Your business aviation hot takes, served fresh.

May 27th, 2026 | Season 3 Episode 21 Companion

Good morning and welcome back to The VIP Seat. This week we are covering Delta's deepening commitment to Wheels Up, the NTSB pulling its public docket after AI got curious, the FAA's surprisingly slick new modernization tracker, NASA reorganizing to race to the Moon, and a Maryland seaplane proposal getting cold water from the locals. We also debut a new segment, Captain Keyboard, where we read the worst comments on our posts and rate them like turbulence. Sit back, buckle up, and let's take off.

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The Scoop: Delta Air Lines has agreed to extend its lock-up restriction on all Wheels Up shares for another year, through May 22, 2027, according to reporting from Corporate Jet Investor. The extension covers more than 35% of Wheels Up's total outstanding shares as of May 22, 2026. The move comes alongside Delta's commitment to lead a new $100 million term loan for Wheels Up. CEO George Mattson said the lock-up extension and the term loan commitment reflect Delta's confidence in the company's strategy and the momentum in the partnership. Delta first took a stake in Wheels Up in 2020 by merging its Delta Private Jets subsidiary into the company, then deepened the relationship in September 2023 when it led the consortium that kept the loss-making operator out of bankruptcy and installed Mattson, a former Delta board member, as CEO.

Our Take: This story got more interesting once we connected it to a separate disclosure we discussed on the show: Berkshire Hathaway reportedly building a roughly 40 million share position in Delta, worth somewhere in the $2.6 billion range. Draw one more line on the chart and Berkshire now has indirect exposure to Wheels Up through its Delta holdings, which is a curious place to land for someone who has historically been skeptical of airlines. An airline and a private aviation company run on fundamentally different math, and that operational complexity is probably why Wheels Up still sits outside the core Delta business. $500 million is real money, but for a $52 billion company it is a manageable strategic bet, and the term loan plus the lock-up extension tell us Delta is committed to the runway it has built, not preparing for an exit.

Read More: Corporate Jet Investor

The Scoop: The National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday it has temporarily taken its public docket system offline after learning that image recognition and computational methods may allow individuals to reconstruct approximations of cockpit voice recorder audio from sound spectrum imagery the agency releases in accident investigations. Federal law prohibits the public release of CVR audio. The agency said on X that the docket system will remain offline while it examines the scope of the issue and evaluates solutions. The affected material includes documents released as part of the ongoing investigation into the Nov. 4, 2025, crash of UPS Flight 2976, an MD-11F that went down shortly after takeoff from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport, killing the three crew members on board and people on the ground. The NTSB has not issued a final report or probable cause. The shutdown followed a two-day investigative hearing on May 19 and 20 where testimony focused on the left engine and pylon separation, maintenance reporting, prior bearing findings, and pylon design requirements.

Our Take: This is where AI accessibility starts to create real second-order problems for institutions that built workflows around the assumption that certain reconstruction work was hard. Spectrograms have been a researcher tool for years, but the technical effort required to turn one back into intelligible voice was high enough to function as a privacy moat. That moat has narrowed. The hard question is not whether the NTSB had to act, it is what comes next. Researchers, OEMs, operators, and safety professionals all rely on docket material to do their jobs, and a full takedown is not a long-term answer. Our hope is that the NTSB ends up with a tiered access model where credentialed safety researchers can see one set of materials and the general public sees another, but that may take an act of Congress.

Read More: AVweb

The Scoop: The U.S. Department of Transportation and FAA launched a new public website called Modern Skies on May 22, 2026, to track over 10,000 air traffic control modernization projects nationwide. The site tracks work funded by the $12.5 billion appropriation for ATC modernization and covers more than 4,600 FAA sites. Users can search by city, state, ZIP code, or local airport to see local progress and what is scheduled in the next 30 days. By the end of 2028, the program is targeting 5,170 high-speed network connections, 27,000 new radios across 1,581 sites, 450 digital voice switches, 612 radar systems, 89 towers with electronic flight strips, and 435 control towers with new Enterprise Information Display Systems. The site is scheduled for monthly updates. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy and FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford framed the launch as a transparency-first response to the lack of public visibility that they say characterized prior modernization efforts, including NextGen.

