Dan Harris posed a simple but loaded question to his LinkedIn network: for a commission-only charter broker — no salary, no draw — where the company's contribution is its name, an email address, software, banking support, and access to credit, what split is fair?

121 people voted. The result was close to a four-way tie: twenty-nine percent said the broker should keep 70%, twenty-eight percent split it evenly, twenty-six percent gave the company the larger share at 60/40, and seventeen percent landed in between. The comment section, predictably, did not resolve the disagreement — it sharpened it. Dan pressed on what a new broker does when they can't front tens of thousands of dollars for software and credit at the outset. Other brokers in the thread argued the split should follow the client relationship instead — whoever brought the business, and could walk with it, deserves the larger cut — or that tenure should decide it, since a broker who could open their own shop tomorrow has a different claim than someone two years into the industry.

Each argument is right about something. None of them, on its own, is a complete answer. Here's what the numbers actually say — including where the thread's own back-and-forth ultimately landed.

Why the Question Doesn't Have One Answer

A commission-only charter broker sits in a specific spot between two better-documented arrangements. On one end is the fully independent broker, who typically earns a commission of roughly 5% to 30% of the total charter price, built into the quote the client sees, and keeps effectively all of it because they're also carrying every cost of running the business. On the other end is a salaried employee-broker at an established brokerage, who might receive a base salary plus 20% to 40% of whatever commission the firm books on their deals — a smaller cut, in exchange for an income floor and someone else absorbing the risk.

Commission-only, no-salary arrangements sit outside both of those models. The broker has none of the safety net of the salaried role, but also isn't carrying the full infrastructure cost of a solo operation. That's exactly the setup the poll described — and it's why a single "fair" percentage doesn't travel well from one situation to the next.

What the Company Side Actually Costs

The "the company just provides a name and some software" framing understates the tooling and certification side of this specifically. Avinode, the charter-sourcing platform most brokers rely on, prices its broker plans from roughly $740 a month for a single-user starter package up to $2,119 a month for its top tier, before adding users — on an annual prepaid contract, the mid-tier plan alone runs close to $12,000 a year, the exact figure Dan raised when he asked what a broker without deep pockets does at the outset. WYVERN's charter broker membership, which underpins the safety vetting brokers use to vouch for operators, runs $499 a month. Layer on ARGUS or WYVERN accreditation for the company itself, and the tooling side of the ledger is a real, recurring cost — not a token contribution.

Credit access is a separate question, and a smaller one than it first appears. Most operators don't hold a client's card, or require full payment, until inside the standard 72-hour cancellation window — a point Dan himself landed on later in the same thread, noting it's the same low-exposure approach he used starting his own brokerage. A broker who is disciplined about collecting client funds promptly doesn't need much personal credit capacity at all. Where it does matter is at the edges — same-day bookings, held inventory, a client who pays late — situations that favor whoever is positioned to front the capital. That's a real factor, just a narrower one than "the company is absorbing major financial risk" suggests.

What Other Commission-Only Industries Actually Pay

Aviation isn't the first industry to argue about this. Real estate settled into a range worth looking at: commission splits commonly run from 50/50 up to 80/20, with brokerages like Keller Williams built around roughly a 65/35 split and platforms like eXp Realty around 80/20, improving toward 90/10 or higher as an agent builds a track record and needs less support. A newer model — the "100% commission" brokerage — flips the structure entirely: the agent keeps the full commission, and the brokerage charges a flat monthly or per-transaction fee instead of a percentage. The company still gets paid for the license, the compliance backstop, and the tools. It's just unbundled from the split.

Travel advisory runs a similar range: splits from 60/40 to 95/5 in the advisor's favor are common industry-wide, with 70/30 typical for someone new to a host agency, 80/20 treated as the general standard, and 90/10 reserved for experienced, high-volume producers. Some platforms have moved to a flat monthly fee instead, letting the advisor keep 100% of commission — the same unbundling real estate is doing.

The pattern across every one of these industries is the same: the split moves toward the person doing the selling as they need less from the company, and it moves toward the company when it's carrying more of the financial exposure or the ramp-up cost.

The Three Things That Actually Set the Number

Based on how this plays out across brokerage industries, three factors do most of the work in setting a fair split — more than any flat percentage:

• Who owns the client relationship. If the broker brought the business and could take it elsewhere, that's leverage for a larger share. If the company's name and marketing generated the lead, that's leverage the other way.

• Who's actually exposed to the money. Real, but smaller than it sounds. Disciplined collection timing — getting paid before an operator ever holds a card — limits most of the exposure a broker would otherwise be carrying personally. It matters at the edges (same-day bookings, a client who pays late), just not as the deciding factor for most deals.

• How self-sufficient the broker already is. A broker who could set up shop independently tomorrow has a different negotiating position than someone who still needs the company's accreditation and banking relationships to operate at all.

There isn't a universal number that survives contact with all three of those variables at once. The split that's fair for a five-year broker with an existing book of clients isn't the split that's fair for someone new to the industry, leaning entirely on the company's name and credit to get their first deal done. That's not a dodge — it's the actual answer, and it's the one the LinkedIn comment section kept circling without quite saying outright.

For more conversations that dig into the real economics behind private aviation — not just the flying side of it — the Iron Bird Podcast covers this ground regularly. Listen to full episodes at flyironbird.com/private_jet_podcast.