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Aspirational Consumer Lifestyle Corp. (“Aspirational”) (NYSE: ASPL), a special purpose acquisition company, today announced that its shareholders have voted to approve the previously announced business combination with Wheels Up Partners Holdings LLC.
SPAC Aspirational Consumer Lifestyle Corp. (NYSE: ASPL) has set July 12, 2021, as the meeting date for the extraordinary general meeting of its shareholders to approve its merger with Wheels Up Partners Holdings LLC. It expects that the business combination will close on July 13, 2021, subject to the approval of Aspirational’s shareholders and the satisfaction of other customary closing conditions, according to a press release.
Ready or not, Kenny Dichter and Wheels Up plan to change the face of private jet access. It’s a big leap from marketing ploys like selling memberships through Costco. Beyond stump speeches at industry conferences, there will be the harsh spotlight from being a publicly traded company. If he’s successful, the lifelong entrepreneur will find his name alongside aviation innovators such as Pan Am founder Juan Trippe, former American Airlines chairman Robert Crandall, who ignited revenue management and frequent flyer programs, and inventor of fractional private jet ownership, Richard Santulli. The latter created NetJets, the world’s largest private jet operator, and gave Dichter his entree into the industry. In fact, Dichter might fly higher than all of them. Success would make Dichter the Jeff Bezos of private jets.
In a two-hour presentation to financial analysts Friday morning, the founder and CEO of Wheels Up, along with his leadership team, discussed various milestones, projected growth, and insights on where it’s coming from. More than that, they unveiled a dramatic vision for a private aviation marketplace they say could more than double the addressable market by 2025, democratizing the segment down to low single-digit millionaires. It will certainly be key in their plan to grow revenues from $695 million last year to over $2.1 billion by 2025.
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.