Our Take: Two surprises here. First, the website is actually beautiful and functional. Search-by-airport, monthly updates, real progress numbers like the 2,600 telecommunications replacements already completed (51% complete at last check) and 62 of 450 IP voice switches installed. Second, this is the right move structurally. Every operator running a business that works has KPI dashboards, and accountability follows visibility. The thing we would still love to see added is a running ticker of dollars spent against the $12.5 billion budget, because progress on counts is one number and progress on dollars is the harder one. If the FAA wants to put past modernization disappointment behind them, that is the line item that will eventually answer the question. For now, the bar for "transparency from a federal aviation program" just went up.

Read More: FAA Modern Skies

The Scoop: NASA announced a reorganization on May 22, 2026, consolidating its human spaceflight and space operations directorates into a single Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate and merging aeronautics and space technology into a new Research and Technology Mission Directorate, according to reporting from The Center Square published by The Lion. The Science Mission Directorate is unchanged. Administrator Jared Isaacman said the restructuring would deliver cost savings through more efficient execution, with no reduction in force, no program cancellations, and no closures. Mission directorates will now report directly to Isaacman, and the agency named Carlos García-Galán as program manager for the Moon Base effort. The reorganization comes against a contested budget backdrop: the White House has reportedly proposed cutting NASA's budget from $24.4 billion to $18.8 billion, a 23% reduction, while the House Appropriations Committee has advanced legislation keeping funding flat. In March, Isaacman said NASA planned to invest about $20 billion over seven years to support development of a long-term lunar base, and he told lawmakers in April that the U.S. and China race to the lunar surface could be decided "in months, not years." More details on the Moon Base initiative are available on NASA's dedicated site.

Our Take: We do not normally cover space exploration on a business aviation show, but the parallels to the FAA story have ties. Two giant government programs, both trying to deliver on long-promised modernization, both restructuring to cut administrative bloat and tighten reporting lines. The same broad lesson applies. The Moon Base initiative is also a useful reminder that "expensive" is a relative term. $20 billion over seven years sounds enormous until you put it next to a $12.5 billion ATC investment, and both look small against trillion-dollar federal budgets. The other dynamic worth watching is the geopolitical one. Whether you frame it as a new Cold War posture or just market competition with China, the urgency is real, and that urgency tends to push organizations toward leaner structures. We will be watching whether the directorate consolidation actually shortens decision cycles or just renames the same meetings.

Read More: The Lion | NASA Moon Base

The Scoop: Virginia-based Coastal Seaplanes is seeking to begin commercial seaplane operations on the Miles River in St. Michaels, Maryland, and the proposal is drawing opposition from residents and boaters in the Chesapeake Bay waterfront town, according to AVweb. The company plans to use a designated sealane stretching more than a mile along the river to accommodate amphibious aircraft. Founder and CEO Sam Riggs told local outlet WBOC that the company began pursuing the location after customer demand for direct seaplane access to St. Michaels increased. Residents at meetings of the town's Waterway Management Advisory Board raised concerns about safety, congestion, and noise, particularly given the river's heavy recreational boating traffic during the summer season. Local marina and yacht operators also flagged navigation concerns. Not all reaction has been negative; some community members on local forums view seaplane service as a natural fit for the region and a tourism opportunity. Riggs said the company intends to integrate into the community rather than disrupt it, and noted that Coastal Seaplanes has received FAA authorization to operate on the Miles River while awaiting approval from the Maryland Aviation Administration.

Our Take: We are bullish on seaplane bases as a structural part of the urban air mobility story, and this proposal is a useful case study in the obstacles. The economics are appealing, since you skip the runway pavement bill and the noise abatement geometry over residential neighborhoods. The opposition tends not to come from homeowners, it comes from boaters. Seaplane pilots carry the obligation to land safely, but that does not make the encounter easy when the boat traffic is heavy. You get a business that is more akin to operating a heliport than a small GA airport. For Chesapeake Bay tourism and for any waterfront market with traffic patterns that already favor short hops, the model can work. The St. Michaels outcome will tell us a lot about whether the community framing can keep up with the operational case.

Read More: AVweb

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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.