Jessie Naor: Good morning and welcome back to the VIP seat. We have a lot of news stories to cover today. Sit back, buckle up, and let's take off. Alright, Preston, well, I think we need to kick off the show with words of kindness and thoughts for those we have lost over the last week.

Preston Holland: Yeah, thoughts and prayers for the big yellow buses and their bus drivers. So Spirit officially did go bankrupt, unfortunately, and has ceased I know a couple of guys are ferry, they run a ferry company. They're my X friends. like we met in real life, but we talk on X all the time. It's like a very odd thing, but ⁓

Jessie Naor: Their current ex-friends. That's confusing.

Preston Holland: Sorry, they are current friends on the platform called X, formerly known as Twitter. So anyways, my ex, see, look, ⁓ naming convention breaks down for X pretty quickly. Come on, Elon, let us call it Twitter again. Some of my Twitter friends, and are doing a lot of ferry missions because they had a ton of leased aircraft. And that's the reality for airlines is when the goes under, then a bunch of leased airplanes got to go home.

Jessie Naor: It does. Yeah, it's definitely, it's the end of an era. There are a lot of really good memes online about this. So we'll all be posting some on the VIP Seat page just so you can see our favorites. Not in our My High Madness today, but there's some really good ones. it's a bummer. I mean, actually I have to admit, know, from someone from BWI and FLL, like I was a frequent customer of the big front seat on Spirit. And I think it's a shame. I think we're losing, you know, another competitor in the space. You know, curious to hear your take, Preston, because I think everyone gone back and forth on this bailout? Like should there have been a bailout or not? What are your thoughts?

Preston Holland: mean, I am generally, I am fiscally conservative. So I generally think that government intervention in the free markets is not necessarily a good thing. Now, the flip side of that coin is that there was a government intervention that kind of created this. So that's where I struggle with it. Like, the reality is, has had a couple of attempts at merging for spirit, like they knew this was coming. This was this was kind of in the tea leaves.

Jessie Naor: Right. Right.

Preston Holland: is that I think that had they not been blocked before from doing a merger with Frontier, and then there was talks of JetBlue, and it's like, ⁓ were trying to find an exit path for what was happening in their business. And just were kind of blocked from doing so and frankly celebrated when people were like, ⁓ yeah, we, you know, we blocked this merger, ⁓ you know, that. Like, I think that that's the thing is

Jessie Naor: Mm-hmm.

Preston Holland: where I can see a government intervention because it was intervened previously. But generally speaking, no, I don't think that the United States should buy an airline. And that was some of the rumors was like, gonna make it Trump Airlines. I'm like, get out of here.

Jessie Naor: I don't know. mean, I saw like maybe this bailout would have just led to the ultimate merger, you know. six months to a year, but I'm kind of on the same page. It's like, I'm not usually a big fan of the bailout thing. It's like a moral dilemma. It's a slippery slope for, you investors. But at the same time, like we already, we screwed up their merger. The government screwed up their merger and then they failed. So there's still less options for consumers. So not, not great, but I guess two wrongs don't make it right at end of the day.

Preston Holland: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I've had decent Spirit Airlines experiences and two horrific Spirit Airlines experiences. like, ⁓ don't know, it's a 50-50 shot, literally, ⁓ me personally. ⁓ think that it did drive prices down to places like Newark. drove down places, airfare places like Fort Lauderdale. I mean, I don't know if you've looked at Delta flights into Fort Lauderdale now, but they're really It went from being kind of economical to incredibly expensive.

Jessie Naor: It's one or the other. Thank Mm-hmm.

Preston Holland: That's a big bummer. mean, I think that like let the free hand of the market do what it will to a certain extent. And, you know, there was an intervention. Speaking of, you know, continuing, unfortunately, the funeral, we have to also tip our hats to ATG 4000 and 5000, who officially got shut off on Friday.

Jessie Naor: Yeah, it's officially the end of the era for Air to Ground Wi-Fi systems, which I think we all could have predicted just a couple years ago here. now its ⁓ 5G system. They recently the acquisition of SATCOM, they're moving in a new direction. And anyone with these legacy systems, apparently there is still some sort of, I guess, like life support for these systems. You were talking about, Preston?

