Your business aviation hot takes, served fresh.

August 19th, 2026 | Season 3 Episode 32 Companion

Good morning and welcome back to the VIP Seat. This week we dig into flyExclusive's record quarter and the debt sitting underneath it, ring the M&A gong for SC Aviation buying Heartland, try to do the math on Atlantic's new Ascend rebates, watch LA County turn ADS-B into a tax roll, and cover an Indiana farmer charged with attempted murder after a crop duster took a bullet. Sit back, buckle up, and let's take off.

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The Scoop: flyExclusive reported second quarter 2026 results, per Private Jet Card Comparisons:

Our Take: What follows is commentary and opinion, not investment or financial advice. This is not a bad quarter. It is not a great one either.

The number worth staring at is gross margin. Adjusted EBITDA is everybody's favorite line item precisely because you can add back an awful lot to get there. Gross margin is harder to dress up, and it moved from roughly 15% in Q2 2025 to roughly 20.4% this quarter. That is the right direction and the right first step, the same Wheels Up needs to take. Below that line, though, the operating loss is still a loss and the net loss is still a loss.

One caveat to point out when comparing WUP to FLYX. The revenue picture includes fractional share sales, which read to us more like a financing activity than an operating one, plus several million in MRO work. Vertically integrating into MRO so you can work on your own airplanes is smart, and in a thin-margin business you chase every form of revenue you can find. Retail is where the margin lives, and Jet Club membership grew about 4.5% year over year to 997 members, which is most likely what is pulling gross margin up.

Here is what makes our ears perk up.

Two customers account for roughly 15% and 10% of accounts receivable. Concentration like that is almost certainly brokered. Extending large credit lines to big brokerage houses carries real risk, and writing that off as bad debt would sting.

Then there is the cost of money.

The filings show new debt taken in May at 26.5% on around $5 million, other notes in the 14% to 15% range, and a related-party secured note around 14% tied to Segrave-held entities, along with hangars and vehicles leased back to the business.

Related party lending is common and often perfectly sensible, particularly where founders are the ones willing to fund growth, and we are not suggesting anything improper. We are saying that borrowing at those rates tells you something about how hard credit is without a large backstop (see, daddy Delta).

Which surfaces the strangest fact in this whole comparison: Wheels Up carries a materially higher market cap while flyExclusive is generating more revenue and better operating results right now.

Q3 guidance of $5 million to $7 million would make four straight positive quarters. That is the number to watch.

Read More: Private Jet Card Comparisons

The Scoop: SC Aviation has acquired Heartland Aviation, a Wisconsin-based aircraft management, charter and maintenance provider, in a deal announced August 3. The transaction expands SC Aviation's footprint across western Wisconsin and the Minneapolis-St. Paul region. Heartland will continue operating under its current name, and SC Aviation plans to add aircraft at the Eau Claire location in the coming months. Adam Singer, vice president and general manager of SC Aviation, said the deal combines Heartland's local expertise with SC Aviation's resources and network across the Upper Midwest. Nick Fancher, president and CEO of Heartland, said SC Aviation was the clear answer when he looked at who could give the operation the best platform to grow. Financial terms were not disclosed. Per the latest FAA Part 135 data cited in reporting on the deal, the combined companies have 24 aircraft available for charter, with Heartland contributing a handful of Citations.

Our Take: If we had to guess, an EBITDA multiple somewhere in the two to six times range feels about right, and we have no useful read on revenue at all. Small market, older fleet, and a great deal depends on the management contracts.

The strategic logic is easy. There is an enormous long tail of charter operators running one to five airplanes, and at that size you cannot get scale or buying power on anything that matters: fuel, FBO, pilots, training, insurance. A medium-sized operator absorbing a very small one is a comparatively easy integration.

One last thing, mostly at our own expense: the Citation naming convention remains a menace. Common name for the VII Congratulations to SC Aviation and Heartland regardless. M&A is good.

The M&A gong is brought to you by Oshman Aviation. Thanks for sponsoring the gong.

Read More: Corporate Jet Investor

The Scoop: Atlantic Aviation has rolled out Ascend, its rewards program for operators, across its full network. AIN reports the program complements Atlantic's existing loyalty program and lets flight departments that concentrate their business at Atlantic facilities, at airports where there is competition, earn rebates on service fees across the chain's entire network. Customers can unlock quarterly rebates of up to 15% on service fees when they choose Atlantic for 50% or more of their qualifying movements in a quarter at competitive locations. Rebate levels escalate as that percentage rises and are then multiplied by the number of consecutive qualifying quarters, up to three. Atlantic's network runs to more than 105 locations across North America, and the company's separate Awards program for individual pilots and crew continues to operate alongside it.

