Following Directional Aviation’s announcement last week that it had acquired U.K.-based charter broker PrivateFly, its Flexjet subsidiary announced strong growth numbers
Flexjet LLC, a leading provider of fractional jet shares, leases, and jet cards said for the first half of 2018 fractional and lease sales increased 17% over the same period in 2017. The company said new business grew even more strongly, expanding by 76% year over year. More than half – 57% – of new customers came through referrals.
Flexjet LLC has been awarded the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Diamond Award for Excellence for the 18th consecutive year, according to a press release.
Aircraft manufacturer Bombardier founded Flexjet in 1995. It focuses on fractional ownership and leases of private jets and also has a limited jet card program.
Since 2012, it is part of the Directional Aviation family of companies created by private aviation entrepreneur Ken Ricci, including Sentient Jet, PrivateFly, Tuvoli, FXAir, jet re-manufacturer Nextant Aerospace and jet sales company Sojourn Aviation as well as others. Its operating unit is OneSky Flight, LLC.
In 2021, OneSky Flight acquired helicopter operators in the U.S. and U.K. and rebranded them under Halo. OneSky also placed an order for 200 eVTOLs from Embraer-backed EVE. The goal is to create door-to-door private aviation solutions for customers of Flexjet and other OneSky brands.
Separately, a SPAC led by Ricci priced at $200 million launched on the NASDAQ in November 2020.
The company has billion-dollar orders for Embraer’s Praetor 500 and 600, the upcoming Gulfstream G700. It also had an order for 20 of the now-discontinued supersonic Aerion AS2 private jets. The company is based in Cleveland and ranks second behind NetJets based on fractional share operators’ flight hours. In March 2021, it launched a jet card program in Europe based on the Embraer Legacy 500.
When was Flexjet founded?
1995
Who owns Flexjet?
Directional Aviation is its controlling shareholder. It is part of OneSky Flight, which includes Sentient Jet, FXAIR, PrivateFly, and Tuvoli
Less than three years after acquiring fractional aviation provider Flexjet from Canadian aircraft manufacturer Bombardier and positioning it as a luxury entrant alongside its existing subsidiary Flight Options, which it focused on selling fractional shares of used jets, Cleveland-based Directional Aviation is planning to phase out the latter brand and focus on the former’s Red Label service, introduced last year.
