July 22, 2025 • 23 mins
In this episode, Jessie Naor and Preston Holland discuss the latest happenings in the aviation industry, including the buzz at Oshkosh, Joby's breakthrough with hydrogen aircraft, FlexJet's significant PE investment, and a unique challenge by Mr. Beast. They also remember Felix Baumgartner, address FAA staffing and safety concerns, and delve into a juicy lawsuit involving Bruce Willis and aircraft maintenance.
Chapters
00:00 Oshkosh Aviation Event Highlights
02:35 FlexJet's Major Investment and Market Position
05:09 Mile High Madness: Celebrating Aviation Achievements
08:59 Introduction and Tribute to Felix
09:08 Joby's Hydrogen Aircraft Breakthrough
11:50 Mr. Beast's Airplane Challenge
15:09 FAA Staffing and Pilot Fatigue
18:58 Bruce Willis Lawsuit and Aviation Contracts
Link to Lawsuit: https://law.justia.com/cases/texas/fourth-court-of-appeals/2025/04-23-00095-cv.html
Jessie’s Links: Private Aviation Safety Alliance: www.FlyingPrivate.org LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessienaor Preston’s Links: Prestige Aircraft Finance: https://prestigefinance.com/ Private Jet Insider (Newsletter): https://prestonholland.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prestonholland X (Formerly Known as Twitter): https://x.com/prestonholland6?lang=en
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Good morning and welcome back tothe VIPC.
Today is July 22nd. Your Co host Jesse Newer here as
usual. And today we also have Preston
Holland who's actually at Oshkosh as we speak.
How's the show? Cohen, Preston.
I am Jesse. It is.
We record on Monday afternoons. Sorry to break the 3rd wall and
we didn't actually record this at 4:00 AM in the morning on
(00:21):
Tuesday, but it's Monday. The show is buzzing.
There's a lot of people here. There is what I have seen to be
a pretty solid strong light business jet presence here.
Pilatus is here of course with their PC 24's.
Jet Access has a pretty big presence here with a Phenom 100.
Honda Jet is here, Daher is here, which is kind of a
(00:42):
crossover Epics Moose looks better than it has in the past
couple of years, densely filled with airplanes and people with a
flight SIM in it, which is very cool.
But it is a it's a good time to be in aviation and at an
aviation event. Seeing a lot of my friends.
So if anybody's listening and you're at Oshkosh, shoot me a
message. We'd love to meet up with a
listener and take a selfie and post on LinkedIn.
(01:02):
Well, I didn't go this year but I actually do have plans to go
next year so I'm pre booking appointments with people for
that. Yeah, we we will do a live
taping of the VIP seat. So any sponsors that are out
there, if you would like to liketo subsidize our stay at
Oshkosh, we can do a live tapingfrom your booth.
So this is not a plug and not anask for money, but you know, the
last time I did this, it totallyworked and we'll have some
(01:25):
exciting announcements about that coming up.
Very. Nice.
Well, Speaking of asking for money, Flex Jet has had some
really successful asking for money.
As of Monday of this week, there's an announcement made
that they have secured $800 million.
So largest, I think largest private equity investment.
Ever. Largest private equity
investment ever in private aviation.
(01:45):
That's, yeah, from L Catterdon, KSL Partners and J Software
Group. It's led by Catterton, which is
also related to the famed Louis Vuitton Moe Hennessy group of
investors. They'll have a 20% stake in the
$800 million investment that they made.
Amazing news for Flex Jet and maybe exciting news for more
(02:05):
charter operators that PE is finally interested in us again.
Yeah, it sets the peg 2 at a $4 billion valuation, which is
pretty impressive. I think that, you know, that
that puts them, I mean, it squarely puts them up there in
the, you know, in the mega category.
I think one argument that I got into is not argument, but it was
a kind of a back and forth when somebody was saying, oh, we'll
(02:26):
flex jet now, we'll catch net jets and surpass them.
And even Ken Rickey will say this.
He said it publicly and he said it privately.
The reality is, is that for every two airplanes net jets
has, flex jet has one airplane. So they're literally twice the
size Flex jet is growing. Basically they're overtaking at
like something like a 15% growthdifference, which means that it
(02:48):
would basically take like 30 years for net for flex jet at
the current trajectory to pass net jets.
So it's they're not probably going to get there.
But I mean, if you know Ken Rickey, this is like the perfect
partnership. I did read in Doug Golan's
article about it that it all kind of started on an e-mail
thread like less than a year ago.
Well, the original idea was like2008 when Ken Ricky bought
(03:12):
flight options back. But then recently this kind of
transpired pretty quickly. And it's unrelated to the bond
issuance that Flex Jet had, which was a couple of months
ago, they issued a bond in orderto kind of raise debt financing.
So this is different from that. So, you know, they're they're
totally separate transactions and Flex Jet wasn't even
actively fundraising, which is Ithink another interesting thing
(03:33):
it was, it was a nice to have, not a have to have for them is
what kind of their messaging hasbeen out of the Flex Jet camp.
So good for them, good for Ken. I hope that he buys himself a
fancy watch or a fancy car as a celebration for himself.
And maybe, you know, give us a ride in it, right.
It comes sponsor the VIP seat. We'll do a live tape from your
car. Well, and I have no doubt that
many bottles of MOA were circling when this news and the
(03:56):
steel finally closed. Oh, yeah.
And there's always going to be Dom Perry on on every flex jet
plane. Of course.
I wouldn't be surprised if thereare Louis Vuitton blankets that
are being ordered for Flex jet plans.
I mean, you think about like allof the cool, funny synergies
that you can have going into this.
You know, it's a it's a match made in heaven.
Totally, I mean, talk about client crossover, absolutely.
