Your business aviation hot takes, served fresh.

May 20th, 2026 | Season 3 Episode 20 Companion

Good morning and welcome back to the VIP Seat. This week we are covering whether New York's new mayor is really coming for your private jet, the NTSB's eye-popping drug study headline, Trump's plan to install a permanent helipad on the South Lawn, the FAA's surprise decision to cut its controller staffing target, and Tennessee's new law letting injured K9 officers ride in air ambulances. Sit back, buckle up, and let's take off.

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The Scoop: A widely shared Fortune op-ed from Greg Raiff, CEO of Elevate Aviation Group, argues that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's tax agenda is on a trajectory that could eventually reach the Teterboro ramp. The article points to the recently passed pied-à-terre tax on high-value New York City real estate owned by non-residents and a proposal to lower the New York inheritance tax threshold from $7.5 million to $750,000 as evidence that the political infrastructure is moving in that direction. According to the piece, Citadel CEO Ken Griffin announced after a public Mamdani video at his apartment building that he may redirect a planned $6 billion investment and thousands of jobs to Florida. The author outlines three hypothetical scenarios for reaching private aviation: a Port Authority landing surcharge, a state-level aircraft registration tax, and an in-state flight activity excise. The Port Authority is a bi-state agency jointly controlled by the governors of New York and New Jersey, with a roughly $10.1 billion annual operating budget and a proposed $45 billion capital plan from 2026 through 2035. It operates JFK, LaGuardia, Newark Liberty, and Teterboro, with Teterboro handling approximately 177,000 arrivals and departures a year. Westchester County Airport (HPN) is not a Port Authority facility and is described in the article as the most insulated major reliever option in the New York metro.

Our Take: We dug into this one and it deserves a calmer read than the headline suggests. The author is the CEO of a charter operator, and his recommended fix is to charter rather than own, which struck us as a thoughtful but commercially adjacent piece of analysis. That said, we do not dismiss the underlying logic. The pied-à-terre tax passed when many people said it could not, so the political capital of Mamdani can’t be discounted, and private aviation is a frequent target whenever local governments go hunting for revenue. But any move on Teterboro requires the Port Authority, which means both the New York and New Jersey governors and their respective boards have to align, and that is a higher bar than a mayoral push alone. If costs at Teterboro ever did become untenable, the metro still has White Plains, Farmingdale, Islip, and a helicopter hop into Manhattan as workable alternatives. Wealth has legs, as we have already seen with the Griffin move toward Miami, and operators should watch Albany at least as closely as City Hall. The right read this week is to track the policy quietly, not to ring the five-alarm bell.

Read More: Fortune

The Scoop: The National Transportation Safety Board published an update to its drug presence study of fatally injured pilots covering accidents from 2018 through 2022. According to the report, 52.8% of fatally injured pilots tested positive for at least one drug of any type, and 27.7% tested positive for two or more drugs, continuing an upward trend the agency has tracked since 1990. Detection of potentially impairing drugs increased slightly to 28.6%, with the sedating antihistamine diphenhydramine remaining the most commonly detected potentially impairing drug. Illicit drug detection rose to 7.4%, driven primarily by delta-9-THC, the active compound in marijuana. The NTSB found that drug prevalence varied by certification and operation: Part 135 operations showed lower detection rates than general aviation, pilots with active medical certificates lower than those without, and ATP and commercial certificate holders lower than private, sport, or student certificate holders. The agency emphasized that the presence of a drug in toxicology testing does not by itself indicate impairment at the time of the accident.

Our Take: When we first read the headline, our brains went straight to "every airline pilot is on something," which is exactly what the framing invites and almost certainly not what the data actually says. The detection rates are heavily skewed by the general aviation tail, and the NTSB itself notes that Part 135 and ATP pilots show meaningfully lower numbers. That nuance matters, because you can make statistics say a lot of things if you do not show the underlying mix. The harder conversation underneath this report is the long-running pilot mental health debate, where many in the industry quietly acknowledge that some pilots are taking medications outside the FAA-approved framework because they worry about losing their certificates. The constructive path is a clearer regulatory runway that lets pilots be honest about treatment and still prove they are fit to fly. Until that path gets built, expect more eye-grabbing headlines and more nuance buried in the body copy.

