✈️ The VIP Seat Weekly

Your business aviation hot takes, served fresh.

March 12th, 2026 | Season 3 Episode 10 Companion

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🛢️ The Scoop: Fuel Prices Just Hit a 44-Month High

US Gulf Coast jet fuel climbed to $4.13 per gallon last week, the highest price since June 2022, after the US-Iran conflict entered its sixth day and China announced it would halt exports of clean petroleum products to protect domestic supply.

The root cause is the Strait of Hormuz. That 16-mile channel between Iran and Oman is normally the transit corridor for roughly 20% of global oil supply. With tanker traffic down an estimated 70-80% since the conflict began on February 28th, and war-risk insurance essentially unavailable for most vessels, the knock-on effects are severe. Europe gets 25-30% of its jet fuel from the Persian Gulf. Asia has seen spot price spikes approaching 200% in some markets. Globally, the jet fuel crack spread hit nearly 5x the historical norm in the first week of the conflict before compressing slightly.

For private aviation specifically, the operational picture is nuanced. Prices are set on Tuesdays and the conflict began on a weekend, which meant the industry didn't feel the full pricing shock until the following week. If you're flying out of a single-FBO airport where the operator sets prices without competition, that dynamic is worth understanding.

On the managed fleet side, most cost-plus agreements mean the pain flows directly to owners. Operators running owned-and-operated aircraft are already issuing fuel surcharges on trips two weeks out, with some surcharges reportedly in the range of $5,000 to $6,000 per leg. For context, that's roughly the equivalent of an additional hour of flight time on a midsize jet. The surcharges are real, and they're going to sting.

Larger players like NetJets and Flexjet with significant bulk purchasing power and established hedging programs may be better insulated, at least in the near term. Most US carriers abandoned fuel hedging after prior hedging contracts generated losses when oil prices declined, leaving them more exposed to sustained volatility than their European and Asian counterparts.

The Brent crude price briefly touched $119 per barrel intraday on March 9th before settling around $99. Whether that represents a peak or a pause depends entirely on how long this conflict lasts and whether the US can credibly reopen Hormuz to commercial traffic.

Our Take: The private aviation charter market is price-elastic, and fuel surcharges at this level will create real friction on single-leg ad-hoc trips. The operators who are going to feel it first and hardest are smaller independent operators without bulk fuel agreements and without the balance sheet to absorb the timing gap between when fuel costs hit and when surcharges get collected. If you're a charter broker, auditing fuel receipts right now is genuinely part of your job. Not as an accusation, but as professional diligence for your clients. Most operators are acting in good faith. Some may not be. That's always been true, and it matters more when the numbers are this large.

🔔 M&A Gong: Priester Rings It Twice, FlyHouse Once

George J. Priester Aviation has acquired two more Part 135 operators: Maxair (based at Appleton Outagamie County Regional in Wisconsin) and Elite Jets (based at Naples Municipal in Florida). Together the two add 17 aircraft to the Priester portfolio, including seven Phenom 300s, a Pilatus PC-24, a Legacy 500, a G200, and a GV.

This follows Priester's 2025 acquisitions of Omni Air Transport, and the group now operates under six separate brands: Priester Aviation, Mayo Aviation, Hill Private Aviation, Omni Air Transport, Maxair, and Elite Jets. Chairman Andy Priester has been explicit that the strategy targets family-owned aircraft management and charter companies, and the group is hinting that more deals are coming in 2026.

Both Maxair and Elite Jets will retain their existing branding, continuing a pattern across the Priester portfolio. Note that the company had previously indicated it planned to merge its Part 135 certificates following earlier acquisitions, though as of this writing all certificates across the group remain active and separate.

Our Take: Priester is building something genuinely interesting here, and the portfolio approach to private aviation is worth watching. The strategic logic of combining owned-aircraft charter specialists (Maxair, Elite Jets) with management and ad-hoc charter operators (Priester, Mayo, Hill, Omni) makes real sense. If you can fill your managed fleet on your own paper, margins go up. That calculus isn't complicated.

What's less clear is the long-term brand strategy. Six brands is a lot to manage for one organization. The local recognition argument has some merit, especially for second and third-generation family businesses with strong regional client relationships. But from a jet card or recurring charter client's perspective, the lack of a unified identity may become a friction point as the portfolio grows. At some point you need a flagship. Right now, there isn't one. We'll be watching to see whether this is a deliberate federated model or a transitional phase before a consolidation play.

FlyHouse has also been busy. The Van Nuys-based operator acquired Jets MRO, a Dallas-based FAA Part 145-certified maintenance, repair, and overhaul specialist. Jets MRO operates a 40,000-square-foot hangar at Dallas Executive Airport and a component repair division in Miami, with approvals covering Bombardier Challenger and Learjet series aircraft as well as Textron Beechjet and Citation family jets.

This is FlyHouse's latest move in what is becoming a genuinely aggressive multi-vertical buildout. They've now added a charter broker (Jetsmith), a Part 135 operator (Sun Air Jets), a Brazil partnership, and now an MRO, all in a matter of months. CEO Jack Lambert said the acquisition "strengthens our maintenance infrastructure" and establishes a meaningful presence in Dallas and South Florida. The strategic logic is clear: if you can control maintenance costs for your own fleet and offer third-party MRO to operators in your network, your margin profile looks very different than a pure charter operator. Whether FlyHouse can execute across all of these verticals simultaneously is the real question, but the ambition is not in doubt.

