Your business aviation hot takes, served fresh.

May 13th, 2026 | Season 3 Episode 19 Companion

Good morning and welcome back to the VIP Seat. This week we are covering the FCC throwing classic Gogo ATG a six-month lifeline, an earnings tale of two cities for Wheels Up and FlyExclusive, a hydrogen-electric R44 that actually flew, a confusing read on the preowned market with conflicting Q1 data from AMSTAT and IADA, and one programmer's "Apocalypse Early Warning System" built on private jet flight data. Sit back, buckle up, and let's take off.

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The Scoop: The FCC has given users of Gogo's classic air-to-ground (ATG) network an additional six months of operation, with the planned shutdown now pushed back and the launch of Gogo's new 4G service delayed to November 8, 2026, according to AIN. In a separate company communication, Gogo's CEO attributed the delay to rigorous testing that showed certain partner-provided software components were not yet meeting performance and quality standards. The 4G program has now seen multiple delays since its original 2019 announcement, including pandemic-era chip supply disruptions. Some of Gogo's design and manufacturing work has reportedly been routed through third-party suppliers, including chip designers in Asia, per analysis cited by short-seller Bleecker Street Capital, which has disclosed a short position against Gogo. The reprieve buys time for operators who had scheduled equipment swaps around the original shutoff date.

Our Take: Last week we paid homage to ATG and said rest in peace. Turns out we were a few days early on the obituary. The frustrating part for operators is not that the shutdown got pushed, it is that the announcement came right at the planned cutoff. If you scheduled downtime, pulled the airplane out of service, and lined up the new install, then learned at the last minute that the timeline slipped by six months on top of years of prior delays, that is a customer-confidence story whether or not the technical issues are legitimate. The ATG install base is large, the spectrum is shared, and there is no rolling back to the old network if the new one underperforms, so a single switch event has to land cleanly. We are not predicting a SmartSky outcome here, but the operators who paid for L3 and L5 upgrades expecting a working network have a fair grievance. Meanwhile, Starlink keeps shipping. Headwinds for Gogo, tailwinds for low Earth orbit.

Read More: AIN Online

The Scoop: Two of the most-watched public charter operators reported Q1 2026 results in the same week, and the results read very differently.

FlyExclusive posted revenue of $96.4 million, up 9% year-over-year, with net loss narrowing to $13.4 million from $23.0 million a year earlier, according to Private Jet Card Comparisons. The company reported positive adjusted EBITDA of $185,000 in the quarter and positive adjusted EBITDAR of $4.4 million, marking its second consecutive quarter of positive adjusted figures. Dispatch availability rose 15% to 57.2% as the operator retired legacy aircraft in favor of Citation CJ3+ light jets and Challenger 350 super-midsize jets. CEO Jim Segrave told investors the result was "not accidental" and reflected a multi-year structural transformation. Contractually committed jet card, partner, and fractional revenue has grown from 9% of the mix in 2020 to 49% last year.

Wheels Up reported a net loss of $83 million on revenue of $168.9 million, down 5% year-over-year, according to Corporate Jet Investor. The company completed its fleet overhaul 18 months ahead of schedule, retiring its Citation X and Hawker 400XP aircraft and doubling its Phenom 300 and Challenger 300 fleet to 36 aircraft. Total gross bookings rose 10% to $267.2 million, and adjusted EBITDAR loss narrowed slightly to $18.3 million. Wheels Up also closed a $100 million term loan led by Delta Air Lines (expandable to $200 million) and an innovative mezzanine facility worth $165 million from Sankaty Jet Capital, part of AIP Capital. CEO George Mattson said the company had "crossed the inflection point."

Our Take: Both companies are telling the same structural story: retire the legacy fleet, concentrate on aircraft with dispatch reliability and contribution margin, and run a simpler operation. The strategy maps to something we have said on this show repeatedly, which is that uptime is the single most powerful predictor of operator financial health. FlyExclusive's $185,000 of adjusted EBITDA is not a victory lap, especially after backing in a $1.6 million non-cash fleet modernization charge. But it is movement in the right direction, the same direction Wheels Up is moving, just with a smaller hole to climb out of.

