Joseph Vincent was not in the cockpit when a client, an Oscar-winning actor, was flying in a Lear 60 jet from Turkey to Ethiopia on a humanitarian mission.

But Vincent, who grew up in Oradell, felt the trip in the pit of his stomach while monitoring it from his Hoboken home.

"This plane is zigzagging all over the place. I'm watching it, and going, 'What the hell is this jet doing?' Then they decide to tell me," he says. "That part of Northern Africa is rife with insurgents and revolutionaries, and they all have surface-to-air missiles. So they had to circumvent where there were missiles."

That's just some of what Joseph Vincent has to deal with for a living.

Vincent is the owner of Vincent Jets, a jet brokerage firm based in Hoboken that matches people with vendors, offering more than 14,000 aircraft across seven continents 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Vincent and his employees work every day with clients who don't want the hassle of going through an airport but do want the hospitality that they wouldn't get if they were flying commercial. The firm's motto is "Everyday is Flyday."

So their work entails things like making sure a client whose chartered jet broke down at 2 a.m. is able to get onto another one by 4 a.m. And getting a therapy horse onto a plane to Colorado. And getting a chef onto a flight to prepare fresh sushi at some customers' request.

"I have never had two days in a row that have been alike," Vincent says. "When it's good, it's great. When it's stressful, it's stressful."

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Vincent, 44, has been in the business for 10 years, first working at another jet brokerage firm before starting his own shop four years ago. Since then, he has dealt with everyone from organizers of missions delivering humanitarian supplies to ravaged locations, to shuttling politicians to the Democratic Governors Association convention.

Ex-White House chief of staff under the Obama administration, William Daley, once kept Vincent on the phone for 45 minutes.

"He wanted to know why I went to Bergen Catholic, what I got out of it," he said. "And we talked aircraft for another half an hour. He vetted me up and down. I got off the phone, I was exhausted."

Currently based out of Vincent's home, Vincent Jets will eventually relocate to a new office at Teterboro Airport, from which the majority of his clients fly.

Working from home is not as relaxing as it might seem, especially when your job requires dealing with the safety and comfort of customers perched thousands of miles in the air, he says. "My wife is so used to me getting up in the middle of the night, closing the door, and working for two hours, trying to solve problems that happen," Vincent says. "So you are always on call. The job keeps him up until 3 a.m. many nights, he says.

Yet he would not trade his current job for his former gig as a financial adviser. He's even planning to get his pilot's license next year along with certifications for the specific planes he wants to fly.

"When you wake up in the morning, you want to enjoy doing your job," he says. "In this industry, there are no bad apples. Everyone is in a good mood."

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Getting in the pilot's seat

Vincent was fascinated with military planes while growing up in Oradell, thanks in part to a trip to Pearl Harbor.

After graduating from Bergen Catholic High School and Ramapo College, he ended up working for JP Morgan Chase on Wall Street.

But he found that Wall Street wasn't where he wanted to spend the rest of his working life. Instead, he took the skills he gained from the financial world and brought them into the arena of jet brokering. "It was a natural progression from my work history where I was used to dealing with high-net-worth individuals and developing relationships. This is almost the same thing," Vincent says.

Jet brokers generally operate by booking chartered flights for clients based on long-standing set-ups, such as subscriptions and memberships. Vincent, however, does what is called live-market pricing, which he claims will "put the industry on its ear."

"So you call me up, and say, 'Joe, I got to go to California tomorrow,' and I will ask how many people you have," he says. "Then, what I do is, I know all my vendors, and there's a lot. Your mom-and-pop vendor who has one turboprop and there's your bigger guys, who maintain a fleet of 20 or 30 Gulfstreams.

"I know where most aircraft are. So what I do is find you a suitable aircraft, then I'll send a picture of it. The interior, make sure it is to your liking. Then I make an offer on that aircraft on your behalf. They're happy; you pay me, we pay them. You got your jet, go."

Still grounded in Bergen County

Vincent still makes time in his hectic schedule to take his wife and parents, who now reside in Emerson, to dinner at favorite Italian restaurants such as Aldo's in Wyckoff.

Vincent admits to being homesick for Bergen County. He thinks about moving back to the county with his wife and dog to start a family.

"All my friends that I grew up with still live in Bergen County, in various towns all over the place," Vincent says. "It's kind of funny, when you're in your twenties and thirties you move to Hoboken. You meet someone and then everything goes right back to Bergen County."