✈️ The VIP Seat Weekly

Your business aviation hot takes, served fresh

January 13, 2026 | Season 3 Episode 2 Companion

Welcome back to The VIP Seat. We’re bringing you some real insider takes this week, as we’ll cover what really happened with the SACI situation, and take a deep dive in the history of the Talon Air re acquisition. Make sure you listen to this week wherever you get podcasts, and share it with a friend!

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🛫 The SACI Disaster That Wasn't

The Scoop: The FAA deregistered over 600 aircraft registered under Southern Aircraft Consultancy, Inc. (SACI), a foreign ownership trust. Panic ensued. CJI held an emergency town hall. Every newsletter led with the story. The sky was falling.

Our Take: When some felt that it may be the end of the foreign owner trust, here's what we found out actually happened: the guy who founded SACI was a U.S. citizen. He died. No one transferred ownership to another citizen, so the trust failed the FAA's citizenship requirement. That's it. No crackdown on foreign ownership. No regulatory shift. Just an estate planning failure.

Of the 637 aircraft affected, the business jets totaled: one 49-year-old Citation, a Citation Ultra, one Phenom 100, four VisionJet G2s, and a couple old Hawkers. The vast majority were piston GA aircraft owned by Europeans who found it cheaper to N-register than deal with EASA regulations.

The lesson here isn't that the trust structure is broken. It's that if you're using a trust, make sure there's a contingency plan. TVPX, Bank of Utah, and the other major players likely have succession plans. Some guy running a small operation out of who-knows-where? Maybe not so much.

Read More: CH-Aviation

🤖 Thoma Bravo Says the Quiet Part Out Loud

The Scoop: Boeing sold its Digital Aviation Services unit which includes Jeppesen and ForeFlight to private equity firm Thoma Bravo for $10.55 billion in cash. This week, layoffs began. And someone at Thoma Bravo apparently decided to tell employees that AI is coming for their jobs.

Our Take: Private equity doing its thing: acquire, cut costs, optimize, extract value. That's fine. But you don't tell people you're firing them because AI will replace them. That seems like the kind of thing you say in closed-door strategy meetings, not in all-hands communications.

Internal chatter suggests 30-50% cuts are coming. The company says that's "misleading" but won't give actual numbers, which is probably corporate-speak for "it's actually 39%."

Pilots are understandably concerned about the integrity of safety-critical systems. The CEO apparently used the word "enshittify" in an interview to describe what he claims won't happen. When you're pre-emptively defending against enshittification…

Prediction: ForeFlight subscription prices go up within six months. If you've been meaning to check out Garmin Pilot or other alternatives, now might be the time.

Read More: The Air Current 

🔔 Vista Divests Talon Air — M&A Gong Rings Again

The Scoop: Talon Air, the Long Island-based operator that was partially owned by Vista Global, has been bought back by the group that originally invested in it. James Chitty (CEO) led the buyout, returning control to his investment group.

Our Take: This one requires some history. Chitty founded Plane Clear, which merged with Apollo Jets (led by Al Palagonia and Dean Giasi) around 2016-2017. Apollo then invested in Talon Air in 2018. Later, Vista scooped up both Apollo and Talon through various acquisitions.

Now Chitty's group has bought out Vista's stake. The theory? It's probably the same Apollo crew getting the band back together. Palagonia has deep connections in sports and entertainment. Maybe they want to do their own thing again.

This fits the broader pattern we've been watching: the ZIRP-era consolidators (Vista, Wheels Up, etc.) are all divesting non-core businesses to focus on profitability. Meanwhile, newer players like Fly House are on the acquisition warpath. The cycle continues.

Read More: Private Jet Card Comparisons

⛷️ Citation X Excursion at Telluride

The Scoop: A Jet Excellence Citation X skidded 300 yards off the runway at Telluride after what pilots reported as a violent crosswind on landing. Significant damage to the aircraft. Thankfully, everyone walked away.

Our Take: Telluride is not a forgiving airport. It's a tabletop runway in a mountain bowl, at 9,078 feet elevation. Wind shear, gusty crosswinds, and zero margin for error. If you're not stable on approach, things go sideways fast… literally.

The single gust explanation is getting some skepticism in pilot forums. But we'll wait for the investigation.

What's more concerning is the apparent pattern emerging around Jet Excellence (formerly Bell Air). This is their third incident in six months: a Teterboro runway excursion, a landing gear failure at San Diego, and now this. Not all incidents are reportable to NTSB, which means the industry doesn't always get visibility into emerging trends.

The Citation X is a great airplane… fast, capable, with a loyal following. But fast means fast, and when you're not stable on approach in challenging conditions, the consequences come quickly. If you're an operator flying into mountain airports, additional training and conservative ops specs are worth the investment.

Read More: Fox News

🛩️ Diddy Parts With His G550

The Scoop: Sean "Diddy" Combs is no longer a private jet owner. His matte black 2015 Gulfstream G550 has been sold while he awaits trial, and it's now registered in San Marino.

Our Take: We're just glad we don't have to read any more articles about him making money while incarcerated. The 2015 G550 presumably sold with a fresh interior. (We'll leave it at that.)

The San Marino angle is interesting though. The San Marino registry, set up in 2012, is popular with Middle East operators because it enables intra-regional travel that N-reg or European registrations don't allow. The registry is actually run by a private company called Aviation Registry Group, which has been setting up registries in small countries like Aruba and now Gibraltar.

It's a fascinating niche business: go to tiny countries, help them set up CAA processes that meet ICAO standards, and boom… you've got a registry. These offices are really tiny… Very different from the FAA bureaucracy we're used to.

Read More: Complex

✈️ Mile High Madness

Jessie's Pick: A shark-faced Kodiak 900 is coming. Jessie's husband Dan and his business partner are taking delivery soon, complete with a custom paint job featuring a shark face on the nose and "Summer Terror Takes Flight" on the belly. If you see a blue and silver Kodiak with teeth flying around, that's them.

Preston's Pick: The best meme of the week… "New ForeFlight update just dropped. It even runs on Android now." The image? A paper logbook. For those not in the know: ForeFlight's Android incompatibility has been a long-running point of frustration for pilots. Now with Thoma Bravo at the helm, maybe just keep that paper logbook handy.

🎧 This Week's Episode

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The VIP Seat Weekly is the companion newsletter to The VIP Seat podcast. We give you the business aviation hot takes for your commute.

Jessie’s Links:
Private Aviation Safety Alliance
FlyVizor
LinkedIn

Preston’s Links:
Prestige Aircraft Finance
Private Jet Insider (Newsletter)
LinkedIn
X (Formerly Known as Twitter)
Jetting