Flexjet’s fleet includes 325 aircraft.
Cleveland-based Flexjet has introduced three Gulfstream G700 ultra-long-range cabin aircraft into its fractional fleet, officially launching its new G700 program.
The G700 is a good fit because customers are getting younger and flying farther, company officials say. Flexjet now averages 41 flights a week across the Atlantic, or eight flights per day.
By the end of 2026, Flexjet expects to have taken delivery of 12 G700s in order to get to “critical mass,” Kenn Ricci, Flexjet chairman, told Aviation Week following the Sept. 16 rollout at its Cleveland headquarters.
“You need about 12 airplanes in a fleet to have critical mass, probably more in the 700 because they’ll be farther away from home. “
By the end of next year, “we’ll have them all bought – whether they will all be in service because it takes six-to-nine months to outfit them.
In just the past nine months, Flexjet announced an $800 million private equity investment from LVMH and partners in July, a $7 billion order for Embraer aircraft in February and a successful public bond offering in December that Flexjet CEO Michael Silvestro is “trading at a 6% premium to their issue price.”
These big announcements are not linked by Flexjet wanting to become the largest private aviation fractional jet company, but rather, extending the luxury experience it provides.
It moved into a “luxury, experiential kind of journey” about five years ago as a way to differentiate its aircraft subscription business and control more of the total flying experience, says Silvestro. That includes things such as launching the Red Label Academy, buying Constant Aviation and Flying Colours in 2023 to bring maintenance in house, expanding its boutique-style LXi Cabin Collection of interiors, expanding private terminals and launching a world-class global command center.
“For the preeminent luxury company in the world (LVMH) to have evaluated and then invested in Flexjet, I think speaks volumes to what they saw in us” and validates its move into that luxury, experiential journey, says Silvestro. “I think our customers can kind of see an increased pace to what we’ve done in the past” and “it’ll just be more and faster” now—from aircraft acquisitions to Chairman’s Club events to its FX Lux travel group—because of the LVMH group’s investment and the potential partnership its brands, including Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Tiffany, Dom Perignon and Bulgari, provide.
Flexjet got a cold call from LVMH in February and discussed what it saw as the future of luxury—which includes time, health and wellness, and the time part is enhanced by private travel.
“We backed into the $800 million” by “thinking about what we would do with the money,” which will include investing in more infrastructure and rapid growth in the international programs, Flexjet Chairman Kenn Ricci says.
Flexjet operates about 40-50 flights across the Atlantic per week from the U.S., “but all those planes end up on the other side, so we need customers on the other side to come back, so part of the international infrastructure” investment will be spent on sales and marketing to generate an international following, says Ricci.
For infrastructure investment, expect Flexjet to focus on its customers’ fixed-based operator (FBO) and terminal experience. “We’re seeing a lot of difficulty now on the FBO side,” says Ricci. If customers “get bad catering and bad line service” at FBOs, that “reflects poorly on what we’re try to do to deliver high-end service,” so he says “solving the FBO experience is part of infrastructure.” Flexjet already operates 11 private terminals, which allows it control all of the customer touchpoints there. However, solving the FBO problem might not necessarily require building more private terminals—instead, it might be placing its own teams at FBOs to take care of its owners and customers.
Fleet
Flexjet’s fleet currently includes 325 aircraft. It sells aircraft in a five-year period, and at the end of that, owners can either invest more capital in a new aircraft or keep the same aircraft, but it comes off warranty so the operating costs increase, explains Ricci. At the end of the 10-year period, which can be 10-12 years because all owners do not come on the same day, “they move into core fleet or they move into leasing or jet cards,” he says. “So those planes back up our fleet between years 10 and 15, and then we sell them at 15,” says Ricci. When Flexjet aircraft reach that age, they usually have 10,000-12,000 hr. on them, "so it’s time for them to leave.”
Speaking of which, Flexjet is in the process of phasing out its Bombardier Challenger 300s. Embraer’s Praetor 600, which is part of that $7 billion February order, will replace those in the super-midsize business jet category.
This means a lot of the new aircraft orders will replace the existing fleet, “but the growth has been pretty steady at about 10%-12% per year of new add-ons, which I think is digestible,” says Ricci.
“The fleet will grow by 15 to 20 to 30 aircraft per year, but we buy 40-50 to end up with the 30 because of the replacement cycle,” he adds.
Outlook
The Flexjet executives view the future of private travel positively in the short and long term. “I think short term is driven a lot by the [aircraft] bonus depreciation” in the U.S. administration’s Big Beautiful Bill, says Silvestro. And long term, he is even more positive because “I think private aviation has become the ultimate luxury because it’s the only thing that [customers] can do to get more time in a 24-hr. day.”
As with other private aviation companies, Flexjet has benefited from a younger clientele since the COVID pandemic. “You have a whole tranche of 40-somethings that a generation ago waited another 10-15 years because of the sensibilities which that generation had in terms of spending money,” says Silvestro. “The 40 year olds are all in, so we see a drastically younger flyer than we ever had before.”
This is part of why Flexjet is migrating its fleet from smaller jets to bigger ones. Ten years ago Flexjet did not operate large-cabin aircraft. "While our light jets are still important, they’re the smallest part of our business,” he adds.
In addition, those flyers often do not start in light jets and work their way up. “They are going right into mid-, super-mid and heavies,” says Silvestro.
In about the next five years, the Middle East could be a natural progression for expansion, says Silvestro, who points out, “there’s lots of travel between London and the Middle East.”
Related Content
