Interview of Todd Rome

President of Blue Star Jets

That’s what on my mind when I meet up with Todd Rome, founder of Blue Star Jets. Blue Star is a decade-old private jet company based in Manhattan with over 4,000 air crafts around the world in its employ.

Blue Star doesn’t actually own the jets. It’s a different model where instead of renting out planes, there’s a demand made (for example, a family traveling from New York to Los Angeles) and then the pilots of privately owned planes can bid for the trip. Todd’s company eliminated the “deadhead” on the back-legs of trips, where planes might wait days for another job. In the usual model, private jets might only be using 50 percent of their potential capital. Blue Star finds the right air craft around the globe to meet the needs of the customer and then the air crafts compete for the business. It’s a model that lowers the price of private air travel and creates industry competition.

Before the interview, I pictured private jets like the one Austin Powers uses in ‘International Man of Mystery.’ Only rich people and spies used private jets. But Blue Star also provides planes for medical transport flights, cargo transport and rescue missions.
Todd grew up on Long Island and lives in Manhattan with his wife and four children. He went to the University of Maryland as a business major. He tells me as a kid he was always interested in business; going out on the street selling kazoos to his friends, working as an ice cream man, doing concert promotions as a teen.

In his 20s, he went on his first private flight in a helicopter to the Hamptons. He also worked on Wall Street and a lot of his friends owned planes. Todd owned a plane and enjoyed the lifestyle finance afforded, but grew bored with the actual work.

“I liked more creative marketing-driven business,” he says. “I was very good at it but finance wasn’t my passion. I wanted to train myself in a whole, new industry I’d never been in before.”

Todd says he never had any interest in learning to fly or being a pilot, though he says that journalists ask him that question all the time. He loves flying but more for the convenience of a weekend in the Hamptons than for the mechanics that a pilot would enjoy.
Blue Star Jets was started the year before 9/11. When the Twin Towers fell, Todd thought his new company was doomed.
“We read it wrong,” he says. “Demand went through the roof. People weren’t doing it for the glamour but for the safety and security of it.”

During the Icelandic volcano that stopped commercial air travel and during the unrest in Egypt, Blue Star Jets continued to fly. Todd was up for four nights straight coordinating European flights.

The planes have also done rescue missions during earthquakes and hurricanes. Todd says Blue Star’s business works out to about 1/3 rockstars and athletes, 1/3 corporations, and 1/3 wealthy families. All pilots Blue Star works with are audited by WYVERN, an aviation safety intelligence organization. The company currently has a 100 percent safety record.

Flying commercial, aside from getting groped by the TSA and scrunching your knees into a tiny seat, restricts a person to a scheduled route made by the airline. Not just in terms of leisure flights, but the flexibility of private aviation allowed pilots to fly around the storm during the tornadoes and hurricanes. When commercial travel shuts down, private planes can still fly — and Todd says it’s not any less safe.

“A lot of people are afraid to fly,” I say. Todd shakes his head.

“Fear is a made up emotion,” he says, bewildering me a little.

But private jet travel is still expensive. A flight on a Gulfstream or a G5 might cost $79,000 to $100,000. Todd mentions a flight for seven people that would run $2,500 an hour. “It’s still a wealthy man’s game,” he says.

For concert tours, the jets can provide for a celebrity’s special needs. Todd makes a profile of the customer marking down their specific requests.

“Sometimes they want the jets to be a certain temperature when they walk on,” he says, like that’s normal. “They want the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal. They want pigs in a blanket for the kids, cheese trays for the wife. There’s always movie requests. They want lots of blankets. We do everything. You want a Surf n’ Turf dinner? We can do it.”

One of Todd’s employees, an investment executive sitting in the conference room where we do the interview interrupts to tell me Todd is the most talented business man. I ask what he means and he says he’s never known someone with the foresight to see a niche that needs filling and create something to fill it. For example, it’s hard to believe that no one else saw to go to the air crafts directly and have them bid for more business rather than remaining idle when not on trips.

Like when I discussed the privatization of space travel with rocket scientist Shah, the privatization of aviation creates more competition in the industry that then lowers the costs. The air crafts work for you, rather than you making your schedule around the commercial airline’s schedule.

Todd has a Long Island accent, dark features and severe, thoughtful eyes and eyebrows. His face moves in such a way when he’s listening that it seems like he’s considering everything you’re saying very intently. His comfortable, open buttoned shirt contrasts his business demeanor.

“Building relationships in a new industry takes forever,” he says of getting into private jets with little to no experience ten years ago. “I had to understand the equipment and grow the customer base. Credibility can’t be bought. We had to prove ourselves.”
He likens himself to the horses in Central Park wearing blinders. He says staying away from personal distractions and staying focused on business helped him.

“But I think once you achieve a certain level of success, you always want to set your sights higher,” he says.

Like with any new business venture, Todd spent years flying around and long hours trying to convince people of his new company’s reliability when Blue Star (named for the investment in the film ‘Wall Street’) was first starting out. 

“There’s a lot of frustrations and there’s a learning curve. Some concepts work, some don’t. Some contacts work out, some don’t,” he says. “There’s no straight line to success. You have to keep on trucking.”

I try to draw a connection between Todd’s childhood and his burning desire to become a wealthy business man. He says he was “born with the want and desire,” but he clarifies that he’s got four children and he feels the need to provide for them as “captain of the ship.” For instance, he’s taken his family down to Disney World on a jet and spends most weekends in the Hamptons. Last weekend, the family went to Palm Beach.

He says he grew up with one sister and both parents. I ask if there was a desire to “step up” his lifestyle as an adult - to go from a kid outside New York to a grown man with power in Manhattan.

“I had a good childhood,” he says, measured. He’s probably had media training. “But it’s definitely different. I’d say I stepped it up a notch,” he pauses, laughing softly. “I’m definitely paying more for private school than my parents did. But it feels good to provide for others besides yourself. That’s my good feeling.”

I mention connections to Anne, the pastry chef I interviewed months ago. In movies, “pastry chef” is often depicted as a female dream job - one of creativity and relaxation and cuteness. The male equivalent is someone in business, flying around on private jets.

Todd looks curious but in the end, seems to understand what I’m saying.

“It is a dream job,” he says. “But no business or job is perfect 100 percent of the time.” He pauses, smiling. “That said, I do think I have the best one out there.”