Preston Holland: Yeah, there's this box that you can put into your ATG system that basically gives you a really throttled version of the 5G. I think it's like 50 ish grand. So it's not cheap by any means to kind of resuscitate your ATG system. But had a client who was looking at an airplane with ATG and I was like, isn't that defunct? And the was like, hey, I think we can put the C1 box in and kind of give it a little bit more life. I think that Yeah, it's kind of like throwing a bandaid on a problem. Maybe you should just consider L3 because it's probably going to be really crappy Wi-Fi even if you put the C1 box into it. But rest in peace, ATG 4000 and 5000, you served us okay. You didn't serve us great. You served us okay while you were around. And we hate to see you go, but we'd love to watch you leave. Starlink forever. Just kidding. I did hear from a friend that used

Jessie Naor: You

Preston Holland: Galileo the other day and said it was pretty awesome. So, you know, future is satellite

Jessie Naor: Yeah, I think it's decent. They're still continuing to form out some of their Leo options. They're kind of similar to Starlink with the OneWeb network. But at the end of the day, the 5G system still, we're talking about, I think it's 80 megabits per second somewhere in that realm versus Starlink that's getting you like 150 to 200 plus. it's a pretty big difference. know, I got to say like I was looking at their share prices today. Again, not financial advice, not investment advice. We don't do that on this show. But was looking at GoGo. I mean, their stock has been crushed over the last year. They're around $4 a share at this point. So think the market is saying Glad that you did the Satcom deal because you're getting into more diverse business types other than just competing with Starlink because you can't really compete with Starlink. They're just like eating everybody's lunch in this space. But it's gonna be interesting to see where they go from now because like you look at the finances, big revenue but that was pretty much ⁓ all due the Satcom purchase. So like I wonder how much actual organic growth of their... in-flight connectivity is happening with everyone kind of flanking to Starlink or waiting for STC to come for their plane.

Preston Holland: Yeah, well, and you know what else we have not seen is a big go-go deal at an airline, right? Like you've seen giant Starlink announcements and then a bunch of Amazon announcements that's it, right? You don't see a lot of people going, hey, we're going with Galileo for our connectivity solution, right? Like that's it doesn't help because it's, I mean, I would have to imagine that the commercial activity is a significantly higher driver of revenue, just like...

Jessie Naor: We Mm-hmm.

Preston Holland: you have to get one customer and then all of sudden you get a ton of revenue from one customer, you get customer concentration risk, but there's a lot of switching costs, right? Like I think about that, but again, point out to you that there's no one who has announced a go-go, to knowledge and in my recollection, ⁓ cannot anybody having a big splashy announcement saying we're going go-go.

Jessie Naor: Thanks. Yeah, no, it's over the last year, you're talking about a 40 to 70 percent, depending on the day, change in price on the stock. So I think the market's saying, we don't really know where you're headed from now. look, know, GoGo always pivots. And I think actually the SatCom deal was a really good idea because now they're in all sorts of other systems. And I think they'll be successful because they know the market really well. But certainly this is not going to be a growth story for them, at least this particular kind of business.

Preston Holland: Yeah, no kidding. Well, this brings to our favorite segment of the week, which is Mile High Madness, where Jessie and I go and find some of the best posts on social media about business commercial aviation. And we show them on show. Sometimes we roast, sometimes we celebrate. It just kind of depends on what we have for the week. I'm going to go first. This Chad Gilson. Chad has made a couple of appearances but his LinkedIn's to me are just really funny. his sense of humor to me is just incredibly dry. And he said, what's the aviation attorney equivalent of ambulance chaser? And it's a suburban that says it has a vanity plate that has jet avator. And it's like, this is what I would imagine, whatever the equivalent of the aviation attorney ambulance chaser, right? ⁓ got like, I don't know, the guys who are like.

Jessie Naor: Pretty good.

Preston Holland: you know, call me now if you've been in an accident, right? And they do these vanity plates. This is basically the equivalent of that ⁓ for aviation attorneys. So I thought this was pretty funny. Thanks, Chad, for making us chuckle. He's been on a heater recently with some really dry joke social media stuff. So if you're not friends with Chad Gilson on LinkedIn, go connect with him because it's pretty funny.

Jessie Naor: I really love it because I think so many times these LinkedIn posts are just like, ⁓ here's this story about something that I did and how it would have taught me about leadership and all this other like blah, blah, blah that is honestly useless. to see jokes and focus on ⁓ The slop. It's so bad.