(04:19):
You know, these these are all the folks that are that these
companies are already servicing.I think it can be hard
sometimes, especially, you know,private equity, they don't
necessarily put businesses together really well.
You know, everyone's still goingto be their own entities and
they're so large, but you would hope to see some of those cool
partnerships and deals sort of come out of this.
But yeah, man, wow, really cool.Very exciting.
(04:41):
I think the fashion, I think thefashion industry is better at
that than any of the other kind of the other kind of servicey
boring industries. I think fashion is pretty good
at that. I think the other thing is too
is that Ken has done, this is really the way that I would look
at this is this is more of a recap for Ken.
There's a recapitalization for Ken Rickey, who is the going to
(05:05):
maintain his chairmanship. He's taken some chips off of the
table because he has he has donethe bolting together.
And so he brought in FX Air, andhe brought in the aircraft
Workeridge, and he brought in the MRO, and he packaged it all
up. And then he sold a chunk of that
to private equity. And they're basically saying,
yeah, we think it's still going to keep growing.
Yeah. I mean, they are saying they're
going to use the proceeds to purchase more aircraft.
(05:26):
But as you say, it's still goingto take time for aircraft to
come through. There's no changing the
timeline. Someone can get aircraft
delivered at this point. So even if you have a billion
dollars tomorrow, it doesn't mean you're going to be net jets
in a year or two or four or five.
Yeah, exactly. So I did announce this news on
Twitter, and this takes us into the Mile High Madness section,
to Mile High Madness music. And so I tweeted about this, and
(05:49):
I basically was like, hey, congratulations to Flex Jet.
I'll pull this up on the screen.Big news.
Flex Jet rages 800 million from Bernard Arnall, valuing the
company at $4 billion. Will we see Louis Vuitton in
tears on Flex Jet airplanes soon?
And I get probably one of the funniest, this from this guy
named Robert Ricard. He sends me this.
And I chuckled out loud. Like if we get a nice Louis
(06:13):
Vuitton like lime green painted Gulfstream, like now we're
talking baby. So this is the collaboration
that we've all been looking for is finally somebody's going to
paint Louis Vuitton on the outside of AG450.
I mean, does that mean you get to mark it up, too?
Like, way ahead. You know it's got Louis Vuitton
on it. It's for sure, for sure.
(06:35):
Yeah, it's a. It'd be a one of one.
Except for the color choice, I'mnot sure about the lime green.
Like there was a limited editionLouis Vuitton bag that came out
a couple years ago that was likemetallic silver.
Now you give me a metallic silver airplane with like matte
LV's all over it. Yeah, that's money right there.
I think it's, you know, it's kind of one of those things
(06:56):
where you want to be loud. You know, it's kind of like
those I'm actually sitting here at Oshkosh.
Speaking of loud, Cirrus was giving out like hilarious
looking sunglasses last night. So another brand that knows how
to be loud. So if you're watching, if you're
not watching on YouTube, I'm wearing some of the ridiculous
looking sunglasses. And if you wear, if you're out
there and you wear them, you know, they probably look good on
you. They look ridiculous on you.
I mean. I don't know, the 80s are coming
back for us. Maybe go with it.
(07:17):
Exactly, exactly what have you seen out there on the socials?
What is? What's your social media take of
the day? So today, unfortunately, I have
some sad news, but I have to to honor Felix Baumgardner.
He was the guy who in 2016, he jumped out of a capsule and
broke the sound barrier with hisown body by skydiving into from,
(07:38):
I don't remember what it was from space.
It was the first skydive from space.
Amazing feat. But unfortunately, he died in a
paragliding accident over the weekend in Italy.
While we mourn his loss, he dieddoing what he loved with his
boots on. So you can't, you know,
discredit him for that. But I wanted to play the video
for everyone to see because it'sjust a nice little way to honor
(08:00):
Felix's accomplishments to aviation areas.
I'm going home now. I would throw up.
I would throw up. In that moment, I'm out.
I am so out. But I, I watched, I watched this
thing live when it happened and I was like screaming like, oh,
(08:20):
but he gets that. He starts to go out of control
and they were really worried, like he wasn't.
Yeah, I would throw up you wouldyou?
I would have puke lined in that helmet.
Just the. Noises that are coming out of
him in this video are extreme. But then he manages to, like,
write himself back up, pulls hischute at 8000 feet.
(08:40):
I think he was going, yeah, 843 mph into.
This when he pulled the chute. I yeah, I think so.
That's insane. I mean, how does that not break
all of? How does that?
No idea, but the guy lived on the edge, so you got to give him
that. So we salute you, Felix.
(09:01):
You're gone from this earth, butnot from our memories.
And keep living the dream on theother side and.
Yeah, now we that, that was really cool.
All right, Speaking of exceptionalism of human beings,
Joby has successfully flown a hydrogen powered aircraft.
And if you have been reading my content for any period of time,
you will see I wrote an entire article about hydrogen aircraft
(09:24):
and why it's probably one of theonly ways in which you actually
democratize private aviation. And Joby appears to have read
the article. So congratulations, Joby.
I'm just kidding. But they, yeah, they
successfully completed. Did I read that report correctly
that they flew for 9 hours? Like did they fly 9 contiguous
hours in a circle? Yes, so this was this was not
(09:46):
announced. This was not something that
people were supposed to know about it.
But I think some, you know, folks who are investors, you
know, vested interest in findingout about this stuff figured it
out. But yes, 9 hours in a pattern.
It was called their JA I-30 which I find interesting that
the article said that it was a seat hall aircraft, which is a
(10:06):
conventional take off and landing aircraft.
Just a plane that's hydrogenic powered.
Oh, it's just an airplane. If you look at the picture, it's
got AV tail and a high wing and it looks like it's got puller.
It looks like it's got puller props on the V tail, like on the
tips of the V tail, which is pretty wild.
