Wheels Up names Hegde president

Wheels Up

Former Amazon, Airbnb exec Vinayak Hegde has been elevated to president at now publicly traded private aviation provider Wheels Up

Vinayak Hegde has been named president of Wheels Up. He will continue to report directly to chairman and CEO Kenny Dichter who founded the company. Now Wheels Up Experience, which trades under UP, went public via a SPAC merger in July.

Solairus, Jet Aviation customer data impacted by Wheels Up Avianis data breach

Data breach

Customer data from charter operators Solairus and Jet Aviation stored in the Microsoft Azure cloud were impacted in a data breach at Wheels Up-owned Avianis, according to a report

Aviation International News, a leading trade journal, is reporting a data breach at Wheels Up-owned Avianis exposed customer data at two leading private jet charter and management companies.

Here’s how much Wheels Up paid for each of its 5 acquisitions

Wheels Up Kenny Dichter

Kenny Dichter and Wheels Up doled out less than $100 million in cash to build the second-largest private jet operator with a $2 billion valuation

When Wheels Up’s acquired 5th-biggest Part 135 charter operator Mountain Aviation in January, it pushed the group past Directional Aviation’s Flexjet as the second-largest for-hire private aircraft operator in the U.S. For Wheels Up founder and CEO Kenny Dichter, it was a day at the beach compared to another cold New York winter morning in early 2019. At that point, Wheels Up didn’t operate a single aircraft. Founded in 2013, its owned and leased fleet was outsourced to Gama Aviation Signature. Wheels Up was a big brand. Yet, it was merely a marketing organization selling memberships onto what was then mainly a fleet of King Air 350i turboprops.

NetJets predicts return to 2019 flight levels by 2021 as private aviation bosses offer a bullish outlook

NetJets, Wheels Up, and Sentient Jet execs tell attendees at Corporate Jet Investor Americas 2020 they expect the private jet recovery to continue through next year

Wheels Up, with the second-largest for-hire fleet behind NetJets, says flying is already at pre-COVID levels. Jet card leader Sentient Jet recently restored pre-pandemic budget levels

Airline CEOs continue to say it could take until 2024 or beyond to recover from the COVID-19 downturn. In a parallel universe, the heads of private aviation’s biggest players painted a far different picture. Bosses at NetJets, Wheels Up, and Sentient Jet each offered bullish 2021 forecasts. They were all speaking at Corporate Jet Investor Americas 2020.

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