How AI boom and SpaceX IPO wealth lowered average age of private jet owners by a decade

According to a report by Reuters, US-based aviation lawyer Amanda Applegate told the news agency that she gave up her annual vacation last month because of a wave of aircraft purchase and acquisition paperwork. The attorney attributed the rush to a handful of major “liquidity events” in the tech industry. Chief among them is SpaceX’s Nasdaq listing, which raised a record $85.7 billion for Elon Musk’s rocket company and minted unprecedented wealth for founders and early employees.

Venture capitalists, advisers and early SpaceX staff, alongside the bankers steering the coming IPOs, are now channelling that new money into private aviation, making the sector one of the earliest beneficiaries of the AI boom, Reuters reported. “There are a lot more people who can afford to travel privately,” Applegate said, adding that the number keeps climbing. Business at her firm, Soar Aviation Law, which handles aircraft purchases and deals, is up 25% so far this year, Reuters reported.

According to data from aviation intelligence firm JetNet, flights operated through shared ownership programmes increased 11.8% globally during the first five months of 2026 compared with the same period last year, the report stated. Flights flown by private jet owners rose 13.4%.

A younger cabin

The clearest sign of the shift is age. CEO of US-based Flexjet, a private company which allows buyers to purchase a share of a private aircraft, Andrew Collins told the Financial Times in an interview that the company’s average owner age has dropped by a decade. He added that some owners are now in their twenties. “I can see right now a significant impact from AI already, in terms of AI wealth,” Collins told FT, noting that cryptocurrency is part of the mix too.

He described SpaceX’s $75 billion IPO as a “watershed moment” pushing more newly wealthy people toward spending on private travel and said the IPO market overall is running at three times last year’s pace. He pointed to the ultra-high-net-worth population rising by almost a third over the past two years.

The Reuters report found a similar generational tilt lower down the market. Flexjet’s executive vice president of sales DJ Hanlon said first-generation, self-made wealth from tech IPOs is producing a younger client base at the firm.

Texas leads the entry-level surge

The boom is most visible near SpaceX’s own backyard. Business jet traffic around Brownsville, Texas jumped 177% to 97 flights during the IPO period, according to aviation data firm WINGX, Reuters reported.

Jet Linx, which offers aircraft management and flight-hour cards, said its business grew 60% year-to-date through May, with particular strength in Texas.

Membership card sales — which start at a one-time $17,500 fee or a $250,000 deposit — rose sharply in San Antonio, Dallas and Austin, Reuters reported. “These numbers far exceed the expectations we had going into 2026,” Jet Linx chief executive Jamie Walker said.

Charter firm Mercury Jets told Reuters that demand from tech executives has grown by double digits since the start of the year, and that inquiries have also come in from people who had never flown privately before, according to Ryan DeBruyne, the company’s director of charter sales.

Chasing supply

Flexjet is racing to keep up as the company has ordered 50 new jets, taking its fleet to 390 by year-end. The company said it will buy more if it can secure them, according to the FT.

Rising costs have not dented appetite, Collins told the FT. He further said that the jet fuel prices have roughly doubled but have simply been passed on to customers, with “no impact” on demand for ownership. The company even noticed a short-lived travel spike at the start of the Iran conflict, as fears of jet fuel shortages pushed some customers to fly sooner than planned.

With SpaceX’s lock-up period yet to expire and Anthropic and OpenAI still weighing their own public debuts, the private jet industry’s AI dividend may be only just beginning.