Preston Holland: Well, now it's all AI. It's it not only is it that type of content, it's AI slop. It's like, all right, I know that you thought that leadership was this. But wait, what if I told you that it is this bullet, bullet, bullet, you're like, this is all AI. And like, it's adding absolutely nothing to my life. Like, everybody listening out there, if you're using AI to post your social media content, we can tell it's not very good. Like, ⁓ my gosh, the comments are awful.

Jessie Naor: Stop. And your comments too. Even the comments they're doing with AI.

Preston Holland: The comments are terrible. It's like, great point. Now let me reconfigure your post in a different kind of words that is clearly AI. It's like, people, ⁓ Stop with the AI on social media. Just quit now.

Jessie Naor: Yeah, agreed. All right, so for mine, this is not AI posting, but I think very interesting clip was shared this week. Some people know, and actually I will say Dirk is an old friend of mine, so I am gonna roast him a little bit because he deserves it, but I still love Dirk, so I'm sorry to do this to you, but here was his post this week. So the video was, can you split cost on a 135 charter? And then he said one person has to have operational control if you're doing that, which is just kind of mixing a whole bunch of different regulatory issues in different places and, Dirk, you need to redo the video because this is not right.

Preston Holland: Yeah, it's directionally correct. It is factually probably leaves leave something for the viewers leaves leave something to be desired ⁓ from from

Jessie Naor: Incorrect. This is like one of those that like should be explained by an attorney for five minutes and not like on a short social media clip. Like this is why some of these clips just don't belong on social media. And you know, if it's a 135 aircraft, no, you do not have operational control as a passenger. That's mixing two different things completely.

Preston Holland: Yeah, now if he's talking about everybody splitting a dry lease and doing not only are you doing gray charter, but then you're doing cost sharing. Like also don't be promoting that. Like that's probably not something that we want promoted on social media. There's a lot of people that take huge issue with that. So.

Jessie Naor: Time. Yes, but Dirk is a good broker, knows the industry really well, except for like this one post. I don't know why he posted that, but everything else he posted has been very good and factual. So keep up that good work, but Dirk had to roast you up that one a little bit. Ben.

Preston Holland: Yeah, tough go. And social media people like, here's message to principals. Your social media people probably don't have the level of expertise that you do. It just, based on the nature of the job and based on the type of person that it attracts, they can things wrong. So double check. I had a like that this week ⁓ and I had correct it because it was like, you did not know that you should not have done that.

Jessie Naor: Yeah.

Preston Holland: or said that and it's like, are responsible. We are in such a technical industry that your brand can get diluted really quickly if you say something wrong. So it's important to have some oversight there. But we also need good social media content out there. We need less of the fake skits and we need less of the unrealistic prices of detailing out there. I will let that person remain nameless. So keep posting good social media content, but maybe make sure that your script is factually correct.

Jessie Naor: That'd be great. And we'll try to do the same here.

Preston Holland: Yeah, exactly. Although we do make errors, but we do correct them. We correct the errors. That's what you can guarantee from the VIP seat. of correcting errors, the platypus is back, baby. And ⁓ the Piaggio whatever the new version that they're calling it, ⁓ has the Avanti NX, I don't know, what next? ⁓

Jessie Naor: Avanti NX.

Preston Holland: N stands for N, or next. You have the new version at Aero Fredrichshaven They did announce a order of two aircraft that are going to be in executive configuration inside with an option for a stretcher. So that's pretty cool. But the flying catfish is officially back, And there are going be hot takes and some hot opinions on this one.

Jessie Naor: Yeah, so look, honestly, I know people love the performance of this airplane. I think it's one of the ugliest airplanes I've ever seen in my life, but people do love it and it works. So it is what it is. And I maintain that it is a catfish. I did some digging on the company that bought this because bought Piaggio because was really curious, you know, kind of what their background was and what the goals are for this platform. So this is a Turkish company called Baykar. they produce a lot for the military, unmanned drones, it's in active conflicts in Ukraine, like they're doing really like heavy defense drone manufacturing. And I was like, why does someone like that get into like the Avanti? But come to find out back in 2013, there was a version of the Piaggio called the Hammerhead, which I guess is also a good name for that airplane other than catfish. But apparently the Hammerhead was an unmanned version of the Piaggio had some setbacks at the time, but here we are, know, 13, 14 years later with much better AI technology, drone technology. Baykar company is specifically in AI and unmanned aerospace. So may very well be seeing our unmanned Piaggio coming out soon. ⁓

Preston Holland: that would be pretty nifty and that would be turnaround of a century for an aircraft that has historically had pretty manufacturer support to go that to flying itself. That would be something. I think that interesting thing, and I have heard this from a few pilots, is they are maybe not impossible to stall, but it's really hard to stall them because of the way the pusher, because of the way that the catfish whiskers, I don't know what to call the front wing.

