A facility crew cleans the building: the passenger lounge and front desk, crew rooms and showers, restrooms, offices, ramp-side glass and the open floor of the hangar bay. The aircraft is a different job. Its cabin and exterior belong to the flight department, its detailer or the maintenance shop (MRO) that controls it, and a facility crew should stay off it.
That’s the standard a building should be held to. If you’d rather have it in writing, tell us about the space — we walk it and come back with a scope of work and a price, usually within one business day.
The map: every zone has an owner
An FBO (fixed-base operator) and its hangar divide cleanly by owner, and there are only three: the facility crew, the flight department and the maintenance shop. Our FBO cleaning page publishes the facility crew’s share of the terminal, and our aircraft hangar cleaning page its share of the hangar, both quoted below.
- Guest side: the facility crew. “Passenger lounge and reception: floors, glass, seating, coffee and refreshment bar kept guest-ready”, plus “Conference and flight-planning rooms, CSR counters and front-desk touchpoints” and “Restrooms sanitized and restocked on every visit”.
- The ramp door: the facility crew. “Ramp-side vestibules, entry doors and glass — the first thing guests see stepping off the aircraft”, so it belongs on every refresh.
- Crew side: the facility crew. “Crew areas: pilot lounge, snooze rooms, showers and lockers cleaned and sanitized”, plus the kitchenette’s “counters, sinks, appliance exteriors, trash and recycling”. Occupancy sets this timing: crews rest when their trips allow, so a snooze room is cleaned whenever it is empty.
- Hangar side: the facility crew, on the open floor. The bay floor, “Crew offices, planning rooms, and customer lounge: full janitorial with high-touch disinfection” and “Glass, partitions, and interior windows between the offices and the bay”.
- Everything else: the flight department or the maintenance shop. The aircraft, nose to tail and cabin to flight deck; parts, stands and tooling; and shop waste, which our hangar page leaves with you: “used absorbents, fluids, and shop waste stay with your disposal program”. Regulated waste and the rest of a compliance file are covered in our post on whether hiring a cleaning company makes your workplace OSHA compliant.
The aircraft is not facility work
Our FBO cleaning page answers the cabin question directly: “cabin cleaning and detailing stay with the flight department, the operator's own crew, or the detailing vendor or MRO that controls the aircraft.” MRO means the maintenance, repair and overhaul shop. In the hangar, asked whether we touch the aircraft, our hangar cleaning page says: “Never. We clean the facility: floors, offices, restrooms, glass.” What stays with your MRO or maintenance team, “Aircraft exteriors and interiors, panels, stands, parts, and tooling”, sits behind a line that “is drawn at the walkthrough and it does not move.”
The line isn’t about skill. An aircraft is always under someone’s control, and anything that touches it answers to them. If you searched for private jet cleaning, ask your flight department or maintenance provider who details the cabin; the lounge your passengers cross on the way to the airplane is where a facility crew comes in.
Hangar floors inside a FOD program
FOD stands for foreign object debris. The FAA’s advisory circular on airport FOD management, AC 150/5210-24A, defines it as “Any object, live or not, located in an inappropriate location in the airport environment that has the capacity to injure airport or air carrier personnel and damage aircraft.” The circular is advisory, written mainly for airports and the operators who fly from them; inside your hangar, the FOD and tool-control rules are your maintenance organization’s.
A cleaning crew is one more thing entering that bay, and our aircraft hangar cleaning page treats it that way: “mops, scrapers, and scrub pads get counted in and counted out like everything else that enters the bay.” The rules: “Our equipment is inventoried in and out, nothing loose is left in the bay, debris is bagged and leaves with us, and your maintenance lead signs off on the rules of engagement before the first visit.” The floor work itself is “machine scrubbing and degreasing of the open floor, keeping the standoff from any aircraft your maintenance lead sets”.
Two words in that line do the work: “open” means clear of aircraft and equipment, and “sets” means the standoff is your maintenance lead’s number, not ours. For epoxy, the same hangar page warns that “the wrong degreaser or pad dulls the finish you paid for.” Get the coating’s maintenance guide from your installer and write the approved pad and cleaner into the scope.
Restoring a worn coating is a separate trade. On floors, our janitorial page is plain: “We do not strip and wax, screen, or refinish floors — that is a flooring contractor's job, scheduled separately, and our crew works around it.” How machine passes and specialist work share one floor’s calendar is covered in our post on the commercial floor cleaning schedule.
