Jet Edge Secures $150M from KKR as it Unveils AdvantEdge
A day after KKR announced its $4.5 billion acquisition of Atlantic Aviation, the investment firm is further extending its reach into the business aviation market with the provision of a $150 million credit facility for aircraft charter, management, and brokerage firm Jet Edge.
The facility will provide backing as Van Nuys, California-based Jet Edge formally unveils its AdvantEdge charter management program that CEO Bill Papariella said will further enhance the company’s efforts to expand nationally and add predictability to the ownership experience. In addition, the credit facility will help Jet Edge roll out new digital technologies this year for its client base and strengthen its employee ranks.
Describing the program as a cross between whole ownership and fractional with scheduling closer to that of an Airbnb, Papariella told AIN the program packages services that Jet Edge has built out in recent years and “truly takes our charter/management product nationwide.”
Under the program, owners establish a schedule for blocks of time that their aircraft will be available for charter. Jet Edge will schedule charter accordingly. The program comes with tiers: Edge 250+ (14 weeks, 250+ charter hours), Edge 500+ (28 weeks 500+ hours), and Edge 900 (52 weeks, 900+ hours).
Patrick Clancy, principal at KKR, cited Jet Edge’s “innovative approach to solving the pain points of private aircraft ownership and chartering” as a reason for the financial backing.
Without any fanfare, the $4.7 billion sale of Signature Aviation to a consortium of private equity firms was completed last week. The groups—Blackstone, Global Infrastructure Partners, and Cascade Investments—combined to establish a jointly-owned company and issued the successful bid, which was approved by Signature Aviation’s shareholders in late March. The purchase was officially sanctioned by a UK court on May 27.
“Effective June 1, Blackstone, Global Infrastructure Partners, and Cascade assumed ownership of Signature Aviation, which is now a privately held company no longer publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange,” Signature said in a statement released to AIN. “All three companies have unmatched experience successfully investing across the aviation, transportation, infrastructure, and hospitality sectors. They are deeply committed to accelerating the growth of the Signature Aviation business while making a positive impact on our team, our customers, the environment, and the communities we serve.”
In January, Global Infrastructure Partners issued an offer of $4.6 billion to purchase Signature, which operates the world’s largest FBO network with more than 200 locations globally. That prompted responses from Cascade, which handles the bulk of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’s personal fortune and owned a nearly 20 percent stake in Signature, as well as from private equity group Blackstone Infrastructure Advisors and Blackstone Core Equity Management Associates, which had previously issued its own $4 billion offer, to combine forces to buy Signature.
Icon Shareholder Suit Claims IP Expropriation to China
A group of minority shareholders of light-sport aircraft manufacturer Icon Aircraft has filed a lawsuit in Delaware Chancery Court against their Chinese majority shareholder counterparts, including Shanghai Pudong Science and Technology Investment (PDSTI), alleging that the latter illegally breached their fiduciary duties and have been attempting to facilitate “expropriation of Icon’s intellectual property [IP] in aircraft design, aircraft manufacturing, and advanced carbon-fiber structures manufacturing to China.”
The “Icon Recovery” group filing the lawsuit includes Asset Management Company Venture Fund, former board member and former Boeing chairman Philip Condit, company co-founder Kirk Hawkins, and co-founder Steen Strand, among others. The members are seeking to halt the transfer of the IP to China, dismiss associated board members, and “enjoin…all mismanagement.”
The company acknowledged that “a small number of shareholders and directors of Icon Aircraft have initiated litigation in Delaware Chancery Court against certain other company shareholders, directors, and officers,” and added that “this is an active legal matter, and thus, we will not provide further comment at this time.”
“Since becoming the controlling stockholder of Icon in 2017, PDSTI has disregarded its duties to minority shareholders, seized control of the management of the company, operated Icon as its own property, and systematically dismantled the company, thereby destroying the value of Icon and its shares, all in support of its goal to expropriate Icon’s intellectual property to China,” the lawsuit alleges.
ACS Revises Biz Travel Forecast Higher after Strong Q1
First-quarter global business travel booking numbers reached 76 percent of 2019 levels for UK-based broker Air Charter Service (ACS), surpassing its original forecast and leading it to predict that figure could move beyond the 85 percent it forecast for all of 2021.
“‘Zoom fatigue’ is a real thing and clients are realizing that Zoom is just not the same as face-to-face business meetings,” said ACS group private jets director Andy Christie. “We expect that non-essential [in-person] meetings will not take place as often as they used to, but business travel will continue to improve in 2021 as soon as restrictions on quarantine are eased and vaccines distributed more widely.”
Christie further noted that in terms of leisure travel on private jets, bookings in April increased by 25 percent when compared with April 2019. “This increase proves just how much people are keen to book trips abroad,” he added.
Alliance Aviation To Debut Lancaster Airport FBO
LNS Alliance Aviation, the lone service provider at Pennsylvania’s Lancaster Airport (LNS), will debut its new home—a $3 million, airport-built FBO facility—with an official grand opening later this month.
The newly built 6,700-sq-ft, two-story building, which has a prime midfield location, features a glass-walled passenger lounge overlooking the ramp,12-seat conference room, pilot lounge with a pair of snooze rooms and shower facilities, and flight-planning room. It will offer concierge services, complimentary hot beverages, a catering prep kitchen with a dishwasher, available office space, and a courtesy car. The new private aviation terminal replaces the decades-old 4,000-sq-ft facility that LNS Alliance Aviation occupied since 2008, which has already been taken over by aircraft maintenance, sales, and charter provider flyAdvanced.