But yeah, it's that just makes it a airplane that takes off and
(10:29):
lands not like a helicopter or vertical take off.
It's like nice. It's like it's like renaming sea
bass, right? It's like, OK, yeah.
So we're no. Longer space, I mean they are
still I guess pursuing their evtol's, but this kind of
suggests to me that oh OK, maybewe're actually looking at other
options. I've always left hydrogen.
I know that there are problems with sourcing it, the cost of it
(10:50):
containing it. It's also very flammable.
But I agree with you. I just don't know how we get to
the net 0 without using some alternative fuel because
batteries just seen it right? Now.
Yeah, exactly. Now it's exciting news.
And I think that, you know, Joby's kind of one of the last,
last men's standing. I mean, they've gobbled up
technology from X Wing, which was a German based company.
(11:12):
My understanding, you know, theywere formerly Uber Elevate.
They were, you know, they've they've kind of become this like
conglomeration of all of these, the pieces of these different
programs all together. And so that's good.
Whisk is here. So Whisk is here, as is Electra
Arrow and as is Beta technologies.
So there is an EV tall electric aviation presence at Oshkosh
(11:36):
trying to convince the 80 year old dudes you fly their bonanzas
that like, hey, you should totally fly hydrogen.
Best of luck to you for that. But but it's fun.
I and I to be clear, I like hanging out with those guys.
I had lunch with a couple of them today and they're super
fun. So you don't know any GA people.
There's a type. I think they will absolutely
adopt that technology. And I, you know, one of the
things I've always thought is like that world should be going
(11:58):
after like the GA folks first oreither the wealthy people who
just want A to play with much more for like fleet operators.
Because if it's cool and it flies, somebody out there who's
already a pilot is going to wantto buy one and fly.
I do. Yeah, exactly.
But exciting news for Jovi. If you would like to give us any
exclusive insider scoops for thenext episode, we'd be happy to
(12:18):
cover it. The next story, Mr. Beast has
launched a new competition, and in this competition he had a
pilot stay in an airplane for aslong as possible.
The guy made it 100 days so thathe could win, but not a Learjet.
You actually pointed out that it's a Hawker.
What do we think this thing is? I believe that it's a Hawker
800XP and based off of and I came to that from seeing the
(12:43):
front of the aircraft and then they're advertising that it's a
two and a half million dollar plane you can get into a so, so
then I'd narrow down the age range, which would be somewhere
between 2001 and 2005 right now.That's about where you're at at
two and a half million dollars. And then somebody replied to my
tweet and said it does not have the Proline 21 avionics, which
(13:05):
means that it must be before 2002.
So it's probably a 2000 to 2001 Parker 800XP with a very nicely
refreshed interior. But to be honest, if there's
been a pilot living in there for100 days, I can't imagine that
the interior is in as nice of shape as it used to be.
(13:25):
Well, he was winning it, so I guarantee you he took care of
that thing. You know, he was like, no, this
is my baby now. Yeah, exactly.
And they I watched the video andit and once again, it reminds me
of one. Why shows like this exist is
because the general public just doesn't quantify like how this
all works very well, right. You have Mr. Beast who's like,
(13:48):
oh, look, this two and a half million dollar private jet.
And it's like there's so much like exaggeration or, or leaving
a lot of gaps in information, right?
As opposed to like, I don't know, being like a little bit
more factual. And I guess that gets the
clicks, don't get me wrong. But like, it's just as a
reminder that like, no, the mainstream media does not really
get what we do. Yeah.
(14:10):
I will give some credit. I mean, to make it more
interesting, the pilot started talking about, you know, how
much things cost, how much he would need to maintain it, all
those other things. But I mean man, this guy was in
there for 100 days. No comfortable bed to sleep on,
no shower. And he walks out to a tax, he
walks out to a tax bill of like 200 grand or something like
(14:32):
that. Right.
So I think the the end of the day, he's probably just going to
sell this thing as soon as this competition is done.
But man, I don't know. Maybe you'll get the listing,
Preston. You never know.
Yeah, who knows that would be, Ido.
I am like 1/4 degree separated from Mr. Beast.
So actually I could probably, you know, figure out how to make
that happen. I also did love the like pilot
(14:53):
uniform they made him wear. I'm like corporate pilots other
than like if you work for a big company, but even then you're
not wearing the like white with the stripes and stuff.
I love that they made him wear that.
I was like, it just, I was like,this is just, it just fits.
It just totally fits in with therest of that whole video.
Well, I always used to have thisdebate with my pilots before
because a lot of people don't like wearing the pilot uniform.
(15:14):
But the problem is the flying public, Just like when you go to
see a doctor and the doctor has the white coat on, there is an
association with what you're wearing and what you are, you
know, like, so are you safe if you just have a polo on versus
pilot uniform? There's a lot of people that
feel more comfortable with you having that on.
So I think I don't know. But yes, I my only problem with
this video too, because I got toput the safety girl hat on, is
(15:37):
he was not well rested and he was eating crappy like lunch
meat every day and he was still flying the airplane every day
for them. I find a little bit of a problem
with that. And I do think I'm like
wondering, is the FAA going to have a problem with his state of
mind and his ability to stay safe when flying this aircraft
every day or not? I don't know.
It kind of did get on the edge for me from a safety
(15:58):
perspective. I didn't like that he was
obviously not sleeping every night and they were still
continuing to make him fly this airplane.
Yep. Yeah, I think, well that that
leads us into our next story. We're talking about the FAA not
being cool with being well rested, and this is a subject
that Jesse is an expert on and very passionate about.
So tell us about the staffing issue with the FAA and all this
(16:19):
rest stuff. So for those who don't know, I
was on an FAA working group for a couple years and it was
regarding part 135 duty and rest.
