- August 14, 2026
-
-
Loading
Loading
Jim Pyne isn’t trying to sell private aviation the way much of the industry sells private aviation.
There’s no membership card. No pre-purchased block of hours. No big-company handoff to someone several steps removed from the founder.
The company, Tampa-based PLS Aviation, offers on-demand private jet charter service, aircraft sourcing, aviation industry advisory services and 24/7 concierge support, according to its website. Pyne adds that PLS Aviation’s value proposition is straightforward: direct access, fast answers and the chance to earn a customer’s business trip by trip.
“That’s the big difference,” Pyne says. “With me, I’m not selling you anything. I just want to quote your trips.”
The rest will handle itself.
That approach is central to why Pyne launched PLS Aviation after a career that included 9 years playing in the NFL; coaching; sports businesses; and a 12-year run as a co-founder of Wheels Up, a private aviation company he helped build and take public. Wheels Up is now based in Atlanta.
When Pyne stepped away from Wheels Up, he says clients he had worked with over the years reached back out. They wanted to know what came next. They wanted continuity. They wanted the relationship they had with him — not just access to a plane.
“I always thought I liked the business,” Pyne says. “I like aviation. I like the people I worked with. So I said, ‘You know what? I really want to take care of these people further and create a business and grow — and do it my way.’”
PLS Aviation launched in 2024, after what Pyne describes as a soft launch serving existing relationships. His first-year goals were straightforward: establish the business, build the right team, source aircraft and make sure clients didn’t experience a drop-off in service.
“For year one, I just wanted to get to year two,” Pyne says.
The company did more than survive. It was profitable in its first year and is now growing at roughly double the pace of that first year. Pyne declines to disclose specific revenue figures. He says the company has between 25 and 50 employees when including resources and teams, and is "hiring new people everyday."
The opportunity Pyne sees is tied to several shifts in private aviation. Businesses are using private flights less as a luxury perk and more as a time-management tool. Entrepreneurs and midsized companies are looking for efficiency. Families are paying for convenience on routes where private can be practical, such as Tampa to the Bahamas. And Florida, particularly the Gulf Coast, continues to attract the business owners, executives, athletes, families and high-net-worth travelers who make up the industry’s customer base.
Pyne says demand is coming from “all of the above.”
“That’s another reason I love this business,” he says. “You meet people from all walks of life: successful entrepreneurs, athletes, famous people, CEOs.”
His market thesis starts at home. Pyne has been connected to Tampa since 1994, when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers drafted him, an offensive lineman from Virginia Tech. His children were raised here. He owns property in Redington Beach. Tampa, he says, isn’t just the company’s headquarters. It is the company’s base of relationships.
“I’m a Tampa guy,” Pyne says. “Tampa business. I want to build this business with Tampa people.”
But he sees the market more broadly than Tampa. PLS Aviation is focused on Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota, Naples, Orlando and the Florida Gulf Coast, with clients also moving through markets such as Rosemary Beach and South Florida.
Florida matters because private aviation follows wealth, mobility and time pressure. Pyne says when he first entered private aviation, he assumed the biggest markets would be New York, Los Angeles or Chicago. He was told to look at Palm Beach.
“There’s a lot of wealth down there,” he says. “A lot of people have airplanes. We’re not far from there.”
The need Pyne believes he’s filling isn’t simply access to aircraft. It’s high-touch responsiveness in a fragmented, expensive market.
He says PLS Aviation differentiates itself through founder access, aviation relationships and a lower-overhead model. Clients who call PLS get Pyne. He says he is available 24/7 and works directly with operators, pilots and fleet contacts he has built over more than a decade in the business.
“I hustle. I work hard,” he says. “If you call PLS, you’re getting me.”
That can matter when travel needs move fast. Pyne recalls a client contacting him around 10 p.m. needing a plane the next day. Within an hour, he says, he had five options. The client flew out the next morning.
“That speed and quickness, urgency, and getting me — I don’t pass you off to anyone,” Pyne says.
One client who says he has experienced that firsthand is Bruce Arians, the Super Bowl-winning former Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach who led the team during the Tom Brady era. Arians, in an interview with the Business Observer, says he has used PLS Aviation since it launched and speaks highly of his experience with Pyne and the company.
“Coaching against him, I always respected the player he was. Once he got into aviation, I started using him a ton,” says Arians, who, like Pyne, is a Virginia Tech alum.
Asked why he chooses PLS, Arians keeps it simple: “Dependability and service. He makes it so easy for you.”
His experience with the company, Arians adds, has matched that expectation. “Everything has been on time. Aircrafts are great. Pilots are fantastic. I can’t say enough good things about it.”
The model reflects what Pyne says he learned from watching larger organizations grow. At Wheels Up, he saw both the opportunity and complexity of scaling. He worked on partnerships, including a high seven-figure deal with Boston Beer to place products such as Truly on planes, and sold sponsorships tied to events and access to private aviation customers.
That experience taught him the relationship side of the business. It also showed him how overhead can build.
At PLS Aviation, he says, there is no “fluff” — no large-event machinery or layers of cost he has to pass along to customers.
“You need flights,” Pyne says. “You need to get A to B safely, quickly, service.”
That doesn’t mean the service is bare bones. Pyne says clients receive aircraft options, photos, aircraft history, pilot information and help with catering and ground transportation. The company handles the trip from booking to follow-up.
He wants clients to feel, from the start, that he’s listening. And he is.
“Typically, if someone’s flying private, it’s expensive, but it’s important, too,” Pyne says. “They’re either trying to relax or get somewhere quickly. Sometimes it’s unfortunate. It could be a death. It could be for health reasons, moving people around.”
That’s where Pyne’s NFL background becomes relevant to the business he’s building now.
A seventh-round draft pick, Pyne built a 9-year NFL career and started for four teams. He says he didn’t fully appreciate how rare that was until someone pointed it out years later. But the lesson he took from football wasn’t celebrity. It was pressure, preparation and protection.
His position, offensive line, is, of course, one of the least glamorous positions in sports. If an offensive lineman does his job well, most people don’t notice. If he fails, everyone does.
Private aviation can work the same way.
“As an offensive lineman, it’s a unique position,” Pyne says. “We’re the only position in sports where our job is to protect people. That’s my mentality. I’m a protector.”
He sees a direct line from blocking Reggie White in loud stadiums to handling travel for executives, athletes and families who expect everything to be right.
“I can handle the stress and the pressure,” he says.
For Pyne, the long-term measure of PLS Aviation’s success isn’t just how many new clients it signs but how many it keeps. If customers return, refer others and continue to trust him with high-stakes travel, he says, the company will know its service-first model is working. “If we continue to grow and retain clients and add to them, I think we did it the right way,” he says.
The growth plan isn’t complicated: deepen the company’s presence across Tampa Bay and the Gulf Coast, quote more trips and prove the value through execution.
That, too, reflects Pyne’s background. His father, who played for the New England Patriots before building businesses in construction and real estate, worked until the end of his life. His mother was a hardworking schoolteacher. Pyne says he inherited parts of both: the hard-charging salesperson and the thoughtful service mindset.
“I didn’t have a choice but to work,” he says. “I wouldn’t know what to do if I wasn’t working.”
For Pyne, the path forward is the same as the launch: answer the call, quote the trip and earn the next one.
