Private aviation company Wheels Up Experience has signed an agreement to sell and lease back 10 business jets, a deal the company says will allow it to pay off debt and acquire more aircraft, fueling a planned turnaround.
Wheels Up, which has reported significant financial losses in recent quarters and is part-owned by Delta Air Lines, has for several years been seeking to reorganise its business, which involves selling memberships providing access to private air travel.
The sale-and-leaseback deal, expected to close before year-end, covers seven Embraer Phenom 300 light business jets and three Bombardier Challenger 300 midsize jets, and will generate proceeds of $105 million, Wheels Up said on 23 December.
The company will retain the jets under long-term lease agreements.
“Wheels Up will continue to operate the aircraft, ensuring uninterrupted access for members and customers, including during the busy holiday flying season,” it says. “These aircraft have or will be painted, branded, refurbished and installed with [Gogo Galileo] satellite wi-fi.”
Wheels Up intends to use $65 million of the $105 million in proceeds to repay outstanding debt. It will add the balance of the proceeds – $40 million – to its cash reserves and use those funds to “support [its] planned 2026 acquisitions of additional Challenger and Phenom aircraft”.
“The actions we are announcing today reflect disciplined, intentional execution of our transformation strategy,” adds Wheels Up chief executive George Mattson. “The sale-leaseback agreement further validates our strategy via the partnership of a sophisticated financial institution, balances our mix of owned and leased aircraft, and… [provides] additional capacity to continue executing our fleet plan in 2026.”
Formerly led by founding CEO Kenny Dichter, Wheels Up went public with great expectations in 2021 under a deal valuing the company at $2.1 billion. At the time, the Covid-19 pandemic was raging, hugely inflating demand for private air travel and pushing Wheels Up’s stock price to more than $100 per share.
But business travel demand since slowed and Wheels Up’s plan revealed cracks. Its stock traded at 63 cents per share on 23 December.
Dichter left in 2023, succeeded later that year by Mattson, a former Delta board member. The company initially made network changes, stripping the central USA from a membership plan.
In October 2024, Wheels Up secured $332 million in financing and revealed a fleet shake-up involving divesting Cessna Citations and Hawker 400XPs and aiming by 2027 to operate only two jet types: Embraer Phenom 300s and Bombardier Challenger 350s. Wheels Up also plans to continue flying Beechcraft King Air twin-turboprops.
At the end of September, the company owned and leased 118 aircraft, including five Challengers, 19 Phenom 300s, two Gulfstream G-IVSPs, 23 Cessna Citation X, 12 Citation Excels, two Citation CJ3s, 20 Hawker 400XPs and 35 King Airs, securities filings show.
Wheels Up lost $265 million in the first three quarters of 2025, and lost $340 million in 2024. It ended September with cash and cash equivalents valued at $125 million, down from $216 million at the end of 2024.
The company said in November it expects its fourth-quarter financial results will be “the best since starting our transformation two years ago, setting the stage for accelerating improvement as we close the year and head into 2026”.
Delta owned 37% of Wheels Up stock at the end of September, securities filings show.