So I have heard from some of theforemost experts in pilot
fatigue, actually any kind of fatigue, general occupational
fatigue. And when you look at the rules
that the FAA was coming out withlast year, they were trying to
get air traffic controllers a rest period of 12 hours between
(16:42):
shifts. And you're like, what the heck
difference to 12 hours make? You know, when you look at
fatigue studies and the research, 12 hours actually is a
big deal, especially because it includes you getting to and from
your house, you taking a shower,you get to sleep.
You do need more rest when you're working night shifts.
And the FAA was trying to help with that by saying, OK, we'll
put 12, 12 hours for night shifts, but you get 10 hours for
(17:03):
all your other shifts. Unfortunately, FAA doesn't have
enough staff to make that happen.
So this is now getting rolled back a bit with the agreement of
the union, by the way, because they all see what they're
staffing from the situation fromagain, the safety perspective.
I don't like it, you know, oh, we don't have enough staff
members. So we're just going to go ahead
and rollback the safety changes that we were going to make.
(17:23):
Not a good luck on the FAA or even the union for kind of
accepting. This Yeah, no, that's a that's
a, it's a tough, it's a tough thing.
I think when when you think about rest and duty, I mean, I
always want to default to the experts, right?
Even if the experts err on the side of caution.
I think especially with something as dangerous as ATC
and how dangerous that could be for everybody else, I would me
(17:46):
personally tend to lean on the, you know, more is more is more
is better in this scenario, right.
The last time. So, yeah, I think it's a it's a
hot topic, hot issue. I think you have a lot of
pressure from other parts of thegovernment that are like, you
fix your stuff, you've got shortages, all this.
But yet, you know, not allowing that to interfere with the
actual safety I think is kind ofthe key here.
(18:08):
Yeah. And I was looking at like some
of the numbers because I really wanted to get into the nitty
gritty of like how bad is our staffing shortage at the moment.
So we have in the US today around 11,500 staff members.
This was according to an articlein February.
We're short about 3000, when what's funny is when you go back
in history, 11,000 has been where it's been at for a long,
(18:30):
long, long time. And our air traffic is only
increasing. We're kind of stated status flow
from a staffing perspective. They're trying to fill those
slots as often as they can, but they're not really kind of
grinding water in terms of growth.
Meanwhile, we got more airplanesbeing bundled into airports than
we ever have, and that continuesto grow.
So I don't know, something's gotto give.
At some point we rather have to cut back on slots and the amount
(18:52):
of traffic that's in the air, which none of want where they're
going to have to figure this outbecause it's getting to a
critical point. Yeah, no, I completely agree.
Wrapping up the last story because the F35 just took off
here in Oshkosh and it's about to get very loud on my side.
Moving to our last celebrity driven lawsuit story.
We love a juicy lawsuit story here, don't we, Jesse?
(19:14):
Well, yeah. And this one is juicy, juicy,
juicy. We will definitely post a link
to the full legal case because there's a lot going on here and
this is through the like 4th appellate course, but Bruce
Willis and trust me, there are lots of Bruce Willis quotes
throughout this case in this docket, which is hilarious.
(19:35):
I don't know what if the attorneys rethinking, but they
were having a really good time when they're writing this up,
but there's been a maintenance dispute between there was Saturn
aviation who was managing and maintaining an aircraft that was
chartered on behalf of Mr. Willis.
Some sort of dispute ensued and now this 4th court has said, you
know, you original certificate holder, you're they're
responsible for repaying them for the maintenance issues plus
(19:58):
all the damages which is totaledalmost $1,000,000 in this legal
case, which is pretty unusual. We don't really see these cases
that often in our industry. Yeah.
And I think it also, you know, it goes to prove that you need
to have your agreements really tight and neat and tidy.
And you can get judgments done pretty quickly as long as your
agreements are neat and tidy. So call your aviation attorney
(20:19):
and say, hey, look at this, do we have risk here?
I also think it, you know, it's if you read the court.
I actually still, I've read a fair amount of info.
I still actually have no clue exactly what happened.
But there was there was a delay and there was like an AOG
problem. But I'm like, that happens all
the time. Like I'm not sure why you'd sue
someone over that, right? But then it was like, oh, there
(20:40):
was certain requirements that were being made and then there
was a dry lease involved. There was a broker, a dry lease
airplane and owner of an airplane who's got the onus for
maintenance and all that kind ofstuff.
So it's, it's the nitty gritty and any of anybody who has legal
expertise can actually explain. We do not, this is not legal
advice. So if you have, if you do have
(21:02):
that expertise, we would love tounderstand exactly what
happened. But what it appears is that the
appellate court has held it up. And so it's going to stick and
the operator is going to be on the hook for about $1,000,000.
Yeah, and there was some pretty rough stuff in here.
You talk about, you know, one thing goes wrong with your
contract, that all your dirty laundry is out there for the
world to see. There were accusations that a
(21:23):
mechanic had been using drugs inthe office, that they had held
together some components with duct tape and zip ties.
Which tape? Zip ties can be inappropriate
repair in some cases. Not all cases, but there's a
lot. In and speed tape, which is not
duct tape for the general public.
Speed tape is not duct tape. But my assumption is it actually
(21:45):
was duct tape if it was in the court case and not see tape.
I think so. But it's just man, it's a yeah.
Contracts are much better settled outside of cases like
this. But it looks like it got pretty
nasty and there was a lot of stuff back and forth.
But you definitely want to read some of the quotes in there
about Zeds Dead. I've never seen that in an
(22:05):
aviation talk it ever. Yeah, no kidding.
And you know the big round of applause, like who gets the
biggest win here? The attorneys?
The legal fees were like half ofthe $1,000,000 settlement.
So congratulations to the attorneys for winning and also
getting paid. Hooray.
