Solairus’ fleet will grow to over 500 private jets when its acquisition of Clay Lacy’s managed fleet closes. What’s next?
Last week, news broke that Solairus Aviation had agreed to acquire Clay Lacy Aviation’s aircraft management and charter businesses. The acquisition will expand the Solairus fleet from 365 private jets to more than 500, second only to Berkshire Hathaway’s NetJets and Executive Jet Management. Nearly 200 aircraft in the combined Solairus-Clay Lacy fleet are currently available for charter, including more than 150 large-cabin jets.
Solairus ranks as the 7th-largest U.S. operator by charter and fractional flight hours, while Clay Lacy ranks 17th. However, Solairus founder and CEO Dan Drohan notes that when including flight hours from its Part 91 aircraft, the company recorded 85,067 hours in 2025. That would rank it fourth, behind only NetJets, Flexjet, and Vista Global, according to ARGUS data.
Notably, the deal excludes Clay Lacy’s FBOs, MRO operations, hangars, and other infrastructure at a time when vertical integration has become a popular industry strategy.
On Sunday afternoon, Drohan spoke with Private Jet Card Comparisons in his first interview since the announcement. He discussed how the deal came together, the challenges of transitioning Clay Lacy’s managed fleet to a new company, what the acquisition means for Solairus’ charter business, his approach to future vertical integration, how the transaction could impact private aviation M&A, and what might come next.
Each owner whose aircraft is managed by Clay Lacy has to sign an agreement to agree to come to Solairus. I fully recognize we may not be the right fit for everyone, but we’re going to do our best to earn them all. The plan is a certificate migration over what we’re calling the transition period, which is about six months. One of the points I’ve been wanting to make really clear is that signing is not the same as closing. We don’t own the business, and the employees are not ours yet. That will happen on or around Sept. 30. Then we begin a six-month transition period during which Clay Lacy will continue supporting some accounts as they transition to Solairus, including the Part 135 airplanes. One thing that surprised us when we got into the nuts and bolts of the company was how similar the makeup of their fleet is to ours. I think everybody thinks of Clay Lacy as very charter-centric. Certainly, I did. We were pleasantly surprised to learn that only about a third of their airplanes are charter aircraft, which aligns well with ours.
Drohan: Clay Lacy, the man, has obviously been an industry icon and somewhat of a hero of mine for most of my career. I’d had the opportunity to meet Clay over the years through friends, so the fact that we’re sitting here today doing this transaction with them is somewhat surreal. A formal introduction (for me) to (current owner) Brian Kirkdoffer was made a couple of years ago, and slowly over time, I got to know Brian better. We found that not only did we like each other, but there were a lot of very similar fundamental core values and thought processes about how we believe our people are the true assets of the business, and how we think about aviation and the industry. It became increasingly clear that Brian’s ambitions were leaning more toward the real estate and FBO side of the business, and that has never been my focus. He made what I think was a well-thought-out, informed decision about where he wanted to take the company. We’re going to take really good care of their managed clients and their employees, and he has a well-laid-out plan for what he wants to do on the real estate and FBO side.
Drohan: I don’t think there was one moment necessarily. As you probably know, any negotiation or transaction is going to almost fail about 10 times before it succeeds. There were sophisticated players on both sides. We had our private equity partners (Ancient LP, which also owns Burgess and Sotheby’s) involved. Jefferies was involved; Nick Fazioli and his team were representing Brian, and, obviously, there were lots of lawyers. Everybody walked into it believing that if it happened, it would be great. If it hadn’t happened, we both had great businesses to run the next day. What has been most profound to me is how much I’ve really come to like the team at Clay Lacy and how much respect and regard I have for them. Even if the transaction hadn’t come together, I would have left the process with much greater respect for that group of people. I’m thrilled to know now that they’re going to be on my team and that we’re going to get to do this together.
Drohan: It’s been a topic on the weekly agenda for at least a year. But we’ve worked really hard not to let it consume us. We’ve got our hands full running the business day to day. Even now, during our weekly executive team meetings, we remind each other that we have a business to run outside of the transaction. We have separate calls that are about the transaction. These things can be all-consuming because the integration is where the rubber meets the road. I don’t want to make it sound like negotiating and getting to signing is easy, because it’s not. But in my view, the hard work is still in front of us.
Drohan: There’s no grand plan. I’m really focused on the people side of this — the clients and the employees. Without their support, we won’t have any of this. Our health in this business is our employees and our clients. When I know we’re firing on all eight cylinders in customer service, support, regulatory compliance, conformity, accounting, and service delivery, then we can start thinking about the art of the possible for the next phase of the business. Could we get into the MRO business with 500 airplanes? Sure. But when you really slice and dice our fleet, the majority are newer airplanes. They’re not going to an independent MRO. They’re going to the OEM. I would far rather have great relationships with the OEMs and strong, powerful MROs. It’s the same thing with FBOs. Sure, we could buy hangar facilities, but I’d rather build really great relationships with the big FBO chains and have them partner with us to take care of our managed clients. I want to keep this very pure-play aircraft management approach that we’ve been really good at for almost 18 or 19 years.
