“NetJets is owned by Warren Buffett.”
Verdict: NetJets has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway since 1998, when Buffett's company bought Executive Jet Aviation for $725 million. So it is owned by the company Buffett ran, and he was a customer before he was the owner — he bought a share in 1995 and has said the purchase was sparked by his family's enthusiasm for it. Buffett stepped down as Berkshire CEO at the end of 2025; the ownership didn't change.
NetJets was founded in 1964 as Executive Jet Aviation and invented modern fractional ownership in 1986 under Richard Santulli, who used his background in mathematics and finance to model how many aircraft a shared fleet needed. Buffett bought a quarter share in a Hawker in 1995 — he'd previously owned an aircraft he jokingly named The Indefensible — and three years later Berkshire bought the whole company.
Berkshire's annual letters have tracked NetJets through a rough patch after 2008, when the company lost money and wrote down its fleet, to a return to strong profitability in the 2010s and the pandemic-era boom. NetJets now operates more than 1,000 aircraft, the world's largest business-jet fleet, and has placed multi-billion-dollar orders with Cessna, Embraer and Bombardier.
The nuance is only about what 'owned by Buffett' means. Buffett owned roughly 15% of Berkshire Hathaway at his peak, and he handed the CEO role to Greg Abel at the end of 2025. Berkshire — not Buffett personally — owns NetJets. Anyone repeating the rumour in a hangar is close enough to be forgiven.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org · berkshirehathaway.com
Aircraft in this story