Badges, escorts and discretion
Airside access runs on the airport’s rules. In TSA’s regulations, the air operations area (AOA) and the security identification display area (SIDA) are portions of an airport that its security program specifies (49 CFR 1540.5). Unescorted SIDA access generally requires a fingerprint-based criminal history records check (49 CFR 1542.209); anyone else is escorted, continuously accompanied or monitored by someone with that authority (49 CFR 1542.211). Part 1542 covers airports that regularly serve operators required to hold a TSA security program (49 CFR 1542.1); elsewhere, the airport and your lease set the rules. This is general information, not legal advice.
Within those rules, our FBO cleaning page names who decides and what stays private, in one sentence: “your security coordinator decides who works badged and who works escorted on the AOA, and discretion about tail numbers and guests is non-negotiable.” Our answer, on the same page: “We follow your security coordinator's rules: crews work escorted or complete the airport's badging process — whichever your leasehold requires.” That describes a process, not a badge we arrive holding.
A vendor’s own screening is a separate filter: our janitorial page says “every cleaner passes a background check”, and that is no substitute for the airport’s fingerprint check. Write discretion into the scope too: that visit photos show rooms and floors, never aircraft or people, and that tail numbers, names and schedules stay out of crew messages. Sign-in, codes and who holds what work as in any building; see how cleaning crews access a building after hours.
A 24/7 rhythm built around arrivals
When an FBO never closes, the schedule follows the ramp. Our FBO cleaning page publishes the pattern, “Overnight deep cleans plus quick-turn refreshes between arrivals, on a 24/7 cadence set at the walkthrough”, puts the deep clean “when the ramp is quietest”, and sets the rule for the hours in between: “no vacuum running when a principal walks through the door.” It adds that “our line is answered every day, 24 hours, which matters when a 3 a.m. pop-up arrival needs the lounge turned.”
Split the work by what fits in minutes. A refresh is the quiet list: restrooms, coffee bar, lounge seating, the ramp door’s glass. The deep clean takes anything slow or loud: floors, showers, crew rooms, kitchenette, offices. Agree at the walkthrough who alerts the crew to an unscheduled arrival, usually the front desk, and what a refresh covers when only minutes remain.
What we won’t claim
First, a client list. South Florida’s private flying runs through fields such as Miami-Opa locka Executive (OPF) and Miami Executive (TMB), which the Miami-Dade Aviation Department describes as relievers for Miami International, plus Fort Lauderdale Executive (FXE), owned by the City of Fort Lauderdale, and the Naples airport (APF), owned by the City of Naples Airport Authority. Naming them is geography; this post claims no work at any of them, or at any other airport.
Nor will we claim:
- Aircraft work. Nothing inside or outside the airplane, the flight deck included.
- An airport credential. We claim no badge of our own and no say in who receives one.
- An outcome. No FOD, security or inspection result; those belong to your maintenance and airport security programs.
- Specialty work. Restorative floor work, carpet or deep upholstery extraction, or a person stationed in your lounge. On the last, our janitorial page is direct: “we do not staff day porters today.”
FAQ
Who cleans the inside of a private jet?
Whoever controls the aircraft at the time: the flight department, its contracted detailer, or the MRO during maintenance. That is a separate decision from who cleans the terminal, and a facility crew’s work ends at the ramp door.
How does a cleaning crew get airside at an FBO?
Through the airport’s process. Where TSA’s Part 1542 applies, unescorted access to the security identification display area (SIDA) generally requires the airport’s fingerprint-based check, so a crew either clears it or works escorted there. Your security coordinator and your lease decide which. This is general information, not legal advice.
Does a terminal that never closes need a day porter?
Not necessarily. An overnight deep clean plus short, quiet refreshes between arrivals can carry it, with your front desk covering a spill in between. Someone stationed in the lounge all day is a day-porter post, so ask any vendor plainly whether it staffs one. We don’t; our janitorial page says so: “we do not staff day porters today.”
How is FBO or hangar cleaning priced?
From a walkthrough, not a rate card. A serious quote turns on the size of the terminal and the bay, the floor’s condition, the restrooms, showers and offices, the access or escort logistics, and the cadence, and it should come back as a written scope you approve before anything starts.