Your business aviation hot takes, served fresh.

April 8th, 2026 | Season 3 Episode 14 Companion

Good morning and welcome back to the VIP Seat. This week we are covering a jaw-dropping fraud ring out of Nepal, the biggest FBO transaction in years, a circling approach safety report with real implications for how you dispatch trips, a hard-fought legislative win in Washington state, and a long-overdue upgrade to the weather tools your pilots rely on every flight. Sit back, buckle up, and let's take off.

Today’s Newsletter is brought to you by AB Jets

Lots of talk about fleet optimization at Scheduler’s and Dispatchers. We even talked about it this week! Running a floating fleet requires disciplined execution and a team that answers the phone. That’s who AB Jets is at their core!

Owner-operated since 1999, ARGUS Platinum since 2014. When the owners are the ones who built the operation from the ground up and are still running it today, the standard doesn't slip. Because it's their name on it.

New Challenger 3500s with complimentary Starlink, a fleet of Lear 60’s that are reliable, and no owner approval requirements. A fleet optimized to say “yes” to your trips! Thanks to AB Jets for sponsoring this season of The VIP Seat podcast!

Learn More At abjets.com

The Scoop: A Nepali police investigation has reportedly uncovered a fraud network tied to helicopter rescues near Mount Everest, with alleged losses to insurers approaching $20 million. According to a report by The Kathmandu Post, Nepal's Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) found two primary schemes at work: in one, guides allegedly coached tired trekkers to feign illness in order to summon a helicopter rather than hike back down. In a more serious pattern described in the investigation, guides and hotel staff allegedly worked together to manufacture medical emergencies, including what investigators described as the administration of altitude sickness medication alongside excessive water intake to induce symptoms. At least one case reportedly involved lacing food with baking powder. Investigators also found instances where multiple passengers were flown on a single helicopter but insurance claims were reportedly submitted as separate rescue flights. The CIB charged 32 individuals last month, including staff from several hospitals and helicopter operators. The Kathmandu Post had first flagged the issue in 2018, which led to a 700-page government report, but investigators say the fraud continued and grew in the years that followed.

Our Take: This story might seem far from business aviation, but it hits close to home a few places. Helicopters are a critical part of the aviation ecosystem, and insurance fraud anywhere in the system eventually lands on all of us in the form of higher premiums and tighter underwriting. The structural piece here is what stands out in that it was not just a few bad actors. According to the investigation, it appears hospitals, tour operators, and helicopter companies may have been coordinating, with reported referral commissions flowing between them. For anyone traveling internationally and relying on travel insurance to cover aviation-related evacuation, this is a reminder to understand exactly what your policy requires before something goes wrong, including whether you need pre-authorization before a medevac.

The Scoop: Apollo Global Management is reportedly in advanced talks to acquire Atlantic Aviation from KKR in a deal that multiple sources have described as approaching $10 billion in value. Apollo is said to be partnering with Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, GIC Pte, to take a controlling stake, while KKR is expected to reinvest to retain a meaningful interest in the company. The transaction, according to Bloomberg reporting cited by multiple outlets, could represent approximately 15 times KKR's original equity investment, including distributions. KKR acquired Atlantic from Macquarie Infrastructure in 2021 for around $4.5 billion. During its ownership, Atlantic expanded to more than 100 FBO locations across the U.S. and moved into the Caribbean with the acquisition of ExecuJet's FBO at Princess Juliana International Airport in Sint Maarten. No deal has been officially confirmed, and reporting has noted that last-minute changes remain possible.

Our Take: This is the kind of number that makes you do a double take. From $4.5 billion to nearly $10 billion in roughly five years, and KKR is reportedly still bullish enough to roll equity into the new structure rather than cash out entirely. That tells you something about conviction in the underlying asset. FBOs are increasingly being treated like toll roads or utility infrastructure, with captive demand and a customer base that is relatively insulated from economic cycles. The interesting question as we watch this play out is what happens at the next turn. If the deal closes at $10 billion with meaningful leverage, the next buyer would need to see a path to $15 billion or beyond to hit their return target. At some point the math has to change, either through significant organic earnings growth, more M&A, or fee increases that squeeze operators already under margin pressure. For the charter and management companies anchoring at Atlantic FBOs, that last scenario is worth watching closely.

The Aviation Safety Information and Analysis Sharing (ASIAS) program, working alongside the General Aviation Joint Steering Committee, has published new findings on circle-to-land approaches, identifying them as a meaningful and under-appreciated risk in general aviation operations. The one-pager, distributed through NATA, notes that between 2008 and 2023, ten accidents involving Part 91 and Part 135 operators occurred during circling approaches, resulting in 17 fatalities. The analysis found that a subset of airports see circling approaches conducted at significantly higher rates than the broader national airspace, and that a linkage exists between circling approaches and subsequent unstable approaches. The report calls on flight crews to conduct thorough pre-flight and pre-approach briefings, stay within obstacle-protected airspace, and be especially aware of the added workload these maneuvers create.