Oh man, well with that, we should wrap up the show today.
We're going to make this a quickone so that pressing can get
(22:26):
back to looking at cool airplanes.
We're all very jealous and we hope that you have an awesome
time out there. Thanks, Jesse.
Yeah, anybody who is out here, feel free to holler at me.
Follow Jesse on LinkedIn. Check out her flyingprivate.org.
I'm Preston, Preston Holland on LinkedIn.
Subscribe to the VIP newsletter at the VIP seat.com to get all
(22:47):
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(23:09):
will see you next week.
Good morning and welcome back tothe VIPC.
Today is July 22nd. Your Co host Jesse Newer here as
usual. And today we also have Preston
Holland who's actually at Oshkosh as we speak.
How's the show? Cohen, Preston.
I am Jesse. It is.
We record on Monday afternoons. Sorry to break the 3rd wall and
we didn't actually record this at 4:00 AM in the morning on
(00:21):
Tuesday, but it's Monday. The show is buzzing.
There's a lot of people here. There is what I have seen to be
a pretty solid strong light business jet presence here.
Pilatus is here of course with their PC 24's.
Jet Access has a pretty big presence here with a Phenom 100.
Honda Jet is here, Daher is here, which is kind of a
(00:42):
crossover Epics Moose looks better than it has in the past
couple of years, densely filled with airplanes and people with a
flight SIM in it, which is very cool.
But it is a it's a good time to be in aviation and at an
aviation event. Seeing a lot of my friends.
So if anybody's listening and you're at Oshkosh, shoot me a
message. We'd love to meet up with a
listener and take a selfie and post on LinkedIn.
(01:02):
Well, I didn't go this year but I actually do have plans to go
next year so I'm pre booking appointments with people for
that. Yeah, we we will do a live
taping of the VIP seat. So any sponsors that are out
there, if you would like to liketo subsidize our stay at
Oshkosh, we can do a live tapingfrom your booth.
So this is not a plug and not anask for money, but you know, the
last time I did this, it totallyworked and we'll have some
(01:25):
exciting announcements about that coming up.
Very. Nice.
Well, Speaking of asking for money, Flex Jet has had some
really successful asking for money.
As of Monday of this week, there's an announcement made
that they have secured $800 million.
So largest, I think largest private equity investment.
Ever. Largest private equity
investment ever in private aviation.
(01:45):
That's, yeah, from L Catterdon, KSL Partners and J Software
Group. It's led by Catterton, which is
also related to the famed Louis Vuitton Moe Hennessy group of
investors. They'll have a 20% stake in the
$800 million investment that they made.
Amazing news for Flex Jet and maybe exciting news for more
(02:05):
charter operators that PE is finally interested in us again.
Yeah, it sets the peg 2 at a $4 billion valuation, which is
pretty impressive. I think that, you know, that
that puts them, I mean, it squarely puts them up there in
the, you know, in the mega category.
I think one argument that I got into is not argument, but it was
a kind of a back and forth when somebody was saying, oh, we'll
(02:26):
flex jet now, we'll catch net jets and surpass them.
And even Ken Rickey will say this.
He said it publicly and he said it privately.
The reality is, is that for every two airplanes net jets
has, flex jet has one airplane. So they're literally twice the
size Flex jet is growing. Basically they're overtaking at
like something like a 15% growthdifference, which means that it
(02:48):
would basically take like 30 years for net for flex jet at
the current trajectory to pass net jets.
So it's they're not probably going to get there.
But I mean, if you know Ken Rickey, this is like the perfect
partnership. I did read in Doug Golan's
article about it that it all kind of started on an e-mail
thread like less than a year ago.
Well, the original idea was like2008 when Ken Ricky bought
(03:12):
flight options back. But then recently this kind of
transpired pretty quickly. And it's unrelated to the bond
issuance that Flex Jet had, which was a couple of months
ago, they issued a bond in orderto kind of raise debt financing.
So this is different from that. So, you know, they're they're
totally separate transactions and Flex Jet wasn't even
actively fundraising, which is Ithink another interesting thing
(03:33):
it was, it was a nice to have, not a have to have for them is
what kind of their messaging hasbeen out of the Flex Jet camp.
So good for them, good for Ken. I hope that he buys himself a
fancy watch or a fancy car as a celebration for himself.
And maybe, you know, give us a ride in it, right.
It comes sponsor the VIP seat. We'll do a live tape from your
car. Well, and I have no doubt that
many bottles of MOA were circling when this news and the
(03:56):
steel finally closed. Oh, yeah.
And there's always going to be Dom Perry on on every flex jet
plane. Of course.
I wouldn't be surprised if thereare Louis Vuitton blankets that
are being ordered for Flex jet plans.
I mean, you think about like allof the cool, funny synergies
that you can have going into this.
You know, it's a it's a match made in heaven.
Totally, I mean, talk about client crossover, absolutely.
(04:19):
You know, these these are all the folks that are that these
companies are already servicing.I think it can be hard
sometimes, especially, you know,private equity, they don't
necessarily put businesses together really well.
You know, everyone's still goingto be their own entities and
they're so large, but you would hope to see some of those cool
partnerships and deals sort of come out of this.
But yeah, man, wow, really cool.Very exciting.
(04:41):
I think the fashion, I think thefashion industry is better at
that than any of the other kind of the other kind of servicey
boring industries. I think fashion is pretty good
at that. I think the other thing is too
is that Ken has done, this is really the way that I would look
at this is this is more of a recap for Ken.
There's a recapitalization for Ken Rickey, who is the going to
(05:05):
maintain his chairmanship. He's taken some chips off of the
table because he has he has donethe bolting together.