The contribution margin story matters most. Challengers are pulling significantly more margin per flight hour than the rest of the fleet at both operators, and that is exactly what is showing up in the FlyExclusive numbers (39% unencumbered contribution per Challenger versus 27% for CJ3+ and XLS+). Wheels Up is heading the same direction with its Challenger 300s. The question for Wheels Up is whether $100 million in fresh Delta-led term debt plus the Sankaty mezzanine debt is operational runway or growth capital, and the company is framing the Sankaty piece as aircraft financing for fleet expansion. $26.8 million of G&A in a quarter is still a heavy number, even after the 53% year-over-year cut. Delta clearly still believes in the thesis. The next few quarters will tell us whether the inflection point was a turn or a plateau.

Read More: Corporate Jet Investor | Private Jet Card Comparisons

The Scoop: Two preowned market reports landed in the same window and they read in different directions.

AMSTAT reported that total preowned business aircraft transactions, including jets and turboprops, fell 10.5% in Q1 2026 versus Q1 2025, per Corporate Jet Investor. Activity still beat the 10-year Q1 average by 4% and exceeded both 2023 and 2024. Preowned inventory at the end of March stood at 5.9% of the active fleet, below the 10-year average of 7.3%. Business jet inventory specifically came in at 6.6% of the active fleet versus a historical average of 8.2%. Median jet values rose 3% from Q4 2025 to Q1 2026, with heavy jet asking prices up 4% quarter-over-quarter and median heavy jet values up 11% since mid-2025, according to AMSTAT general manager Andrew Young.

The International Aircraft Dealers Association (IADA), meanwhile, characterized the Q1 2026 preowned market as flourishing, citing both market metrics and dealer perception as supporting a strong outlook, according to AIN.

Our Take: The AMSTAT headline “AMSTAT: Q1 fall in pre-owned sales despite demand strength” reads more bearish than the underlying data supports. Volume is down year-over-year, yes, but Q1 2025 was an outlier on the upside and the broader story is supply-constrained, not demand-weak. Inventory at 5.9% of fleet is well below the 10-year average. Values are firming. Heavy jets in particular have seller leverage that has not eased. That is not the texture of a market rolling over.

On the IADA side, dealer membership has been growing, so a rising share of transactions naturally flows through accredited members each year. Some of the IADA "up" signal is share capture inside an industry data set, not pure market expansion. Reported time-to-transact has also tightened versus prior periods. Both reads can be true at the same time.

Add in the OEM signal and the structural picture clears up. Embraer posted record Q1 results, Bombardier reported a record-breaking quarter, and Gulfstream's parent reported a strong Q1 driven by deliveries and services. Order books are huge, services revenue is climbing, and new aircraft demand is firm enough that some OEMs are pulling back from trade shows because they do not need the lead generation. That is a confidence move, and the historical pattern is that the OEMs who skip the relationship-building in the good years feel it more on the way down. We are not calling a downturn. We are saying the cycle does not stay where it is forever, and the OEMs that keep showing up are the ones who weather the next turn best.

Two more variables to watch. Bonus depreciation, which was not in place during Q1 2025 and is now back, may be pulling some transactions forward into 2026. And tariffs continue to compress margins for Embraer in a way the company's own guidance signals could be persistent.

Read More: Corporate Jet Investor (AMSTAT) | AIN Online (IADA

The Scoop: Unither Bioelectronics, an arm of United Therapeutics led by CEO Martine Rothblatt, flew a Robinson R44 demonstrator modified with a hydrogen-electric fuel cell propulsion system at Bromont Airport in Quebec, with Aviation Week there to observe the flight. Test pilot Rick Webb conducted the demonstration, supported by Mikaël Cardinal, Unither's vice president for organ delivery. The hydrogen fuel-cell propulsion system produces only water vapor as exhaust. The company envisions hydrogen-powered helicopters as part of a future zero-emission organ delivery network, leveraging the parent company's medical mission.