Our Take: Read the program terms twice and you still cannot say what a given flight department would actually save. Can you get like a 55% rebate? Somewhere in there is an answer…

Here is our prediction, and you can hold us to it: somebody builds software to optimize FBO selection with rebates and rewards. On balance, rebates flowing to the operator beat points flowing only to the crew. But complexity has a cost, too.

Read More: AIN

The Scoop: Los Angeles County is using ADS-B tracking data to identify aircraft that may be subject to local property taxes, according to reporting by GlobalAir.com citing the county assessor. In California, aircraft are taxable based on where they are primarily located and operated rather than where they are registered, which means owners based outside the state can still face assessments if an aircraft spends sufficient time there. The assessor told Fox News that more than 1,000 aircraft worth approximately $4 billion have been identified, representing a potential $40 million tax base. GlobalAir notes that ADS-B was created as a safety and efficiency tool and has since been adopted by airports for fee collection and now by assessors for tax purposes, and that with legislation such as the ALERT Act and the Pilot and Aircraft Privacy Act addressing airport use of the data, the debate is shifting toward how government agencies use it.

Our Take: What nobody has answered is what counts as based there. Does a landing count as a day? Does a drop and go count as a day? Is it prorated by the hour?

Our suspicion is that the most aggressive reading wins by default until somebody challenges it. That is also where the downstream mess starts. What happens to managed charter aircraft when an owner starts capping California days? Do you end up with airplanes based in Nevada flying in empty to collect the principal? There is a threshold at which that math flips, and programs like this are the thing that finds it.

This is not just a state-level issue anymore, and it is not just California. County-level assessments have been showing up elsewhere, including in Texas. Meanwhile a House-passed bill would restrict using ADS-B data to enforce fees and fines. In the FBO fee context, that looked to us like a solution in search of a problem. With ADS-B now feeding a tax roll, the case for it reads considerably stronger. If you are an owner with California exposure, this is a conversation worth having with your own tax advisor before the assessor has it with you.

Read More: GlobalAir.com

The Scoop: An Indiana farmer has been charged with attempted murder after allegedly shooting at a crop duster over his Boone County property last year, AvBrief reports. The pilot said he had shut off the sprayers before crossing the farm, heard a pop, and found a bullet hole in the fuselage just below the cockpit after landing. According to court documents obtained by 9News and cited by AvBrief, the 41-year-old objected to the overflights because the noise had reportedly caused miscarriages among his goats, and told an official of the cooperative that hired the aircraft that "they're lucky I'm not a better shot." He faces three additional felony counts and has been released on bail. All of it is alleged, and the case has not been tried.

Our Take: We will let the charging documents speak for themselves. Two notes. Jessie, a goat owner, is unconvinced by the premise: goats, in her experience, do not care much about an airplane passing overhead. And spare a thought for the ag pilot, who reportedly finished his assigned fields with a bullet hole in the airplane. Land-use fights over spraying and overflight are real and they deserve a venue. That venue is a county office or a courtroom.

Read More: AvBrief

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The Carpet in Atlanta Is Backwards

If you have walked the tunnel between concourses at ATL instead of taking the plane train, you have seen the runway design underfoot and the aviation history along the walls. Very good stuff for the nerds among us. One airline pilot noticed the carpet was installed exactly backwards, and only a pilot notices that. Our working theory is that the design was correct, because whoever drew it up knew full well that pilots would check, and then a subcontractor of a subcontractor of a subcontractor laid it down perfectly reversed. To the pilot who caught it: absolute dork. We love you.

Billion Dollar Detailer

A repeat offender in our feeds resurfaced this week with a post about a very large exit from an aircraft detailing business. We are skeptical of the arithmetic. A number like that would imply a national operation with multiple offices and a hundred-plus employees, not one crew doing jets. The account bills itself as comedy, which is fine, but the disclosure is thin enough that plenty of people appear to be taking it at face value. That is the real objection here, and it is not the joke. Detailing companies are fielding calls from people who watched the videos and want into a business that does not work the way it looks online. New merch is now in development. In the meantime, the McKenna's Not Real hat is still available at thevipseat.shop.

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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.