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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.
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.
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.
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.