And so he brought in FX Air, andhe brought in the aircraft
Workeridge, and he brought in the MRO, and he packaged it all
up. And then he sold a chunk of that
to private equity. And they're basically saying,
yeah, we think it's still going to keep growing.
Yeah. I mean, they are saying they're
going to use the proceeds to purchase more aircraft.
(05:26):
But as you say, it's still goingto take time for aircraft to
come through. There's no changing the
timeline. Someone can get aircraft
delivered at this point. So even if you have a billion
dollars tomorrow, it doesn't mean you're going to be net jets
in a year or two or four or five.
Yeah, exactly. So I did announce this news on
Twitter, and this takes us into the Mile High Madness section,
to Mile High Madness music. And so I tweeted about this, and
(05:49):
I basically was like, hey, congratulations to Flex Jet.
I'll pull this up on the screen.Big news.
Flex Jet rages 800 million from Bernard Arnall, valuing the
company at $4 billion. Will we see Louis Vuitton in
tears on Flex Jet airplanes soon?
And I get probably one of the funniest, this from this guy
named Robert Ricard. He sends me this.
And I chuckled out loud. Like if we get a nice Louis
(06:13):
Vuitton like lime green painted Gulfstream, like now we're
talking baby. So this is the collaboration
that we've all been looking for is finally somebody's going to
paint Louis Vuitton on the outside of AG450.
I mean, does that mean you get to mark it up, too?
Like, way ahead. You know it's got Louis Vuitton
on it. It's for sure, for sure.
(06:35):
Yeah, it's a. It'd be a one of one.
Except for the color choice, I'mnot sure about the lime green.
Like there was a limited editionLouis Vuitton bag that came out
a couple years ago that was likemetallic silver.
Now you give me a metallic silver airplane with like matte
LV's all over it. Yeah, that's money right there.
I think it's, you know, it's kind of one of those things
(06:56):
where you want to be loud. You know, it's kind of like
those I'm actually sitting here at Oshkosh.
Speaking of loud, Cirrus was giving out like hilarious
looking sunglasses last night. So another brand that knows how
to be loud. So if you're watching, if you're
not watching on YouTube, I'm wearing some of the ridiculous
looking sunglasses. And if you wear, if you're out
there and you wear them, you know, they probably look good on
you. They look ridiculous on you.
I mean. I don't know, the 80s are coming
back for us. Maybe go with it.
(07:17):
Exactly, exactly what have you seen out there on the socials?
What is? What's your social media take of
the day? So today, unfortunately, I have
some sad news, but I have to to honor Felix Baumgardner.
He was the guy who in 2016, he jumped out of a capsule and
broke the sound barrier with hisown body by skydiving into from,
(07:38):
I don't remember what it was from space.
It was the first skydive from space.
Amazing feat. But unfortunately, he died in a
paragliding accident over the weekend in Italy.
While we mourn his loss, he dieddoing what he loved with his
boots on. So you can't, you know,
discredit him for that. But I wanted to play the video
for everyone to see because it'sjust a nice little way to honor
(08:00):
Felix's accomplishments to aviation areas.
I'm going home now. I would throw up.
I would throw up. In that moment, I'm out.
I am so out. But I, I watched, I watched this
thing live when it happened and I was like screaming like, oh,
(08:20):
but he gets that. He starts to go out of control
and they were really worried, like he wasn't.
Yeah, I would throw up you wouldyou?
I would have puke lined in that helmet.
Just the. Noises that are coming out of
him in this video are extreme. But then he manages to, like,
write himself back up, pulls hischute at 8000 feet.
(08:40):
I think he was going, yeah, 843 mph into.
This when he pulled the chute. I yeah, I think so.
That's insane. I mean, how does that not break
all of? How does that?
No idea, but the guy lived on the edge, so you got to give him
that. So we salute you, Felix.
(09:01):
You're gone from this earth, butnot from our memories.
And keep living the dream on theother side and.
Yeah, now we that, that was really cool.
All right, Speaking of exceptionalism of human beings,
Joby has successfully flown a hydrogen powered aircraft.
And if you have been reading my content for any period of time,
you will see I wrote an entire article about hydrogen aircraft
(09:24):
and why it's probably one of theonly ways in which you actually
democratize private aviation. And Joby appears to have read
the article. So congratulations, Joby.
I'm just kidding. But they, yeah, they
successfully completed. Did I read that report correctly
that they flew for 9 hours? Like did they fly 9 contiguous
hours in a circle? Yes, so this was this was not
(09:46):
announced. This was not something that
people were supposed to know about it.
But I think some, you know, folks who are investors, you
know, vested interest in findingout about this stuff figured it
out. But yes, 9 hours in a pattern.
It was called their JA I-30 which I find interesting that
the article said that it was a seat hall aircraft, which is a
(10:06):
conventional take off and landing aircraft.
Just a plane that's hydrogenic powered.
Oh, it's just an airplane. If you look at the picture, it's
got AV tail and a high wing and it looks like it's got puller.
It looks like it's got puller props on the V tail, like on the
tips of the V tail, which is pretty wild.
But yeah, it's that just makes it a airplane that takes off and
(10:29):
lands not like a helicopter or vertical take off.
It's like nice. It's like it's like renaming sea
bass, right? It's like, OK, yeah.
So we're no. Longer space, I mean they are
still I guess pursuing their evtol's, but this kind of
suggests to me that oh OK, maybewe're actually looking at other
options. I've always left hydrogen.
I know that there are problems with sourcing it, the cost of it
(10:50):
containing it. It's also very flammable.
But I agree with you. I just don't know how we get to
the net 0 without using some alternative fuel because
batteries just seen it right? Now.
Yeah, exactly. Now it's exciting news.
And I think that, you know, Joby's kind of one of the last,
last men's standing. I mean, they've gobbled up
technology from X Wing, which was a German based company.
