Johnny Foster is not retiring from OGARAJETS

opinion

by Alasdair Whyte

May 11, 2026

Johnny Foster is retiring. He is hanging up his bow tie and stepping back from aircraft sales. Oh wait. Ignore that. “I am definitely not retiring. There is a retirement sometime in the future but it is certainly not any time in the near term,” says Foster, the president and CEO of OGARAJETS.

This week he did announce a new Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) where his stake in OGARAJETS will be gradually handed over to employees. He has transferred 30% of his shares to a trust. Most of these will go to employees who have been with the company for more than five years. He will transfer more stock in the future.

“As we continue to prove the model and the company continues to grow both in the size of the team and the performance, more shares and more allocations will be put into the trust that is held for the benefit of the employees,” Foster tells us.

“We learned a lot about our company and about ourselves. But more than anything, I learned what I did not want,”

Foster says that the ESOP came about after he had been in talks to sell OGARAJETS. He came close to selling the company to private equity a few years ago. “We learned a lot about our company and about ourselves. But more than anything, I learned what I did not want,” says Foster.

“I did not want to compromise the standards by which OGARAJETS does business. I did not want to compromise the opportunity for the employees who have been here for so long and have been such an indelible part of creating the culture and the experience that we provide to our clients.”

Setting up the ESOP was not cheap or easy. “I bought and sold 12 aircraft in the time it took us to complete the ESOP,” says Foster. He has no control of the trust or involvement in valuing the company. Foster credits Ashley Charnley, OGARAJETS’ chief operating officer, with making it happen. The rest of the team did not know. They only found out last week at a mandatory meeting.

“I think most of the room felt that I was either retiring or that we were going to sell or merge with someone and none of it was going to be good news,” says Foster. “Despite my big smile and some balloons, it was pretty sombre and I dragged it out for probably 15 to 20 minutes. There was a notable sigh of relief when we started talking about conveying ownership to the team.”

“We went out for margaritas, tacos and chips and had a great lunch together.”

Everyone was given a small box with a key inside to symbolise their ownership. “It went really well,” he says. “We went out for margaritas, tacos and chips and had a great lunch together.”

One benefit of an ESOP is significant tax savings. Foster believes they can use this cash to acquire other businesses and then fold them into his company.

“OGARAJETS will cross 50 years before the end of the decade. This is a really important milestone for all of us to celebrate. Quite frankly I want to see it go another 50 years. I had no confidence that it could do that under the guise of someone else’s ownership or by merging,” says Foster. “The best way for me to assure the legacy was to start to pass on ownership and eventually control to the employees who created it. They will be the stewards of it going forward.”

You can listen to the whole interview on the CJI Podcast. But just to confirm. He is not leaving.