UP IN THE AIR

HOW JSX FOUNDER ALEX WILCOX BROUGHT THE PRIVATE JET EXPERIENCE TO THE MASSES WHILE NAVIGATING STRAIGHT INTO A CLOUD OF FEDERAL REGULATIONS. AND WHY HIS RADICAL NEW WAY TO FLY COULD BE IN FOR A BUMPY RIDE.

- BY TOM VANDERBILT

IN WHAT SEEMS LIKE A GAFFE TAKEN FROM HIS OWN SHOW, LARRY DAVID, THE WRITER AND CURMUDGEONLY ANTIHERO OF CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM, HAS GONE TO THE WRONG AIRPORT-LAX RATHER THAN BURBANK.

“Excuse me for one second,” says Alex Wilcox, co-founder and CEO of the air carrier JSX, as we sit in a conference room in the company’s headquarters at Dallas’s Love Field, overlooking a spacious hangar filled with a handful of Embraer jets. He dials up the Burbank station manager. “Hey, Arya, you at the station?” he asks. An affirmative crackles from the phone. “Larry David apparently went to the wrong airport—can you hold until 8:05, 8:10? Don’t hold more than 8:15.” Ending the call, Wilcox smiles, a look of mild exasperation on his face that signals he’s experienced high-maintenance clients more than a few times in his business.

The moment almost perfectly encapsulates JSX, the public charter air service founded by Wilcox in California in 2015 and sitting somewhere in the regulatory muddle between private-jet travel and commercial flight. JSX has steadily added routes and gained enthusiastic customers and accolades in recent years. While hardly a household name, it’s been voted Travel+Leisure’s number-one domestic airline—thanks to an experience that hints at the private-jet lifestyle at a fraction of the price (but typically several times the cost of an equivalent economy seat on a traditional commercial airliner). JSX employs about 1,000 people, and flew some 36,000 flights in 2024. While the company does not disclose revenue, estimates put it comfortably in the nine figures.

JSX is expanding its reach at a time when air travel, with all its delays and high costs and strict security regimens, is filled with potential for the kind of social awkwardness that kept