1963–1978
The pre-owned business jet market gets its architect.
Wayne J. Hilmer Sr. had purchased his first aircraft before he held a pilot’s license. He understood something the market hadn’t yet organized around: the first generation of business jets was entering service, and when their original owners were ready to move on, there was no infrastructure to facilitate that transaction. No database. No established protocols. No market.
Omni built one.
In July 1963 — the same month the first LearJet models 23 and 24 entered service — Omni Aircraft Sales opened at Hyde Field, just outside Washington D.C., and set about promoting a pre-owned market for the LearJet, Jetstar, Sabreliner, and Gulfstream. The firm developed and refined the offer, acceptance, and contract protocols that remain standard across the aircraft sales industry today — at a time when the telex machine was the state of the art in global communication. By 1966 it was a member of the National Business Aviation Association. In 1967 it moved to modern executive offices at 2401 Virginia Avenue, adjacent to the Watergate complex — the year Washingtonian Magazine named Wayne Hilmer and Omni “the free world’s leading merchants of used aircraft.” In 1971, Omni created the first comprehensive database of private jets and their owners in the world.
The transactions of those years show what that infrastructure produced:
1972 — Omni leases aircraft to Air America during the Vietnam War.
1973 — Frank Sinatra’s Gulfstream II, serial number 67, purchased in December and resold to the Government of Liberia.
1975 — After the war’s end, the CIA liquidates Air America’s surviving fleet through Omni: a Twin Otter, then the Bell 204B helicopters that evacuated Saigon — with every dollar returned to the U.S. Treasury.
1975 — In August of the same year, Elvis Presley Enterprises hires Omni to sell Presley’s Gulfstream G-I and Jet Commander.
1976 — Hugh Hefner’s “Black Bunny” Playboy DC-9, purchased in March and resold to AeroMexico.
1977 — Aircraft from Presley, Sinatra, and Saudi Prince Fahd, traded at the Paris Air Show.
Through the 1970s Omni pioneered the research call — regular, direct outreach to every owner on the registry, a practice competitors later adopted and the firm still uses today. The name came from the Omni VOR navigation aid; in Greek it means in all directions.
OmniJet and the Hilmer family are the original Omni Aircraft Sales of the 1960s and 1970s, which became The Omni International Jet Trading Floor in 1978 and OmniJet in 2001. A separate, unrelated company later appropriated the Omni Aircraft Sales name; OmniJet is not affiliated with it.
1978–1989
A brokerage rebuilt on the discipline of a financial exchange.
In April 1978, Omni moved to 11300 Rockville Pike and became The Omni International Jet Trading Floor — a name chosen deliberately, modeled on the structure and discipline of a financial exchange, to match the explosive growth in transaction volume the firm was handling. The next month, Forbes Magazine featured Wayne Hilmer and Omni as the leading name in pre-owned aircraft sales.
The record kept building. In 1978, Omni’s subsidiary International Airmotive purchased and resold the Lisa Marie — Elvis Presley’s Convair 880, his most famous and most extensively customized aircraft. In 1979, a Boeing 707 leased through Omni carried Ross Perot’s team in the rescue of two EDS employees held in a Tehran prison during the Iranian Revolution — a mission conceived, funded, and executed by Perot when government channels had failed, and chronicled by Ken Follett in his 1983 bestseller On Wings of Eagles.
By 1980, close to twenty percent of the entire pre-owned aircraft inventory available in the United States was listed exclusively with Omni. In 1983, the firm became the first in the industry to put its owner-and-operator database on an IBM mainframe — a market intelligence capability no competitor could match.
In 1985, Omni built a 20,000-square-foot facility at Easton Airport on Maryland’s Eastern Shore — Easton Jet Center — for the storage and management of owned and consigned aircraft. It remains operational today.
In 1988, Wayne J. Hilmer Jr. assumed the presidency. He had been on delivery flights at age ten. He held his pilot’s license before his driver’s license.
1990–2001
Consolidation at Easton, and an early move to the web.
In 1990, the first Gulf War shifted the market — and Wayne Jr. answered it by consolidating the firm’s operations at its executive FBO facility, Easton Jet Service, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The move reorganized Omni into a leaner, more cost-competitive operation, and put the company aircraft directly outside the office door: staff could fly to meet clients and accept consigned aircraft on the spot.
With the dawn of the internet, Omni opened satellite offices and quickly developed into a web-centric operation — trading through the decade as the Omni Jet Trading Center. The proprietary database built in the mainframe years became a web-enabled advantage: clients gained immediate access to every competing aircraft comparable to theirs, for sharper market awareness and better decisions.
The firm’s focus narrowed to exactly what it remains today: knowing precisely what jet aircraft are selling for, and how best to maximize the client’s position. With millions at stake, better information produces superior results — and while Omni’s services rated among the industry’s highest, its commissions stayed among its lowest. Integrity, then as now, was one of the unwavering foundations of the business.
2001–Present
Three generations. Six continents. The same standard.
Today, OmniJet is led by Wayne J. Hilmer Jr. and his son, Benjamin Hilmer — the third generation of family ownership in one of the longest-standing and most respected names in global private aviation. Over six decades, this multigenerational firm has handled the sale, leasing, and marketing of thousands of aircraft: corporate jets, airliners, helicopters, and military transports, for royalty, governments, business leaders, and celebrities, across six continents — and with nearly every aircraft manufacturer.
The protocols Omni developed in 1963 are still in use across the industry. The database Wayne Sr. built has evolved into a proprietary intelligence network that informs every transaction the firm touches. The name Omni — inspired by the VOR navigation aid, from the Greek for in all directions — has never been more accurate.
The aircraft have changed. The family has not. Sixty years of that standard is why the name still means something.
Press & recognition.
- Washingtonian Magazine — 1967 profile of Wayne Hilmer Sr.
- Forbes Magazine — May 1978 feature on the leading pre-owned aircraft sales firm
- On Wings of Eagles, Ken Follett — 1983 bestseller chronicling the OmniJet-leased 707 that flew the EDS-Tehran rescue
- Wikipedia — substantial historical entry on Omni International Jet Trading
- NBAA member since 1966 — 60+ year continuous trade-body affiliation
- Aviation Week Marketplace — supplier profile
- NATA member
The same values. The next deal.
Built by one family over six decades, and carried forward by a team that operates by the same principles. If you are looking for aircraft sales, acquisitions, or related services, we would welcome the conversation.
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