Hangar space able to accommodate aircraft up to the size of a Challenger 300 is available on an as-needed basis along with rental cars, and a restaurant is within walking distance. The Avfuel-branded location plans a week-long introductory event beginning on June 21, offering tours, gift bags, and local treats.
Eurocontrol Calls SAF Distribution ‘a Crucial Issue’
Eurocontrol today released a snapshot showing the distribution and availability of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in Europe, underscoring the progress still needed to meet the agency’s “aspirational goal” of a 10 percent use rate on the continent by 2030. Now accounting for 0.05 percent of total jet fuel consumption, SAF use in such volumes would reduce CO2 emissions from EU departing flights by 8 percent, according to Eurocontrol.
The agency calls logistical considerations for getting the fuel to airports a “crucial issue.” In 2019, just 39 of 1,657 EU airports accounted for 80 percent of the volume of conventional fuel used by aircraft departing from EU airports. Therefore, instead of distributing SAF evenly over all 1,657 EU airports, concentrating on the fuel supply chain at those 39 airports would prove a more efficient tack, according to Eurocontrol.
Providing a 12.5 percent SAF blend to those airports would achieve the same 8 percent reduction in CO2 emissions from flights departing the EU. So far only seven of the 39 airports—Frankfurt, Paris CDG, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Stockholm-Arlanda, Hamburg, and Munich—have started to supply SAF.
SAF now costs some double the price of fossil jet-A, meaning the use of 12.5 percent SAF in the fuel mixture would lead to a subsequent increase in total fuel costs of 12.5 percent.
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection AStar "dusted” a group of environment protestors yesterday at a Minnesota pipeline, flying as low as 50 feet agl, and has once again shed light on law enforcement use of helicopters for crowd control. This incident came less than two weeks after the Department of Defense Inspector General issued a report critical of low-level flights of Army National Guard helicopters that dusted protestors in Washington, D.C., last June and the 2018 use of a Pennsylvania State Police Bell 407 to break up a large gathering of tailgaters before a Penn State football game.
Low-level flight over persons on the ground is widely accepted as dangerous by helicopter safety experts. Developing standards to use law enforcement helicopters to disperse a protest or control crowds “is not something we would approve,” Don Roby, the training and program manager for the Airborne Public Safety Association (APSA), told AIN.
In its report on the incident in D.C., the DOD IG noted a clear lack of policy with regard to deploying military helicopters in domestic civil disturbances. Among the IG’s recommendations: integration of aviation assets into existing civil support mission plans; training on the proper use and restrictions on the use of helicopters to support law enforcement; and mission tracking to record requests, reviews, and decisions to approve or deny the use of military helicopters to support law enforcement.
Transport Canada has granted technical standard order (TSO) approval for the CMC Electronics MFD-4068 Smart Multifunction Display (SMFD). One of the MFD-4068 display’s key attributes is its ability for one center-mounted display to drive adjacent displays and a head-up display, which is especially suited for trainer aircraft applications, according to Brad Nolen, v-p of sales and marketing.
The display features an open architecture platform that allows customers to develop their own applications. This includes customers such as military “programs with sensitive IP that they wish to keep in-house,” he explained, “or legacy software that they wish to re-host.” Examples of applications developed by customers and CMC include PFD, navigation, synthetic vision, and FMS applications, all of which can be displayed simultaneously.
CMC said the SMFD's target market is trainer and air transport aircraft, as well as helicopters, for both retrofit and forward-fit applications. Ideally suited for aircraft that operate in harsh environmental conditions, the display “offers superb optical quality, high graphics performance, true eight-bit color rendition with optical performance stabilized over its design lifetime and its extended operating temperature envelope,” according to CMC.
With multi-core processing, the MFD-4068 includes analog, commercial serial, and MIL-STD-1553 interfaces. The open architecture platform uses “non-proprietary standards for partitioning of applications (Arinc-653), according to CMC, and Green Hills Software’s Integrity-178 tuMP multi-core real-time operating system.
People in Aviation
Ryan Scott was named president of jetAviva, overseeing the company’s Embraer market activities. Scott brings more than 30 years of experience to his new role, including as a founding member of Embraer Executive Jets, where he served as senior v-p of sales.
NBAA appointed Kali Hague to a three-year term on the board of directors as the Young Professional director. A pilot and flight instructor who has worked for a Part 135 charter and airport authority, Hague is a partner at Jetlaw, where she advises clients in the U.S. and internationally on all aspects of aviation law and co-presents the firm’s NBAA-approved Professional Development Programs, as well as speaks throughout the country on aviation best practices and compliance.
Luxaviation Group promoted Gary Forster to managing director for ExecuJet Caribbean. Forster joined ExecuJet Middle East in 2012, helping to launch its new FBO in Riyadh, later leading the opening of an FBO in Bali, serving as regional FBO manager for Asia-Pacific, and most recently holding the role of global FBO business development manager.
Ametek MRO promoted Andy Wheeler to divisional v-p and managing director. He succeeds Alan Harding, who has become divisional v-p for Europe and Asia. Wheeler joined the company in 1980 and has held a number of roles since then, including as operations director and most recently as commercial director.
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