(11:12):
My understanding, you know, theywere formerly Uber Elevate.
They were, you know, they've they've kind of become this like
conglomeration of all of these, the pieces of these different
programs all together. And so that's good.
Whisk is here. So Whisk is here, as is Electra
Arrow and as is Beta technologies.
So there is an EV tall electric aviation presence at Oshkosh
(11:36):
trying to convince the 80 year old dudes you fly their bonanzas
that like, hey, you should totally fly hydrogen.
Best of luck to you for that. But but it's fun.
I and I to be clear, I like hanging out with those guys.
I had lunch with a couple of them today and they're super
fun. So you don't know any GA people.
There's a type. I think they will absolutely
adopt that technology. And I, you know, one of the
things I've always thought is like that world should be going
(11:58):
after like the GA folks first oreither the wealthy people who
just want A to play with much more for like fleet operators.
Because if it's cool and it flies, somebody out there who's
already a pilot is going to wantto buy one and fly.
I do. Yeah, exactly.
But exciting news for Jovi. If you would like to give us any
exclusive insider scoops for thenext episode, we'd be happy to
(12:18):
cover it. The next story, Mr. Beast has
launched a new competition, and in this competition he had a
pilot stay in an airplane for aslong as possible.
The guy made it 100 days so thathe could win, but not a Learjet.
You actually pointed out that it's a Hawker.
What do we think this thing is? I believe that it's a Hawker
800XP and based off of and I came to that from seeing the
(12:43):
front of the aircraft and then they're advertising that it's a
two and a half million dollar plane you can get into a so, so
then I'd narrow down the age range, which would be somewhere
between 2001 and 2005 right now.That's about where you're at at
two and a half million dollars. And then somebody replied to my
tweet and said it does not have the Proline 21 avionics, which
(13:05):
means that it must be before 2002.
So it's probably a 2000 to 2001 Parker 800XP with a very nicely
refreshed interior. But to be honest, if there's
been a pilot living in there for100 days, I can't imagine that
the interior is in as nice of shape as it used to be.
(13:25):
Well, he was winning it, so I guarantee you he took care of
that thing. You know, he was like, no, this
is my baby now. Yeah, exactly.
And they I watched the video andit and once again, it reminds me
of one. Why shows like this exist is
because the general public just doesn't quantify like how this
all works very well, right. You have Mr. Beast who's like,
(13:48):
oh, look, this two and a half million dollar private jet.
And it's like there's so much like exaggeration or, or leaving
a lot of gaps in information, right?
As opposed to like, I don't know, being like a little bit
more factual. And I guess that gets the
clicks, don't get me wrong. But like, it's just as a
reminder that like, no, the mainstream media does not really
get what we do. Yeah.
(14:10):
I will give some credit. I mean, to make it more
interesting, the pilot started talking about, you know, how
much things cost, how much he would need to maintain it, all
those other things. But I mean man, this guy was in
there for 100 days. No comfortable bed to sleep on,
no shower. And he walks out to a tax, he
walks out to a tax bill of like 200 grand or something like
(14:32):
that. Right.
So I think the the end of the day, he's probably just going to
sell this thing as soon as this competition is done.
But man, I don't know. Maybe you'll get the listing,
Preston. You never know.
Yeah, who knows that would be, Ido.
I am like 1/4 degree separated from Mr. Beast.
So actually I could probably, you know, figure out how to make
that happen. I also did love the like pilot
(14:53):
uniform they made him wear. I'm like corporate pilots other
than like if you work for a big company, but even then you're
not wearing the like white with the stripes and stuff.
I love that they made him wear that.
I was like, it just, I was like,this is just, it just fits.
It just totally fits in with therest of that whole video.
Well, I always used to have thisdebate with my pilots before
because a lot of people don't like wearing the pilot uniform.
(15:14):
But the problem is the flying public, Just like when you go to
see a doctor and the doctor has the white coat on, there is an
association with what you're wearing and what you are, you
know, like, so are you safe if you just have a polo on versus
pilot uniform? There's a lot of people that
feel more comfortable with you having that on.
So I think I don't know. But yes, I my only problem with
this video too, because I got toput the safety girl hat on, is
(15:37):
he was not well rested and he was eating crappy like lunch
meat every day and he was still flying the airplane every day
for them. I find a little bit of a problem
with that. And I do think I'm like
wondering, is the FAA going to have a problem with his state of
mind and his ability to stay safe when flying this aircraft
every day or not? I don't know.
It kind of did get on the edge for me from a safety
(15:58):
perspective. I didn't like that he was
obviously not sleeping every night and they were still
continuing to make him fly this airplane.
Yep. Yeah, I think, well that that
leads us into our next story. We're talking about the FAA not
being cool with being well rested, and this is a subject
that Jesse is an expert on and very passionate about.
So tell us about the staffing issue with the FAA and all this
(16:19):
rest stuff. So for those who don't know, I
was on an FAA working group for a couple years and it was
regarding part 135 duty and rest.
So I have heard from some of theforemost experts in pilot
fatigue, actually any kind of fatigue, general occupational
fatigue. And when you look at the rules
that the FAA was coming out withlast year, they were trying to
get air traffic controllers a rest period of 12 hours between
(16:42):
shifts. And you're like, what the heck
difference to 12 hours make? You know, when you look at
fatigue studies and the research, 12 hours actually is a
big deal, especially because it includes you getting to and from
your house, you taking a shower,you get to sleep.
You do need more rest when you're working night shifts.
And the FAA was trying to help with that by saying, OK, we'll
put 12, 12 hours for night shifts, but you get 10 hours for
(17:03):
all your other shifts. Unfortunately, FAA doesn't have
enough staff to make that happen.
So this is now getting rolled back a bit with the agreement of
the union, by the way, because they all see what they're
staffing from the situation fromagain, the safety perspective.