Drohan: They come in a couple of different forms. The regulatory side is pretty well spelled out. We have to work with the FAA and the FSDOs on the Part 135 side. The people side is another bucket. As I’ve gotten to know (the) Clay Lacy (people) over the last year, I’ve found their culture is far more similar to ours — and ours to theirs — than I think anybody would have expected. There will obviously be subtle differences. Both companies’ cultures have evolved over time. There were also tough decisions that had to be made at Clay Lacy. Not every member of their team will be on the go-forward team long-term, and some of those are still gray-area question marks. The third bucket is clients. I’ve given our existing Solairus management clients my word that we will have minimal, if any, impact on them. I want them to see the duck gliding on the surface while we’re paddling beneath. I don’t want them to feel anything except the positives that come from this transaction. The Clay Lacy clients are different because they obviously have to go through a transition. They’re going to get a different monthly statement. There will be different processes.
Drohan: I’ve seen some of the stuff online that people are talking about that these are difficult deals to get done because of the integration and because of the 30-day (management) contracts (with the private jet owners), and all true, I totally agree with that. I’m encouraging our team internally to listen to the 98% of people who are positive and supportive of what we’re trying to get done here, and to ignore the other 2%, because those same 2% are out in the world commenting on every topic.
Our objective is to make that integration impact as small as possible. We’ve given it the moniker “Push and Pull.” We have a small group at Solairus responsible for pulling people, tools, resources, accounts, information, and data from Clay Lacy. Then we have a team at Clay Lacy responsible for pushing information, data, clients, information systems, and everything else over from their side. That combination of push and pull is hopefully going to result in clients feeling as little integration impact as possible.
The fourth bucket is systems integration — payroll, expense payments, IT, email addresses, and phone systems. If we can define the North Star and everybody is rowing in unison toward that North Star, we’ll figure it out. Then culture is the fifth bucket. Solairus had its own culture before this transaction. Clay Lacy had its existing culture. Now there’s going to be a new culture in the future, and we get the chance to define what that will be.
Drohan: I don’t think it changes. It’s more of the same. If you asked me for one or two sentences defining the road ahead, first, we will never stop thinking about safety being the most important thing we do every day, 24/7/365. I know that’s how Clay Lacy thinks about the universe as well. Second, how do I think about growth going forward? More of the same. Are we going to have a greater percentage of our operations be Part 135? Probably not. We’re just going to have more of it. We have around 150 airplanes on our (Part 135) certificate today, with perhaps 60 actively flying charter. We’re going to add another 30 or 40 (active charter aircraft). So we could have around 100 airplanes actively engaged in charter, with additional aircraft on the certificate that aren’t as busy.
Drohan: I wouldn’t even call it a jet card, honestly. It’s a response to people in that business because our clients came to us and said, “We want something that looks like that.” We defined it within the context of who we are. My mother used to say, “Never forget who you are and what you represent.” That will always be the case at Solairus. We’re an aircraft management company with a charter certificate. We’re not a charter hustler that manages airplanes to support the charter business. The charter business at Solairus supports the aircraft management relationships. It always has, and it always will. When you travel the halls of Solairus, whether literally or philosophically, you’ll see that the company is built to be a management company. We’re built to take care of crews assigned to and dedicated to one owner and one airplane. Hopefully, we do a bang-up job taking care of that crew so they take really good care of that client, and that client takes really good care of us. It’s a simple triangle. We’re not a charter house. If you’ve got a roadshow to do, great. If you’ve got a big, really important charter to do, great. But bachelor parties to Vegas and things like that — that’s not typically our jam.
Drohan: I know many of the Clay Lacy clients are already receiving phone calls from our worthy competitors. On one hand, I would say that’s probably what I would do if I were on the outside of this. Right now, we’re going to be on our heels a bit as we figure out this integration, and some people will try to take advantage of that. I get it. But when we start cinching up our belt and saying, “Okay, we’re ready to rock here,” this is not going to be an organization you’re going to want to mess with. I certainly hope we don’t have any slippage from the Solairus side. That falls on our shoulders to make this totally invisible to those clients. On the Clay Lacy side, it’s different because they have a transition to go through to come to Solairus. We want to earn those clients, and we’re going to do our best to do that. If there’s any slippage, that would obviously be disappointing, but we’ll deal with it when the time comes.
Drohan: I think it can be a good thing for our industry. (Jet Linx Executive Chairman) Jamie Walker said money follows money, and I think Jamie’s right. Private equity has been dipping its toe into our part of the industry for a while, and it takes deals to define what deals look like. Priester has done a good job acquiring mom-and-pop operators. (George J. Priester Aviation Chairman) Andy has gone around and provided returns to those owners. Andy, Jamie, and I have all talked about that strategy. Andy is deploying it, and it’s working. This is an incredibly fragmented industry. This transaction will help consolidate it. Are there other big deals that will happen? Unquestionably. This cracks the door open. I don’t know what those deals are sitting here today, but there will be more.
Drohan: The positivity, support, and outreach, both online and elsewhere, from inside and outside the industry, have been overwhelming. I want to acknowledge and publicly thank people for that. It’s honestly been humbling to see how many people — competitors, industry folks, non-industry folks, and clients — are genuinely happy for us. The deal hasn’t closed, and the companies still have a lot of work ahead. We haven’t done anything yet except sign a piece of paper. We got the negotiating done. Now there’s a heavy lift coming.
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