New Jersey-based charter broker Jacquie Dalton started SPARROW Executive Jets less than three years ago, but she’s no newcomer to business aviation. Here, she talks about her experiences in the industry and the challenges she has faced to get to where she is today. She also explains why she accepts clients only by referral – and why she named her company after a bird.

It wasn’t a very happy upbringing, but my mom did the best she could. My younger brother had a bad accident when he was 14 and almost had his arm amputated. I dropped out of high school to help him. He was a motocross racer, and I worked full-time at a deli so I could rehab him, get him a car, sponsor him, and take him on the race circuit. I paid all his fees. I was 16 years old. I grew up quickly.

My boyfriend had a tip on a horse so we went to the racetrack, and it was that day I knew I could become a jockey. I ended up meeting [renowned horse trainer] John Forbes, and I showed up every single day, seven days a week at the break of dawn, to learn the basics—how to muck stalls, how to train ponies. The [pace and culture of the] racetrack is actually very similar to being a jet broker. There aren’t many female jockeys. ​​I looked like a girl who came from money that was riding daddy’s horses, but people didn’t realize the hardship that I had gone through. I won the first race I rode in, and the horse was 21-1. I rode just over 210 races in a year.

You never get over the shame of dropping out of high school. I went to Brookdale Community College [in New Jersey] and got my GED at age 23. It was very humbling because I had been this jockey in the newspapers and signing autographs for kids, and all of a sudden, I’m back in school. I was one of only two transfer students accepted at Northwestern University in Chicago. I graduated at the top of my class, and I got the George M. Sargent award for departmental excellence in the school of speech. That was a huge thing for me. 

I started in business aviation in a marketing position at an aviation services company in Washington, DC. We did around 18 management acquisition deals, refurbs, and grew to 65 employees with 45 pilots. That’s where all my operational experience comes from and why I understand management companies and what they are dealing with. 

I think it’s dangerous for people who don’t have operational experience [with private jets] to be out there brokering jets. There are people working at concierge desks in hotels who are trying to book charter jets. They’ve never been on the other side of the business to see how operations and maintenance run, how safety programs run, how sales operates. At SPARROW, if I see an aircraft management company really trying to grow their retail business and sell jet cards and stuff like that, I back away because it tells me they’re more focused on generating money than running a safe operation and taking care of their aircraft owners.