FlyHouse Flies With The New York Jets

When it came to deciding which football team aircraft charter operator and broker FlyHouse was going to partner with as the NFL’s first private aviation sponsor, you might think that for a private jet company, the New York Jets would be a no-brainer, but according to company CEO Jack Lambert, that was just a serendipitous benefit. 

While the New York Jets have rarely been high in the league’s power rankings—the team made its first and only Super Bowl appearance more than a half century ago—it was their passionate, well-heeled supporters in the New York area that proved enticing to FlyHouse. In socioeconomic parlance, they are known as HENRYs (high earner, not rich yet). “We always think about the 1%, we’re going after the 19%,” said Lambert. “When we looked around the league, the per capita of the money spent, even though the Jets haven’t been a good team historically their fan base is as loyal as the day is long,”

As a result, at the start of the season this company began a five-year agreement that made it the exclusive private aviation provider for the team, and included branding of the Jets VIP guest lounge, known now as the FlyHouse Green Room. An all-inclusive oasis for the team’s high-end season ticket holders during home games at Metlife Stadium—which the Jets share with the N.Y. Giants—the luxury lounge includes a gourmet buffet, open bar, private restroom facilities, indoor booth seating, televisions on every wall, an outdoor lower bowl patio with seating, and even a DJ for those fans who want to forget the action on the field.

As part of its sponsorship, Flyhouse—which enables private travel for the team's executives, commercial partners, players, and staff throughout the season—receives a certain number of tickets per home game to distribute as perks to customers.

While that is the most outwardly visible part of the agreement, FlyHouse’s messaging is also reaching the opposing teams throughout the league through signage in the visiting team locker room and “swag-bags” of Flyhouse-branded merchandise distributed to each player in the colors of each team.

But it’s not just its NFL sponsorship deal that differentiates FlyHouse. In September—following the appointment of NetJets veteran Todd Goldstein as executive v-p of sports and entertainment—it announced a new collaboration with sports broadcaster ESPN that made it the official private aviation sponsor for its popular College GameDay, Monday Night Countdown, and NFL Live programs, offering bespoke air travel for celebrity guests during the 2025 college and NFL football seasons. The company has also made inroads into professional golf partnerships, and is investigating a deal with a major market NBA team similar to its Jets sponsorship as well, according to Lambert.

Aside from its own fleet of approximately 25 airplanes, FlyHouse has developed a marketplace which offers access to thousands of aircraft. The company believes that by developing a large ecosystem of smaller operators it can generate economies of scale with FBOs, as well as fuel and maintenance providers, to drive down the price and generate savings that can be passed along to the end user.

“What we did is develop technology where airplane owners can either have us manage their planes on our certificate or operators can come into our platform, put their airplanes in our platform provided they pass our Flyhouse Safety Seal (a third-party safety audit) and our other requirements,” company founder and chairman Sanford Michelman told BJT. When customers enter a request for a trip, platform member operators can swiftly enter price quotes which are received by the customer through the app. “We try to drive the price down on everything, we try to be completely transparent about it, we don’t charge management fees or anything like that,” said Michelman. “What we’re trying to do is drive it down where we can make [charter] more available for not just the ultra-high net worth, that’s why we’ve created things on our platform like the Friendshare program.”

The Friendshare technology on the company’s booking platform allows users to create their own travel community groups among their friends and share the costs of a flight with them. It allows a customer to book a specific flight in less than a minute and then determine the number of seats that will be available for that flight. They then push it out to specific groups designated among their social networks to offer those available seats.

Under the private groups setting, a user can invite specific friends, family, and colleagues to join them on a specific flight. If they aren’t FlyHouse members already, they will receive an email to join and create a profile. In the public group category, users can share their flight with the larger FlyHouse community. In both cases the app takes care of all the logistics. Those interested can simply pay their share of the flight directly to Flyhouse which processes the transaction.

“This isn’t about selling seats, it’s about creating accessible, shared experiences,” said Lambert, adding Friendshare allows travelers to turn flights into memories, while keeping payment seamless and transparent among the group. “We’re bringing clarity, community, and flexibility to an industry that has often felt impersonal.”

Michelman also explained that he is seeing growing interest from smaller operators interested in putting their aircraft on his company’s certificate. “Our partners are coming to us saying  “Look, you’re doing the advertising and marketing, I don’t have the budget nor the reach that guys you do and you are also handling our accounting effectively because all the payments go through [your] system why don’t I just put the planes on your platform?” he told BJT. “So, we are now seeing our partners wanting to put their planes on our certificate because it’s a better value proposition for them, because they don’t have those costs and it’s the same revenue.”

“The reality is that a lot of operators have a hard time scaling,” explained Lambert. “They’ve got 7 or 8 airplanes, they don’t have a safety officer so they can’t get the highest safety ratings, so FlyHouse flys in and says ‘We’ll come and help you, we’ll provide the safety officer for you, we’ll provide all the stuff to help you get to that level you need to, because you want to serve the customer and create a better experience.’”

“I’m taking the 90% of operators in the country that have less than 10 airplanes and now I can move their metal better and more efficiently than they can, allowing them to focus on the experience and customer service side,” he added.

In another example of its vertical integration, FlyHouse is also the only company in business aviation with its own financial institution. “In February we bought a bank, and part of that deal with the bank is we want to be able to provide capital to our partners,” said Lambert. “If you think about it from an [aircraft] operator perspective, they struggle on cash flow, well now I can offer their owners capital to buy an airplane, and then a charter customer can now apply for credit use for flying private.”

Under its FlyHouse Capital-brand, the company looks to issue its own credit card that can be used for any type of purchase including booking flights, but instead of accruing airline miles as use incentives, it will offer its customers private flight hours. “We’re creating the House hours, that hasn’t been done before and you can’t do that if you don’t have a bank,” said Lambert.

Further enhancing its capabilities, the company is finalizing a deal for the purchase of highly Southern California-based FBO, maintenance provider, and aircraft charter operator Sun Air Jets. The deal will give FlyHouse a base at Los Angeles-area Camarillo airport (KCMA) along with hangar space and bustling West Coast business aviation hub Van Nuys Airport (KVNY), Sun Air’s charter certificate, and its FAA Part 145 repair station. Through the latter,  FlyHouse can now offer preferred maintenance pricing and slots to its charter platform partners.