certification required to handle certain larger aircraft (for example, with at least 31 passenger seats on flights that are not subject to a fixed schedule), which in turn would trigger strict rules for perimeter-fence height and emergency-response capabilities. It’s precisely thanks to such airports that JSX makes its money. But it isn’t always simple. Because safety standards differ at these airports (for example, no pre-boarding security screening), Taos passengers find it hard to make connecting flights at Denver International. They have to take a taxi for a 30-minute ride from Rocky Mountain Metropolitan. Even if JSX flew into Denver, passengers would disembark in a special area outside the controlled commercial terminal and would have to go through security to connect.
Wilcox sees such small airports as unjustifiably neglected assets. “Even though there are more than 5,000 airports, most airlines compete at just 480,” he says. Most of those airports “are not accessible to the consumer, and that’s what we see as our opportunity,” he adds.
To understand the narrow regulatory window that allows JSX to exist at all, you need a strong cup of coffee—otherwise the rules and jargon are hard to follow.
First, traditional commercial aviation is subject to a section of the Federal Aviation Administration’s code that mandates minimum pilot experience and retirement at age 65. But a completely different section applies to charter flights with a maximum of 30 seats, and its rules differ (less experience required, no mandatory retirement age). JSX complies with these rules.
To let customers book flights, JSX uses another regulation that classifies it as a public charter operator. This regulation “plays a really important role in the industry,” explains Kali Hag, a partner at the Washington, D.C. law firm Jetlaw. “It allows [charter] operators to provide transportation to small communities at an affordable rate.” Operators in this category include companies like Tropic Ocean Airways, which flies seaplanes in the Bahamas.
JSX performs some interesting regulatory pirouettes here. At the bottom of its website in fine print, the company explains that “flights are operated by … Delux Public Charter LLC (dba JSX Air).” “Flights are public charters sold by JetSuiteX Inc., as the charter operator, and operated by Delux Public Charter LLC as the direct air carrier,” the fine print continues. Essentially, JSX consists of two commonly owned companies: one that sells the tickets and another that operates the flights, which are chartered out of mostly obscure airports near wealthy cities.
For most of its existence, JSX flew largely under the radar. That changed in 2023, when the Federal Aviation Administration issued a notice. “In recent years, the number and complexity of scheduled public charters has increased. If left unchecked, this rapid growth will introduce new safety risks,” the agency said. (The Trump administration has clearly stated its intention to roll back various business regulations, including in aviation. Whether that will change the FAA’s view of JSX remains to be seen.)
Wilcox’s company has also drawn the attention of the influential Air Line Pilots Association and industry giants American and Southwest. “Exploiting these loopholes to replace higher safety standards with lower ones is an abuse of the public’s trust,” the association said.
Wilcox says American and Southwest are simply trying to protect their market share and insists his company poses no threat to the giants. “Today I’ve got 18 flights from Dallas. They have more flights every 15 seconds than I probably do in a week,” Wilcox says. And don’t even try to question him about pilot qualifications. About a third of JSX pilots are retirees from Southwest and American who could no longer fly there under union rules. “We require first-class medicals. The older you get, the more rigorous the exam—EKG, vision tests, hearing tests, reaction tests. Every six months you have to pass a proficiency check.”
Not all airlines oppose JSX, and the fact that JetBlue, United, and Qatar Airways have invested in it serves as a certain seal of approval. The company does not disclose its total funding, but its backers include mainstream startup investors such as Zappos co-founder Tony Hsieh. JSX has a partnership with JetBlue—United MileagePlus members earn redeemable miles when they fly JSX. Wilcox points to these relationships as proof of his company’s legitimacy and safety. Another explanation is that JSX’s routes don’t really overlap with those carriers’ networks. “For customers who want point-to-point flights between two cities, those airlines don’t face the same type of threat as American or Southwest,” says Brett Snyder, industry analyst and author of the Cranky Flier blog.
In any case, the possibility that the FAA could force JSX to operate like a traditional commercial airline has always loomed. Under agency policy, it does not comment on potential regulatory changes, but it’s unlikely that the rules will change overnight. “Developing new regulations is a process that takes many years,” Hag says. Wilcox, for his part, says he will challenge any decisions that threaten his company. And he may well become more influential: in January, rumors circulated in the industry that Trump might appoint Wilcox to head the FAA.
Whatever happens, JSX has one big advantage—its satisfied customers. When the FAA opened its notice for public comment, JSX supporters flooded the agency’s website. So far, more than 70,000 comments have been filed. “In the agency’s history, nothing else has gotten that many comments. And they have to read every one of them,” Wilcox says with thinly veiled satisfaction.