Our Take: Jessie broke this one down clearly on the show, and it is worth repeating for anyone booking or dispatching business aviation flights. A circling approach happens when weather or traffic requires a crew to execute a non-precision final to a different runway than the one the approach procedure was designed for. It puts more cognitive burden on the flight crew at a critical phase of flight, and the data show it is one of the remaining categories where the industry has meaningful room to improve. Airports like Teterboro, Palwaukee, and Van Nuys show up in the ASIAS data with elevated circling approach activity, partly because of their traffic complexity and surrounding environment. For operators running safety management systems, this report is worth incorporating into your risk assessments for those specific fields. And for brokers and schedulers, the takeaway is that a missed approach or a crew request to divert is not a service failure. It is often the professional call.

Washington Governor Bob Ferguson signed House Bill 2711 on March 31, repealing Senate Bill 5801 before it could take effect on April 1. The original measure, passed in 2025, would have imposed a 10% tax on the purchase, lease, or transfer of aircraft valued above $500,000. A coalition of aviation groups including NBAA, AOPA, and the Pacific Northwest Business Aviation Association worked through the 2025 and 2026 sessions to push for repeal, arguing that aircraft were already leaving the state in anticipation of the tax. The replacement bill raises the state aviation fuel tax by 7 cents per gallon, from 18 cents to 25 cents, and increases aircraft registration fees. NBAA Regional Director Phil Derner called the outcome a win for job creation and local investment.

Our Take: Credit where it is due. NBAA and the coalition did the work here, and the outcome matters. A 10% tax on aircraft purchases above $500,000 would have covered nearly every working general aviation aircraft in the state, not just the jets. The fact that flight departments had already started relocating before the tax even took effect is a powerful illustration of how mobile this asset class is. When you own an airplane, your state's tax policy becomes a variable in where you choose to base it. For any state legislators watching: that is the story. The fuel tax increase is a more proportionate and defensible structure, spreading the contribution across all users rather than penalizing the purchase decision itself.

NOAA has officially launched the Domestic Aviation Forecast System (DAFS), a new forecasting tool designed to improve predictions of in-flight icing and turbulence across the contiguous United States. The system is built on NOAA's High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) model, which updates every hour on a 3-kilometer surface grid and ingests three-dimensional radar data every 15 minutes. That is a significant improvement over the previous system, which used a coarser 13-kilometer grid. DAFS provides forecasts of icing probability, severity, and supercooled large droplet conditions, and improves turbulence prediction across several categories, including low-level, clear-air, mountain wave, and within-cloud turbulence. The system was developed with FAA Aviation Weather Research Program funding and is now integrated into operational NWS products, meaning the improved data will flow automatically into tools like ForeFlight and Garmin Pilot without requiring any user updates.

Our Take: This one is a win. Better icing and turbulence forecasting at higher resolution helps every operator. The practical benefit is that crews get more actionable weather intelligence earlier in their planning cycle, which means more options to route around hazards rather than reacting to them in flight. And because the improved data flows into the existing platform ecosystem automatically, the upgrade is essentially frictionless for everyone in the industry. The previous 13-kilometer grid was coarse for aviation purposes, especially in mountain terrain and around rapidly developing convective systems. Moving to 3-kilometer resolution with more frequent radar data assimilation is a meaningful step. If you want a rough sense of scale: a 3-kilometer grid can distinguish between conditions on either side of a narrow valley. The old 13-kilometer grid could not.

Patrick Reed Is Now a VistaJet Ambassador (and a comment on golf sponsor economics)

With Masters week in full swing, Patrick Reed showed up at Augusta sporting a VistaJet logo on his hat after signing on as a brand ambassador for the global charter operator. He is not alone in the private aviation sponsorship game. Justin Rose, who has three runner-up finishes at Augusta and is considered a contender this year, carries a FlyHouse sponsorship. These partnerships look like a dream from the outside, and the assumption is usually that the golfer just flies free all year. The reality tends to be more nuanced. Most of these deals involve a combination of discounted in-kind hours and a cash component, and the operators running them will tell you that the athletes are savvy about using exactly what they negotiated and not a dollar more. The days of assuming a logo on a shirt means unlimited complimentary flying are largely a myth. Still, congratulations to Patrick Reed. A VistaJet hat is a pretty good get.

Someone Put RFK Jr. in the Left Seat

A spot-on RFK Jr. impression made the rounds on instagram this week, featuring the impression doing a full ILS approach briefing in that distinctive raspy voice. If you have ever listened to RFK for any length of time and found yourself involuntarily clearing your throat, you are not alone. The impression is worth finding. We will link it in the show notes.

Missed the podcast? Catch up on the full episode at the links below! We would LOVE if you would give us a 5 star review, and share with your friends!

Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Website 

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