FlyExclusive flying again as fractional firm targets fleet growth
Founder says charter provider has put troubles behind it and is now firmly on growth path.
FlyExclusive founder and chief executive Jim Segrave is setting his sights on returning to a “three-digit” fleet by this time next year, a total that would firmly establish the North Carolina charter operator – which is exhibiting at NBAA-BACE this week – as number three in the US market by size after fractional giants NetJets and Flexjet.
After a two-year period of churn, during which the business offloaded 40 underperforming older aircraft, FlyExclusive’s largely Cessna Citation and Bombardier Challenger fleet stands at about 80. Segrave says the portfolio should return to over 100 “by this time next year”, adding: “We are back in growth mode and adding the right airplanes in a disciplined way.”
However, Segrave insists his ambition is about more than scale. “I want to be one of the top three, but it’s about our personal touch, our sales team,” he says. “We’re smaller [than NetJets and Flexjet] so we’re very focused on customer experience and being the best rather than the biggest.”
FlyExclusive has been rationalising its fleet around three families: the Citation CJ3 and larger Ascend/XLS, and the Challenger 350/3500. It has 11 of the latter, with the rest made up of Citations, with fresh CJ3 Gen 2s arriving next year. Two remaining HondaJets it inherited from its deal with Volato in 2025 are being phased out by the end of 2026.
It has been a busy year for the company, which listed on the New York Stock Exchange in December 2023 and recorded $376 million revenues last year. Earlier this month, it officially unveiled new corporate offices in the state capital Raleigh. The premises supplement rather than replace FlyExclusive’s former facility in Kinston, which will remain its maintenance hub.
Kinston, population 20,000, had been FlyExclusive’s home since the business began. In fact, Segrave’s online biography notes “keeping a national operation rooted in a small town was a deliberate choice and it’s why the experience feels personal”. However, he maintains the move was needed to professionalise the organisation and gain access to a wider talent pool.
“To take the business to the next level, we have to be able to recruit,” he says. “I still believe being in the office matters, and in Kinston we were struggling to find the right people to grow the business. We’ve been here [Raleigh] for 90 days and already we’re recruited some remarkable folk into top level positions. They are moving the needle so fast.”
Kinston continuity
He says FlyExclusive will continue to invest in Kinston, where the company started in 2015 from a single hangar. A $30 million grant from the state will allow the company to expand its maintenance operation and develop a pilot training centre, which it will start building next year ahead of a planned opening in early 2029.
Segrave says the move will “repatriate” about $5 million a year in training costs that currently go to out-of-state providers, along with more than 8,000 hotel room nights. Similarly, much of the around $75 million that the company spends on maintenance outside North Carolina will be carried out at the new facility.
Another priority for Segrave is AI, with the company at NBAA-BACE demonstrating a system, developed in house, that allows customers to interact with brokers and wholesale customers via a bot. “I’m not sure anyone (in the charter segment) is as far down the road leveraging AI as we are,” he says. “It’s how we are improving the customer experience.”
The technology will enable clients to book entire trips through a virtual agent. “You might want to go from New York to Dallas on a certain date,” he says. “It might recommend a Challenger but also offer you an XLS. It will provide an estimated cost, and preliminary trip sheet before assigning pilots and the tail, providing you with updates throughout.”
FlyExclusive has experienced growing pains in recent years. In 2023 company made a hefty loss on a terminated deal to provide wholesale services to fellow charter provider Wheels Up. In 2024 and 2025, the company had to negotiate a complicated transfer of Volato’s third-party-owned aircraft onto its register, before divesting most of them.
However, Segrave, who still owns the bulk of the stock, insists FlyExclusive is now firmly out of any turbulence, with its fractional venture – involving 10 of its aircraft – doing well, and its wholesale operation, which sees FlyExclusive provide services to other charter providers and is responsible for around 40% of revenues, remaining “super important”.
He says that with the fleet expansion and other investment plans, FlyExclusive is embarking on the next stage in its growth journey. “Today we have a more professional organisation. We have no more investor issues, although [going through an IPO] has been harder than we thought,” he admits. “But we are now in a position to start enjoying the fruits of being public.”
The post FlyExclusive flying again as fractional firm targets fleet growth first appeared on FlightGlobal.
Source: www.flightglobal.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.