Trying out a JSX flight myself turned out to be a bit more complicated than I’d hoped. I had initially planned to fly from the small Morristown, New Jersey airport, just a nine-minute drive from my home, to Boca Raton. That would have meant I could leave my house only half an hour before takeoff. But that route was unavailable due to runway repairs. So I decided to fly from Houston to Dallas, where JSX has operated since 2018.
One day in September, I flew United from Newark to Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport, grabbed a taxi there, and spent 45 minutes getting to the smaller William P. Hobby Airport. There, in a separate building adorned with a large JSX billboard, there’s a simple lounge with a few functional pieces of furniture and a coffee machine.
When I arrived, the lounge was empty except for a few JSX staffers. That’s because JSX aims to mimic the feel of private aviation. “We don’t want you to get here early. Most private-aviation customers don’t even go into a lounge—they just drive up to the airplane and go,” says JSX chief commercial officer David Drabinksi.
As my departure time (2:00 p.m.) approaches, other passengers begin to appear. Even though there’s no security checkpoint in the lounge, charter aircraft weighing more than six tons are subject to security measures—carriers must check whether any passenger is on a no-fly list. “But we do more,” Drabinksi emphasizes. JSX screens all checked baggage. Carrying only my laptop backpack, I join a short line at the door to the ramp, step through a scanner (“a very smart metal detector,” says Drabinksi), and watch as a JSX agent swabs my bag for traces of explosives. Compared with the usual procedures at big airports, the process is over in a flash and is virtually stress-free. Still, once I’ve cleared it, the thought occurs that such security screening requires a very high level of trust. Of course, no system is perfect—the TSA has had its own failures—but are people who fly really ready to entrust safety entirely to airline employees?
On board, I initially consider ordering the JSX Ranch Water cocktail, but end up choosing a Fever-Tree Ginger Beer. Then I open my laptop and connect to the Wi-Fi, which is strong enough to stream a live football game. “Almost two years ago, we became the first fleet in the industry to have Starlink on every aircraft,” Wilcox boasts. He says United, which will be the first major airline to equip its entire fleet with Starlink, tested the system on JSX planes. “I think they see us as a kind of laboratory.”
The flight takes less time than the taxi ride between airports. We deplane and walk past an open hangar holding several aircraft. In the adjacent building, which houses JSX’s operations center, a wall of screens shows a live map of all JSX flights—three this evening.
“Dallas–Fort Worth, home to both American and Southwest, is the Silicon Valley of aviation,” Wilcox says. “There are tens of thousands of people here who know how to dispatch airplanes, who know how to fix airplanes. It’s a huge ecosystem.”
It’s worth noting that Southwest also started out skirting the edges of federal regulation. At the Frontiers of Flight Museum, a short walk from JSX, you can see the famous napkin sketch that inspired the airline’s founders—a simple triangle with its corners labeled “Dallas,” “Houston,” and “San Antonio.” The idea was to create a low-cost carrier that avoided interstate routes and the fare controls of the Civil Aeronautics Board, which governed the skies before the FAA.
We all know how that turned out. Another museum exhibit tells the story of yet another Dallas-based airline—Legend Airlines, founded in the late ’90s. At the time, the city’s Love Field Airport was subject to a federal regulation known as the Wright Amendment, which allowed flights only within Texas and to four neighboring states. Founder Bruce Leadbetter found a workaround: the amendment applied to aircraft with more than 56 seats. So he removed half the seats from his planes and offered low-fare flights to Washington and Los Angeles, complete with what was then a rare luxury—seatback TVs.
Sound familiar? American Airlines and other carriers went hard after Leadbetter’s company. Because of the pushback, its aircraft sat idle for three years and only began flying in 2000. A year later, the company went bankrupt under the weight of regulation-driven costs. Will JSX be the next Southwest—or the next Legend? Is the company a bold innovator bringing back the joy of flying, or a clever operator who has outsmarted the regulators? “One thing I’m aware of every day is that change has its enemies,” Wilcox says.
Spending time with Wilcox, it’s hard not to be swept up by his enthusiasm. Under its influence, the entire airline system we know—safer than ever despite its flaws—starts to seem, in some way, wrong. “I’ve never heard him admit there’s even a debate. He’s a true believer, that’s for sure,” says analyst Snyder.
Originally published at https://inc-baltics.com/zemo-cenu-privata-aviacija/
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