Read More: NTSB Newsroom

The Scoop: According to a Wall Street Journal report cited by multiple outlets, President Donald Trump is discussing plans to install a permanent helipad on the South Lawn of the White House. The reported rationale is damage to the grass caused by the Marine Corps' newer VH-92A Patriot, which began replacing the long-serving VH-3D Sea King in 2024. The VH-92A is reported to be significantly heavier than its predecessor, and its exhaust has been linked to turf damage during landings and takeoffs. Sources familiar with the matter told the WSJ that the president is personally involved in the design discussions. The helipad would join a series of recent White House grounds projects under the current administration, including the Rose Garden repaving, the addition of two flagpoles, and demolition work to make room for a planned ballroom expansion. A timetable has not been publicly established.

Our Take: This one is fun to picture and also more practical than it sounds. The VH-92A is a heavier and more powerful airframe, and operators have known about the turf damage risk for years. Whether that pad needs gold accents is a separate question, and we will leave it to the design committee. What is harder to ignore is the broader pattern. PBI becoming DJT and now a helipad all add up to a president who, love him or not, is unusually engaged with the aviation industry. Our friends at AB Jets keep a little Trump figure pinned to their ops map to track the resulting TFRs, which says something about how often this comes up in the day-to-day. For the operators flying around all of it, the boring answer is the right one: watch the NOTAMs, plan the reroutes, and keep the customers moving.

Read More: Caliber.Az via WSJ

The Scoop: The FAA released its 2026-2028 Air Traffic Controller Workforce Plan and lowered its full staffing target from 14,633 to 12,563, a reduction of roughly 2,000 positions. According to the agency, the system currently has about 11,000 fully certified controllers, putting it roughly 1,500 short of the new target rather than the previously implied 3,500. The FAA attributes the change to a combination of better scheduling, equipment modernization, and additional automation, and cites findings from the Transportation Research Board. The agency said it will work with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association to apply Theory of Constraints methodology, although NATCA told AvBrief it was not involved in developing the plan and is now reviewing it. Hiring will continue, with trainee targets of 2,200, 2,300, and 2,400 for each of the next three years, even as more than half of new hires historically wash out during training. The plan also references scheduling software the FAA committed to back in 2012 that has reportedly not yet been rolled out.

Our Take: We have spent a lot of time on this show talking about the controller shortage, so seeing the target come down rather than up was surprising. We get the logic. Modernization is supposed to bring efficiencies, and if the new equipment lives up to the marketing, fewer humans handling more traffic is the natural outcome. Our concern is that the modernization is not close to landing, and lowering the target now feels at least partly like a way to make today's shortfall look better on paper. There is also the small matter of the scheduling tool the agency committed to back in 2012 (!!!) that has not yet been rolled out, which does not inspire confidence that the next system rollout will go faster.

Read More: AvBrief

The Scoop: Tennessee state senators Michele Reneau of Signal Mountain and Bo Watson of Hixson announced a new state law allowing injured police K9 officers to receive on-scene stabilization and be transported to a veterinary hospital by ambulance or air ambulance. The law also creates an educational program for EMS providers to be trained in canine emergency medical care, which the lawmakers noted differs meaningfully from human emergency care. Before the law, officers typically had to transport injured K9s in their own vehicles. In April of this year, Erlanger's LIFE FORCE program used a helicopter to fly a Clay County K9 to the University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine in Knoxville, the program's first live operational K9 air medical transport after several training runs.

Our Take: This is the kind of bill that is hard to vote against and even harder to walk back if you do. Police K9s are expensive to train and place, they take real risks on the job, and giving them access to the same air medical infrastructure already in use across the region is a sensible upgrade. The training piece is the part operators and EMS providers should pay attention to, because canine emergency medicine is genuinely a different skill set than human transport. We would like to officially propose a follow-on bill granting Jessie permission to pet the dogs, although we acknowledge she is on her own if they do not consent. The authors of the bill are in Preston’s hometown, so maybe we can make that happen.

Read More: ABC 33/40

Nomadic Aviation Picks Up the Spirit Pieces

When Spirit Airlines ceased operations, dozens of leased aircraft were reportedly left scattered across the country with no one to fly them home. Captain Bob and the team at Nomadic Aviation Group got the call, and per his posts on X, they brought on 32 contract former Spirit pilots to crisscross the globe ferrying airframes back to their lessors. The Wall Street Journal picked up the story, which got our attention because we know Bob from the aviation corners of X. It is the kind of logistical scramble most operators never see, and the lessors are the ones left holding the parking bill on the other end.

The Lobster Sunscreen Collab Nobody Asked For

If you ever doubt your business idea, remember that someone in the Netherlands is reportedly running a small business where she dresses in a lobster costume and sprays people with sunscreen using what looks like a paint sprayer. A private jet company apparently filmed a collab with her on board a jet. We do not fully understand the connection to private aviation, but we admire the commitment to the bit.

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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.