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heyOne of Colin Jones’ favorite quotes is “Better Known Beats Best” – and it’s a motto that seems to serve him well.
His California based private aviation company, amalfi jetshas touched the heights of social media Stardom with 2.9 million followers and 144 million likes tiktokand has 778,000 followers InstagramThat online fame has turned into real-world bookings, Jones said.
The 24-year-old, who grew up in Westlake Village, Los Angeles, founded the company in 2020 shortly after earning his pilot’s license at the nearby Van Nuys Airport.
After dabbling in e-commerce and selling products through Shopify, he launched Amalfi Jets at just 18 years old from his dorm room at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, where he later graduated with a degree in Aeronautics and a minor in Aviation Business Administration.
“Amalfi Jets has no outside investors and was started with literally $0 and a credit card. No investors, no debt, and pure determination and hard work to pioneer an industry full of ‘dinosaurs,'” he explains. Independent.
“During college, after founding, I reached out to one of my close friends from high school, Kelvin Yoon, who has been my business partner as we grew up.”
Jones says Amalfi Jets now has 27 full-time employees, and although it does not own any aircraft, it offers on-demand charter services from a network of 3,500 aircraft in 170 countries. The list of famous clients includes influential people and Sports Illustrated swimsuit model olivia dunn,
As well as regular business dealings, Jones has used the hugely popular reality show TikTok to lift the curtain on private aviation. below deck Done for the world of super yachts. In the clip, we see Jones requesting the cabin “smell like Dior Sauvage cologne”, and a customer calling to book a plane for his puppets.
“There are many great companies in this space – very well-capitalized, well-resourced businesses. But one thing I’ve noticed is that many of them are quite conservative and traditional in the way they work. So, when we started out, I knew there was no way we could beat them in terms of being traditional. And on the other hand, we also couldn’t be completely ridiculous,” he said.
“For us, coming to social media was about sharing the world of private jets – a world that most people never get to see. I love showing the craziness of customers, because people don’t get to see it that well. People understand the world of yachts through shows like this below deckBut there is no private jet equal to it.
“Our goal online was simple: to show the crazy, fun side of private aviation, but also to show that we are real people behind the brand. I think a lot of companies hide behind their branding, trying to be a perfect, cookie-cutter version of what they think of as success. I wanted us to do the opposite – to be authentic. And I think that’s helped us tremendously.”
Their social-media presence is not limited to customer requests. Jones and his young employees — whose age range is 23 to 44 — also post their behind-the-scenes dramas and escapades at the company.
In the clip, viewed more than 236,000 times, Jones boards an Amalfi jet and “races” against an employee on a commercial Spirit Airlines plane from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.
Employees are “reprimanded” for using company credit cards to spend thousands of dollars a week on non-important items – from coffee to party magicians – and in another, a member of staff tells Jones that an executive from a rival firm has “come into the lobby to buy Amalfi jets”. In this scene, Jones orders the unwanted guest to be escorted off the premises by security.
The clips depict a slightly bizarre office culture – so how does Jones balance between client privacy and the need for professionalism and visibility on social media? After all, discretion and efficient service are the main reasons ultra-wealthy travelers decide to fly private.
Jones says the calls shown on TikTok represent only a small portion of the company’s business.
“The customers, the calls and the content you see on social media, is probably two percent of our business. Ninety-eight percent of our business is a customer who calls me and says, ‘Hi Colin, I need a jet from New York to London.’ ‘Awesome – it’s $150,000.’ ‘Great, I just sent you the money. Have a nice day. Very simple. It takes two seconds, and that’s the case in most situations we come across.”
Jones, who is not qualified to pilot jets but enjoys flying light aircraft with friends, believes her TikTok account has helped change public perception about private jets and notes that the world is “not full of horrible rich people.”
“For many people, private flying is not about luxury – it is about necessity. For some, it is the only way to fly. It allows people to be in multiple places at once,” he said.
“We have a client with a team of about 12 people who were doing a large company roadshow. When they were in LA, they flew with us to Omaha, Chicago, New York, Boston, and Miami – all in one day. If they had tried to do this commercially with 12 people, it would have been a multi-day trip – with separate flights, hotels, rental cars and per diems – and they were still on airline schedules. Are determined by.
“Instead, we used two flight crew and sent them home with their families by midnight. If you’re making $15 million a year, the hourly math makes sense.
“So, we try to change the public perception: There is a real need for private jets. The people behind them are not ‘bad’ – they are often everyday people trying to spend more time with their family or get more done in a day. It is the most efficient, safest and most comfortable way to travel, and there will always be a need for it.”
According to Jones, there’s also another type of flyer — one who’s increasingly frustrated by airport chaos and delays. Whenever a commercial carrier experiences a decline in customer service or queues for check-in begin to form around the terminal, calls to Amalfi Jets markedly increase.
He said: “We once had a customer whose commercial flight was suddenly canceled. They called us from the airport, and within 37 minutes they were in the air on one of our jets. The plane had just landed from another trip, so we sent a car to pick them up from the main terminal and put them straight on the plane. That’s the beauty of private jets.
“We also used that experience to launch a slogan, ‘If you’re stuck at the gate and feeling blue, Amalfi Jets will save you.’ It was intended to be fun and engaging – and it worked. Whenever airlines canceled flights, people started tagging us or contacting us and saying, ‘Come save me!’
“That’s how we try to use social media – to be more provocative.”
He added: “People don’t remember ’20 percent off your next flight’ emails. Nobody cares, But people love it when we sing and dance in the office about the airlines dropping the ball.
“Commercial airlines have certainly contributed to our growth. Airlines innovate with new aircraft, but at the end of the day, the airport experience hasn’t changed. Airports are still crowded, you still have traffic on them… Flying private is years different from flying commercially.”