Our Take: This one is exciting for anyone who has been skeptical of where the eVTOL conversation has landed on energy density. Batteries are heavy and slow to refuel, and we have said we are not convinced lithium-ion is the answer for any meaningful range mission. Hydrogen is a different conversation. The energy density math materially closes the range gap, the refuel cycle is fast, and the exhaust is water vapor. Yes, the system is heavy (the install carries a real useful-load penalty on the R44), and yes, pressurized hydrogen storage on a small airframe is a non-trivial engineering problem. But this was an actual pattern flight on a certificated airframe class, with the fuel cells doing the meaningful work. That puts hydrogen ahead of where most pure-battery eVTOL programs are operationally today.

The bigger question is whether the architecture is portable. If Joby, Archer, and the rest of the eVTOL field can credibly swap battery packs for fuel cells on their existing airframes, the range and turn-time problems that have shadowed the sector get a lot smaller. The cost gap (hydrogen still runs materially more expensive than jet fuel by current pricing) is real but improves with scale and infrastructure. With the World Cup advanced-air-mobility moment now imminent and demos already running in New York, watch how quickly the industry talks about hydrogen as a serious second leg, not just a sustainability talking point.

Read More: Aviation Week

The Scoop: Artist and developer Kyle McDonald launched what he calls the "Apocalypse Early Warning System" (ews.kylemcdonald.net), a public tool that watches business jets, military aircraft, and aircraft with disabled identifiers to flag statistically unusual airborne activity, according to Straight Arrow News. The system pulls from public FAA registry data and the ADS-B Exchange feed and assigns a current alert level from 1 to 5. McDonald told the outlet he started the project after observing what he described as a spike in private jet movement around a high-profile political threat earlier this year, building on a premise that government insiders and ultra-wealthy fliers may move ahead of major events. Users can subscribe to text or email alerts. McDonald acknowledges that level 5 readings can be triggered by holidays, sporting events, data artifacts, or cohort mistakes. A bill in Congress, S. 2175, would establish requirements and limits on access to aircraft data, which could affect tools like this one going forward.

Our Take: This is conspiracy gold. It is also, in fairness, an interesting use of public data, and the methodology page on McDonald's site is more honest about false positives than most products of this type. For the airplane nerds among us, the rabbit hole is the cohort he's tracking. We saw Challengers, Phenom 300s, and Latitudes, which raises the obvious question of whether a level 5 reading just means the NetJets fleet is having a busy Tuesday. The bigger industry watch item here is the broader privacy and tracking conversation, which is heating up in Congress and may meaningfully constrain how public ADS-B and registry data can be aggregated and republished. The conspiracy site is a sideshow, the regulatory question is not. Don't forget your tin foil hat on the way in.

Read More: Straight Arrow News

Better Late Than Never, FAA

Biz Av Memes made it to Mile High Madness for what feels like the tenth time, this week with the Dwight-from-the-Office fire-drill scene captioned for the FAA's long-awaited certified operators list. The list is back, it is in Excel, and the data is finally accurate enough that operators have stopped texting us about aircraft on certificates they do not belong to and certificates that no longer exist. We will keep using flyingprivate.org (shoutout Jessie’s Nonprofit), which aggregates the FAA's various lists into one searchable place at no charge.

Antenna Install: How Hard Could It Be?

A maintenance content creator posted a slick video this week showing the install of a VHF antenna on an airframe, captioned with the warning that the job is harder than it looks. Honest assessment from the cockpit: it actually looked kind of manageable. Strip the sealant, drop in the right hardware, seal it back up. We will call it medium-grade difficulty, with one caveat. Now that it is on video, the install had better be by the book.

Read More: LinkedIn Post

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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)
FastJets

Disclaimer: The VIP Seat Weekly is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Coverage of publicly traded companies reflects the personal opinions of the hosts and does not constitute investment, financial, tax, or legal advice, nor a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security. The hosts are not registered investment advisors and may hold positions in companies discussed. All investments carry risk. Readers should conduct their own research and consult a qualified financial professional before making any investment decision.