Jessie Naor: Right? Great. That's good. For Hammerhead.

Preston Holland: But the way that the catfish whiskers push the nose down, it's really hard to stall. So you would imagine a world which autonomous aircraft need a lot of stall protection. That makes a lot of sense. It's the pusher prop, which has some unique ability that the traditional pull does not have. So I think all of those are very interesting. It's super quiet inside, which people love. That's what people love about the catfish. They also love that it has

Jessie Naor: Mm-hmm.

Preston Holland: long range, it's got like a 41,000 foot ceiling, don't quote me on that, but it's somewhere up in there, it's real high. And it's basically like all the things that the King Air 350 lacks, it makes up for it, and then some. But you have to get you have to be seen in that on the ramp. And you have to ask yourself, is it worth it for the extra performance? I don't know.

Jessie Naor: You know for an airplane that's made in Italy, it just doesn't feel Italian to me. You know, mean it's the Piaggio. Like I don't know, but maybe I'm just being too judgmental. I need to let go of the catfish joke, I guess.

Preston Holland: Catfish forever, it'll always be called that. Congratulations for coming back, we really appreciate that. Speaking things that are back, Vista has been upgraded and they've issued a new bond. So Vista got upgraded by Moody. For those that missed last week, we had a great episode with the Hop-A-Jet CEO, it means that we a lot of news. And so this one is not like brand new news, but I think that it's worth talking about because basically Moody has come out and you know, hey, there's a boost of confidence here.

Jessie Naor: Thank

Preston Holland: Like Vista has been making some moves over the last six to 12 months.

Jessie Naor: and Yeah, I mean, last few weeks we had talked about a new bond issuance that they come out with. We go, okay, another bond. And then there were rumors around an IPO potentially. But then on the end of that, have Moody's upgrading them. So I'm like, hey, you know what? Maybe all the excitement is justified here. So they've been upgraded from a B3 to a B2. So it's something. Citing strong demand, good operating performance, and a growing program membership. But the leverage is still around 5.3 times. they've got integration risk from the roll-up strategy. But we'll see. Definitely a lot of activity happening. IPO is potentially opening, so we'll see where they go.

Preston Holland: It's been a minute since they bought something. I'm trying to think off the top of my head. It's been a little while. You've got the XO platform play, which probably the last splashy one. mean, I don't know. I don't know if I'm getting my timelines mixed up there, but the play makes a lot of sense pulling retail demand to put into wholly owned aircraft. You know, you the jet smarter acquisition, which again, brought in retail clients onto a platform like that's, you know, it a lot of sense.

Jessie Naor: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Preston Holland: Um, I think that there is, uh, there's a lot of momentum for Vista right now after what I think was a pretty tough end of the year in 2025. mean, you had, you know, if we remember back, they went to market, tried to raise a bond, didn't get all the way, all the way subscribed, you know, kind of things were looking a little shaky. And now here we are at the beginning of 2026 and it's basically, Hey, you know, full speed ahead, like green light, let's go.

Jessie Naor: Yeah.

Preston Holland: So good news for Vista, good news for the industry. Would be curious to see what this does for the going public rumors, right? ⁓ And what does that look like this year? But definitely good news. For those people that don't understand how the mechanism of a bond works is it's simple. The price goes up as you don't hit your subscription. So that's how you set the price on a bond. It's quite simple.

Jessie Naor: Okay.

Preston Holland: Now, it's very complicated when you get up underneath it, but if nobody wants it at 5%, you raise it to 6%, nobody wants it at 6%, you raise it to 7%, nobody wants it at 7%, and that's how the price gets more expensive. This rating is going to encourage more people to want to buy their bonds, which is net-net going to drive down their debt financing cost of capital. When they're placing new orders to Bombardier, that's interesting.

Jessie Naor: Mm-hmm. What I think is interesting here too is to see the two strategies, like you look Wheels Up, you know, that was more like straight IPO or SPAC to market versus Vista who's really gone down the bond path and then, okay, maybe, this is all rumors, there's gonna be an IPO. But I mean, if you have to look at just how the two companies have integrated a bunch of companies together. it does kind of feel like Vista's done a better job. Like I don't remember there being, I think they did slightly better on the types of acquisitions they made instead of just trying to like throw a whole bunch of operators together all at one time. They were a little choosier about it and how it fit into their overall strategy. Plus some things like, you know, buying the Jetsmarter team, which, know, is contentious in some ways, but I think, the tech side of that was really good. So I don't know. We'll have to see. I would love see how this progresses. I would actually love to see the IPO just to see how the two perform in the market.