I don't like it, you know, oh, we don't have enough staff
members. So we're just going to go ahead
and rollback the safety changes that we were going to make.
(17:23):
Not a good luck on the FAA or even the union for kind of
accepting. This Yeah, no, that's a that's
a, it's a tough, it's a tough thing.
I think when when you think about rest and duty, I mean, I
always want to default to the experts, right?
Even if the experts err on the side of caution.
I think especially with something as dangerous as ATC
and how dangerous that could be for everybody else, I would me
(17:46):
personally tend to lean on the, you know, more is more is more
is better in this scenario, right.
The last time. So, yeah, I think it's a it's a
hot topic, hot issue. I think you have a lot of
pressure from other parts of thegovernment that are like, you
fix your stuff, you've got shortages, all this.
But yet, you know, not allowing that to interfere with the
actual safety I think is kind ofthe key here.
(18:08):
Yeah. And I was looking at like some
of the numbers because I really wanted to get into the nitty
gritty of like how bad is our staffing shortage at the moment.
So we have in the US today around 11,500 staff members.
This was according to an articlein February.
We're short about 3000, when what's funny is when you go back
in history, 11,000 has been where it's been at for a long,
(18:30):
long, long time. And our air traffic is only
increasing. We're kind of stated status flow
from a staffing perspective. They're trying to fill those
slots as often as they can, but they're not really kind of
grinding water in terms of growth.
Meanwhile, we got more airplanesbeing bundled into airports than
we ever have, and that continuesto grow.
So I don't know, something's gotto give.
At some point we rather have to cut back on slots and the amount
(18:52):
of traffic that's in the air, which none of want where they're
going to have to figure this outbecause it's getting to a
critical point. Yeah, no, I completely agree.
Wrapping up the last story because the F35 just took off
here in Oshkosh and it's about to get very loud on my side.
Moving to our last celebrity driven lawsuit story.
We love a juicy lawsuit story here, don't we, Jesse?
(19:14):
Well, yeah. And this one is juicy, juicy,
juicy. We will definitely post a link
to the full legal case because there's a lot going on here and
this is through the like 4th appellate course, but Bruce
Willis and trust me, there are lots of Bruce Willis quotes
throughout this case in this docket, which is hilarious.
(19:35):
I don't know what if the attorneys rethinking, but they
were having a really good time when they're writing this up,
but there's been a maintenance dispute between there was Saturn
aviation who was managing and maintaining an aircraft that was
chartered on behalf of Mr. Willis.
Some sort of dispute ensued and now this 4th court has said, you
know, you original certificate holder, you're they're
responsible for repaying them for the maintenance issues plus
(19:58):
all the damages which is totaledalmost $1,000,000 in this legal
case, which is pretty unusual. We don't really see these cases
that often in our industry. Yeah.
And I think it also, you know, it goes to prove that you need
to have your agreements really tight and neat and tidy.
And you can get judgments done pretty quickly as long as your
agreements are neat and tidy. So call your aviation attorney
(20:19):
and say, hey, look at this, do we have risk here?
I also think it, you know, it's if you read the court.
I actually still, I've read a fair amount of info.
I still actually have no clue exactly what happened.
But there was there was a delay and there was like an AOG
problem. But I'm like, that happens all
the time. Like I'm not sure why you'd sue
someone over that, right? But then it was like, oh, there
(20:40):
was certain requirements that were being made and then there
was a dry lease involved. There was a broker, a dry lease
airplane and owner of an airplane who's got the onus for
maintenance and all that kind ofstuff.
So it's, it's the nitty gritty and any of anybody who has legal
expertise can actually explain. We do not, this is not legal
advice. So if you have, if you do have
(21:02):
that expertise, we would love tounderstand exactly what
happened. But what it appears is that the
appellate court has held it up. And so it's going to stick and
the operator is going to be on the hook for about $1,000,000.
Yeah, and there was some pretty rough stuff in here.
You talk about, you know, one thing goes wrong with your
contract, that all your dirty laundry is out there for the
world to see. There were accusations that a
(21:23):
mechanic had been using drugs inthe office, that they had held
together some components with duct tape and zip ties.
Which tape? Zip ties can be inappropriate
repair in some cases. Not all cases, but there's a
lot. In and speed tape, which is not
duct tape for the general public.
Speed tape is not duct tape. But my assumption is it actually
(21:45):
was duct tape if it was in the court case and not see tape.
I think so. But it's just man, it's a yeah.
Contracts are much better settled outside of cases like
this. But it looks like it got pretty
nasty and there was a lot of stuff back and forth.
But you definitely want to read some of the quotes in there
about Zeds Dead. I've never seen that in an
(22:05):
aviation talk it ever. Yeah, no kidding.
And you know the big round of applause, like who gets the
biggest win here? The attorneys?
The legal fees were like half ofthe $1,000,000 settlement.
So congratulations to the attorneys for winning and also
getting paid. Hooray.
Oh man, well with that, we should wrap up the show today.
We're going to make this a quickone so that pressing can get
(22:26):
back to looking at cool airplanes.
We're all very jealous and we hope that you have an awesome
time out there. Thanks, Jesse.
Yeah, anybody who is out here, feel free to holler at me.
Follow Jesse on LinkedIn. Check out her flyingprivate.org.
I'm Preston, Preston Holland on LinkedIn.
Subscribe to the VIP newsletter at the VIP seat.com to get all
(22:47):
of this in a digestible e-mail and with all the links to the
stories. Follow us on social, give us a
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This show is growing, and the only way that it's going to
continue to grow is people like you sharing this with your
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aviation friends, send it to your owners if they want the
spiciest takes in that is short enough for your commute and we
(23:09):
will see you next week.
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