NetJets Inc. is an American company that sells fractional ownership shares in private business jets.

Founded as Executive Jet Airways in 1964, it was later renamed Executive Jet Aviation. NetJets became the first private business jet charter and aircraft management company in the world. It launched its fractional ownership business in 1986 and became a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway in 1998.

The company was founded in 1964 and originally known as Executive Jet Airways. The name was later changed to Executive Jet Aviation (EJA), and again in 2002 to NetJets, after Berkshire Hathaway purchased it in 1998. NetJets was the first private business jet charter and aircraft management company in the world. The idea came from retired Air Force Brigadier General Olbert F. "Dick" Lassiter, who had experience running the Air Mission Squadron, an air taxi service for the Air Force. The idea was to run a similar service for private companies, with a pool of corporate jets providing transportation instead of each company having to purchase and maintain their own plane. The founding members of the board of directors included US Air Force generals Curtis E. LeMay and Paul Tibbets, Washington lawyer and former military pilot Bruce Sundlun, and entertainers and pilots James Stewart and Arthur Godfrey, with Lassiter serving as president and chairman of the board.

Shortly after its founding, EJA began receiving regular investments from the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), which were managed by accountant David Bevan. In June 1965, the railroad purchased a majority of shares in EJA, despite the fact that rail carriers were barred from owning air carriers by the Federal Aviation Act of 1958. To hide the investments from the PRR board, Bevan made the payments through a subsidiary, the American Contract Company, which he was president of.

EJA initially began operations in 1964 with a fleet of ten Learjet 23 aircraft. The company soon moved to acquire competitors and larger aircraft, including two 707 jets and two 727 jets from Boeing, but these could not be operated in revenue service without being an airline, so EJA attempted to buy Johnson Flying Service (JFS), a small Montana charter airline. EJA even negotiated an order for Lockheed L-500s, the nascent civil version of the C-5 Galaxy, contingent on acquiring JFS, which required approval from the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), the now-defunct Federal agency that, at the time, tightly controlled almost all commercial air transport. The PRR argued its EJA stake was legal as it consisted of non-voting stock. Anticipating CAB approval, EJA licensed its larger jets to foreign airlines. But the CAB saw PRR's involvement as illegal, EJA found itself deeply unprofitable, and the PRR attempted to sell off its stake. However, potential buyers lost interest after corporate spies for Pan Am acquired and leaked information on EJA's illegal interests. The PRR merged into Penn Central in 1968, and the search for a buyer continued. Penn Central and EJA were ultimately fined $70,000 by the CAB in 1969.

In 1970, the trustee for Penn Central's EJA shares voted to oust Lassiter and replace him with Bruce Sundlun. On July 1, the day before he was voted in as president, Sundlun led a midnight raid on EJA's corporate offices with the assistance of Pinkertons. Lassiter attempted to retake the office with armed guards of his own shortly after, but they were stopped by Sundlun's guards. Lassiter was later sued for his role in diverting $21 million of PRR money into EJA, much of which had gone to his personal expenses. Sundlun, Robert L. Scott Jr. and Joseph S. Sinclair bought out the Penn Central interest in EJA in 1972 and stabilized the company's finances. Paul Tibbets became president in 1976.

In 1984, Executive Jet Aviation was purchased by mathematician and former Goldman Sachs executive Richard Santulli who owned a business that leased helicopters to service providers of offshore oil operations. When Santulli became chairman and CEO of the corporation, he closely examined 22 years of pilot logbooks, and began to envision a new economic model where several individuals could own one aircraft.

In 1987, the NetJets program was officially announced becoming the first fractional aircraft ownership format in history. Around the same time, painted on every NetJets US aircraft is a registration ending with QS, symbolizing the concept of selling quarter shares of an aircraft—a feature that is still representative of the NetJets brand today.