You’ve seen it on Instagram: hand-stitched leather seating, polished real-wood veneers, custom-woven carpets, and that very conspicuous angle of someone sitting alone in a window seat with only a few club chairs behind them. There is no 21B or crying babies on that plane. It's a photo that practically says, I'm on a p rivate jet , and you're not. It's the kind of image that has long separated celebrities and influencers from the rest of us common folk.

Unless you’re Kylie Jenner, who has a custom all-pink Kylie Air jet, the private jets appearing across celebrity Instagram feeds is likely to belong to Fly Black Jets, a luxury charter company. And over the past few years, stars like 21 Savage, Amelia Gray, Bella Hadid, and more have flown with, posted from, and tagged the luxury charter company, thanks to Suman Desai . In an industry where women make up just 3% of the aviation workforce, and an even smaller share of the private charter sector, Desai has been able to carve out a space of her own, all while adding on to her personal charters with her own skincare line.

Desai, who grew up in New York to Indian immigrant parents, remembers being "obsessed with beauty " from an early age. "I always wanted to become a makeup artist," she says. “But I only wanted to do it for people I loved, so I was always practicing on friends and family.” A career in aviation, on the other hand, wasn't something she envisioned. She describes herself as a lifelong "travel bug," but not the kind of student typically associated with the industry. "In middle school and high school, I wasn't a straight-A student. I wasn't that perfect Indian kid."

While she wasn’t graduating at the top of her class like many aviation executives, she had a different kind of advantage. "I’d win homecoming queen or most talkative," she laughs. “I was the most social.”

After meeting Desai, that tracks. You wouldn’t immediately assume she's the president of one of the nation's top private jet brokerages, not because she seems anything less than capable, but because she lacks the stiff, intimidating demeanor so often associated with high-powered founders and executives. She's personable, quick to laugh, and effortlessly relatable. At both of our meetings, she showed up in streetwear, making conversation feel more like catching up with an old friend than interviewing the head of a company. Suddenly, the homecoming queen title made perfect sense, and so did her success.

That instinct for connecting with people carried Desai into fashion sales, where she quickly found her footing. "I was really good at it because I understand people on a human level," she says. “I don’t always think of it transactionally. That’s what helped me grow and retain relationships for so long, I love connecting people.”

But fashion came with its own barriers. After repeated experiences with racism in the industry, Desai began cold-emailing private aviation companies in search of a sales role. The pivot didn’t spare her from discrimination. Private aviation, she says, is overwhelmingly male-dominated—roughly 97%—and sexism was just as present. Still, it was an industry she wanted to crack. "This was when social media was just starting to be used for business," she says. “So I learned the business inside out.”

She landed an entry-level role as the CEO’s executive assistant at a private jet brokerage, where she studied the industry’s playbook from the sidelines. "The normal way private jet brokers got clients was by cold-calling 100 to 200 people a day," she remembers. “But you’re trying to sell a private jet charter to someone you’ve never met. You’re dealing with the top 1%. They’re hard. They’re cutthroat.” At the time, Desai was still finishing her final semester of school, studying fashion, "I was just being a sponge," she says. Then she broke from convention. Instead of relying solely on cold calls, she began texting prospective clients, a decidedly Gen Z approach. In her first month on the sales floor, she outsold all 32 of her colleagues, every one of them a man.

It was on that sales floor that Desai met her now-husband and business partner, Sami Belbase. By then, she had developed an edge few others in private aviation possessed: an intuitive understanding of social media, it was innately Gen Z. "The industry is mostly older, mostly male, mostly Caucasian," she says. “A lot of people don’t know how to use social media unless they have an intern or a social media manager.”

But even then, she believed most companies weren't using those platforms effectively. While her colleagues cold-called prospects, Desai was cold-DMing dozens of potential clients a day. "I'd message 50 people a day until Instagram would literally tell me I couldn't send any more DMs," she says. That helped my career, too."

Belbase recognized the opportunity before most others did. "He saw what I was capable of," Desai says. "I said, 'Let’s just partner up and do it together.’" The result was FlyBlack Jet.

Ask Desai exactly what she does, and even she admits it’s not the easiest job to explain. At its core, FlyBlack brokers private jet charters, but with a focus on the industry's highest standards. The company works with top-tier operators that are Wyvern Registered, one of private aviation's most rigorous safety benchmarks, a distinction Desai returns to repeatedly as the foundation of the business.