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📊 AirX Drops a Cinematic Earnings Report

AirX, one of Europe's largest private jet operators based in Malta, released its 2025 annual results this week, and the format alone earned some attention. Chairman and founder John Matthews presented the numbers in what can only be described as the most visually polished earnings video private aviation has ever produced. Cool gray tones, cinematic production, the works.

The numbers themselves told a familiar aviation story. AirX reported revenue of over 181 million euros for 2025. Net profit after everything, and Matthews was clear this was not EBITDA, was approximately 4 million euros. (A correction: in the podcast we said 1B euros of revenue which was a mixup… John Matthews has stated he is building a 1B euro company.)

To be fair, AirX has been executing a deliberate fleet expansion strategy backed by a 115 million euro bond raised through Arctic Securities in September 2025. They're buying aircraft, building infrastructure, and positioning for long-term scale. The company has grown from 8 million euros in revenue at founding to over 181 million euros. That growth arc is legitimately impressive.

And unlike some well-known publicly traded private aviation platforms, AirX is actually cash flow positive. Given the current landscape of publicly traded names that are burning cash and reporting adjusted metrics that bear limited resemblance to their actual financial condition, that distinction matters.

Our Take: This business P&L is what a scale operator looks like (kinda like an airline). You build a billion-dollar revenue business and you make four million dollars. The cost pressures are relentless. The company also appears to have had a falling out with someone on LinkedIn based on the conspicuous absence of a certain industry figure from the commentary around this release, though we'll leave that thread for another day.

What deserves credit is transparency. Actual net income, clearly stated. In a sector where EBITDA has become the preferred way to obscure operational reality, Matthews chose to lead with the real number. That takes confidence in the underlying trajectory of the business, or at least confidence that four million dollars is better than zero, which in aviation it genuinely is.

🚁 eVTOL Watch: Supernal Cuts 80% of Staff

Hyundai's US-based electric air taxi subsidiary, Supernal, laid off 296 employees on February 27th, which is approximately 80% of its workforce. The company is retaining a skeleton crew of about 70 to 80 people.

The layoffs affected employees at the Mojave Air and Space Port test facility as well as in Orange County and Fremont, California. Supernal will consolidate its remaining operations at its Irvine headquarters.

This follows a September 2025 pause in development of the S-A2 eVTOL, which was designed to carry four passengers and a pilot up to 60 miles per charge. The company had been targeting FAA certification around 2028. That timeline will need to be revisited.

A Hyundai spokesperson said Supernal will not be shutting down and that Hyundai remains committed to advanced air mobility as part of its future mobility vision.

Supernal is not alone. Airbus and Textron have both pulled back from their respective eVTOL programs in recent months. Joby Aviation and Archer continue to make progress, and Joby has a 2026 Dubai commercial launch target with Uber, though current regional conditions may affect that timeline.

Our Take: We have been skeptical of the eVTOL hype cycle for a while now, and this is another chapter in that story. The technology is real. The regulatory timeline is brutal. The capital requirements are enormous. And the market adoption question, which nobody has definitively answered, remains open.

Supernal's "second to market" strategy was always a sensible concept on paper. Let Joby, Archer, and others burn through the certification risk and regulatory learning curve, then come in with a refined product. The problem is that waiting only works if you can sustain the patience of your parent company's board. At some point, Hyundai had to make a decision about whether to continue funding a product that may not see commercial revenue until the early 2030s.

We will keep an eye on what the skeleton crew accomplishes. And we will keep predicting that the companies that actually make it in this space will be the ones who figured out both the technology and the unit economics before they ran out of runway.

🔥 Mile High Madness

Sometimes the story writes itself.

American Airlines passengers flying transatlantic out of London Heathrow have been receiving boxed wine in business class. Not a quirky budget airline. Not economy. Business class. On a $10,000-plus ticket.

Here's the actual backstory: American abruptly halted its catering out of London Heathrow after reported hygiene issues at Dnata, its London catering provider. Instead, the airline has been double catering flights out of the US, flying food across the Atlantic and serving half of it on the return leg. That means food sits onboard much longer than normal, which restricts options. No ice cream. No seafood. And apparently, no properly bottled wine.

Passengers have also reported receiving only one meal instead of two, and not receiving expected business class amenities. The advertised Bollinger champagne was replaced with Cava on at least some flights.

Dnata issued a firm denial, stating the hygiene allegations are entirely false and that independent audits confirm their facility meets all food safety requirements. They confirmed one airline customer has temporarily adjusted its catering arrangements as part of an internal review, and that they are supporting them through it.

Our Take: Look, we are a private aviation show, so we will not spend too much energy on this one. But it is a useful reminder of why the premium cabin on a commercial airline and the cabin of a properly operated private jet are simply not comparable products, regardless of what the ticket price says. When your catering infrastructure breaks down, you have no good options. When you own or charter the plane, you control the catering. That framing alone is worth about fifteen minutes of any sales conversation.

Also: no box wine at altitude. That is a hill we will die on.

🎧 This Week's Episode

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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