After retiring from a 26-year flying career at Delta Air Lines, Dan Hill decided to get back into the charter business, and now he is heading his own company, Mach One Air Charters. The company is based at Chino Airport in Southern California’s Inland Empire east of Los Angeles, and what is interesting about Mach One is that it flies few retail charter trips; 95 percent of Mach One’s flights are for charter broker Sentient Jet.

When he began flying for Delta in 1976, Hill owned Trans Catalina Airlines, which flew Grumman Mallard amphibians from the California mainland to nearby Catalina Island. He sold that business in 1981. After retiring from Delta, Hill joined North American Jet Charter in Paso Robles, Calif., as chief pilot before leaving to start his own business.

Mach One emerged from a small charter company–Riley Air Charters–with just one Piper Navajo that Hill bought to jump-start his new business, a quicker way to get going than obtaining a new charter certificate from the FAA. “It took us six months to get to our first flight in March 2006,” he said. Hill started the new company in Long Beach and quickly added his first jet, a Citation S/II, the faster Cessna with the TKS weeping wing anti-icing system.

By December 2009, when Hill moved Mach One to Chino, he had five jets flying mostly to fulfill Sentient Jet trips. Now the company operates 10 jets, and in addition to the S/II the fleet includes one Citation II, a Bravo, two VIs, two Excels, one XLS, a 2009 Sovereign that expands the company’s reach to Hawaii and a Hawker 400XP. “It’s a good mix for Sentient,” he said, although Mach One also flies charters for other brokers such as Apollo Jets and Blue Star Jets. All of the jets are owned by others and managed by Mach One.

Hill has a particular loyalty to Sentient, in part because of how Mach One was treated during the challenging bankruptcy of JetDirect Aviation, which had purchased Sentient and about a dozen charter operators. Sentient ended up being sold to Macquarie Global Opportunities Partners in September 2008, and the company has since grown rapidly. But at the height of the JetDirect troubles Mach One was fully paid all the money it was owed, and Hill was grateful for that.

When it comes to scheduling charters, Mach One tries to help Sentient, even when other brokers call first. As a major provider of lift for Sentient, Mach One logs into Sentient’s operator network to view available upcoming trips and keep information about Mach One’s airplanes up-to-date. Mach One is the second-largest provider of lift to Sentient, according to Hill, after Travel Management Company. Three of the Mach One jets–the Hawker 400XP, one Citation Excel and the S/II–are strictly available for Sentient trips and do not fly any owner flights.

Mach One employs 35 pilots who work either a 20-day-on/10-off or 10-on/five-off schedule. The main crew base is Chino. All pilots are equipped with an Apple iPad running the ForeFlight Mobile app. Maintenance is done primarily at Mach One’s Chino hangar, and Mach One’s mechanics are supplemented when needed by mobile maintenance provider AOG Jet Support of Santa Ana, Calif.

The Mach One hangar at Chino was empty when Hill moved in, and he built it into an office-condo. “We had the good fortune of drawing it up the way we wanted,” he said. “We wanted a homey family-oriented business.” Amenities include a fitness room, sleep room, showers, breakfast bar and a comfortable living-room area with a fireplace and large-screen TV that employees are welcome to use on off days.

Hill, who won the 2013 Service-Based Entrepreneur award in the Inland Empire Spirit of the Entrepreneur Awards program, stays current on the jets and still flies charter trips. “It’s a business,” he said, “but it’s the love of my life.”