But don’t get it confused, Desai is not giving out free flights in compensation for a tag by these major celebrities or influencers. "It’s just not worth it," she says. "I don’t really care if somebody tags FlyBlack because their followers don’t fly private. I’d rather they have such an amazing experience that they tell their two or three friends who actually do." Instead of comping entire flights, FlyBlack occasionally offers clients a discount in exchange for agreed-upon content. "We’ll send a quote and say, 'If you’re open to doing some social media promotion, we can take a certain amount off your charter,’" she explains. The strategy has helped put FlyBlack in front of high-profile clients including Tyla, Odell Beckham Jr., Russ, and Lil Yachty.

That philosophy has shaped the company’s approach. Rather than selling a seat on a jet, Desai set out to create an experience. "I wanted it to be more than just a flight," she says. "If you were flying with us, it would be like Tiana-air," she tells me. The details are intentional: partnerships with luxury brands like Marquis Caviar and premium water labels including Halstein's and pH Hydration help turn each charter into something that feels bespoke.

Beyond gourmet food and plush interiors, Desai saw another luxury ritual taking off at 40,000 feet: skincare. Social media had turned in-flight beauty routines into a genre of their own, with influencers filming elaborate regimens from first-class cabins. To her, it was an overlooked opportunity. "If I wouldn't use the skincare myself," she says, "why would I put it on my planes and give it to our millionaire and billionaire clients?"

The question led her to South Korea, where she began developing and patenting her own biotechnology-driven, multifunctional barrier-repair skincare designed to deliver the coveted "glass skin" finish. Throughout the process, she continued running FlyBlack remotely.

When GlassFX , her skincare brand, launched in 2025, it quickly landed in publications including The Cut and Harper’s Bazaar , the latter naming its BarrierFX Moisturizer among the best barrier-repair creams and winning beauty awards from Allure and Nylon .

"One of my main goals with GlassFX was, of course, to put it on the jets," she says. “But FlyBlack is only for the top 1%. I wanted to reach the other 99%, too, because I knew this was such a great product.” The two businesses ultimately became extensions of the same philosophy. Even the product packaging was designed with travel in mind. "I had to keep airline liquid regulations in mind," she says. "I wanted people flying commercial, not just private, to be able to bring it on board and still have that luxury experience."

From the beginning, Desai was determined to build something of her own, with her own needs in mind. During her first meetings with skincare labs in South Korea, she was repeatedly asked if she wanted to white-label existing formulas. "I said no," she remembers. “That wouldn't align with my ethics. BarrierFX isn't something e.l.f. or anyone else can just duplicate because it's built on patented technology.”

At the center of the line is EPIDERMBARRIER, a patented biotechnology designed to mimic the skin's natural lipid structure, reinforcing the skin barrier at a molecular level while locking in hydration and supporting long-term repair. The collection includes a three-step regimen—a serum mist, a bi-phase oil mist, and a barrier-repair moisturizer—engineered to restore and strengthen the skin rather than simply masking its concerns.

That distinction is central to Desai’s philosophy. "People keep layering product after product and wonder why nothing's working," she says. “They don't realize they have to fix the foundation first, which is the skin barrier.” She sees that mindset as one of the biggest differences between Western and Korean skincare. "In the West, it's often about covering imperfections," she says. "In Korea, it's about fixing the underlying problem so your skin naturally glows." As someone with brown skin, Desai also wanted formulas that addressed concerns often overlooked by the beauty industry, particularly hyperpigmentation. "I'm brown. Most of my friends have darker skin," she says. "We needed something stronger and more effective, but gentle enough to work on melanated skin without making hyperpigmentation worse."

And that it does, all while being fragrance-free, radical-free, and made for sensitive-skin, asking the question: how does she do it all within 24-hours?

But for her, running two companies means no two days look alike. But the mission behind both remains constant. "I do this all for women," she says. “My goal is to help and uplift women.” Her advice to aspiring founders is equally straightforward: don't abandon the plan the moment things get difficult. "A lot of people give up on entrepreneurship," she says. "The most successful entrepreneurs stick to their plan, whether it's Mercury retrograde or things just aren't going their way." She laughs before adding, "Without rain, there are no rainbows."