Preston Holland: Yeah. And I also think that there is a liquidity conversation around the idea of an IPO. So it's how do you get liquidity to your early investors? How do you trade in the market? Nick Fazioli talked a couple of weeks ago about some interesting different ways that people are able to create liquidity. So I think that there's probably demand there. But I think you just look at market comps and that would the scary part. But speaking of market comps, there is now another market comp. it is time to ring the M&A gong for GMR, who Jessie knows quite well, ⁓ for going public. So we're going to ring the M&A gong.

Jessie Naor: you

Preston Holland: Again, if you would like to sponsor the M&A Gong and buy us a larger M&A Gong, it is for sale.

Jessie Naor: I like the tiny one. I like it. I think it's quirky and whimsical.

Preston Holland: I would love to see a logo on the M&A Gong. So if you'd like to sponsor the M&A Gong, it is for sale. Reach out to us. Hello at the vipseat.com. Anyways, GMR has gone public. Jessie, here's my question. How much of the business in which we all knew is still what's, you you have the wheels up buying a lot of the fleet. what all walk us through that business and what's interesting that in the public markets?

Jessie Naor: Thank So will tread lightly because yes, I'm a former employee. Yes, they were the acquirer of my company. So I will try to behave just be as factual and on like what everybody in market knows anyway. So I think one of the things that I've seen from GMR is that it seems like they're really getting into their core services. The Grandview fleet is no longer there. They have also had a lot more success ⁓ in the medical billing space there have a lot of rule changes. At we're really negative for the industry, but now they're starting to improve. So margins are getting better. GMR does other things too. They don't only do like transportation. They also run like the big FEMA contracts. So when it comes to a natural disaster happening somewhere. like a quarter of the workforce, can't remember how much, but some large person of the workforce is available to go immediately to these places. So GMR sends in helicopters, airplanes, tents, doctors, everything you need they're providing. So I think it's an interesting play. think they've been trying, I think everyone knows they've been trying to go public for a long time. Look, KKR bought them in 2018. So they obviously would like those companies to go public as quickly as possible. It is, but it was a

Preston Holland: It's a long time. It's a long time.

Jessie Naor: weird time because we had all these like regulatory changes, lots of different things going on in that space, but it looks like they've kind of know slimmed down the company, gotten really focused on medical evacuation, medical transport, and some other ancillary services that help revenue. And yeah, they're gonna be, they're offering it. 32 almost 32 million shares at 22 to 25 dollars a share Hope to raise 750 to 800 million dollars, will be evaluation a little bit over five billion dollars ⁓

Preston Holland: Five billion. That's big number. So I guess the question is, here's the question that I have not knowing enough about that side of the business, is you own a lot of fleet at that point or is it a lot of brokering, logistics? What's the core business there?

Jessie Naor: They own, yeah, own own asset own or lease. think, you know, I don't know what the exact numbers are. They also have a ton of ground vehicles and I think they do some production of ambulances as well. they're really, they've tried to be vertically integrated all the way from flying the patient to some levels of nursing support and care through whole chain.

Preston Holland: hey, maybe if they raise enough money, they can go buy a company like Piaggio, right? And then just really get vertically integrated. That is total speculation and mostly a joke. So just to be clear, for those that are listening, that is a joke. Things that are not a joke is busted for flying sanctioned Russians, ⁓ which the avenue drama that has come out. like this thing is, it's kind mean, it's, I'm not gonna say it's blown up, but like there's a lot of stuff that's kind of

Jessie Naor: you Yeah, that's a joke.

Preston Holland: gone crazy about this. lot of like LinkedIn posts from executives, which I'm like, I don't know if that's like your best move there, but what do know?

Jessie Naor: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so Avinode got investigated by a Swedish journal and shoot, I didn't even remember the name of it. But apparently, and look, I don't know how much of this is like the journalists not fully understanding like what Avinode does versus doesn't do, versus what they were accused of, but functionally they're saying that Avinode allowed people onto their platform that were brokering flights for clients that weren't they weren't supposed to. And they were supposedly or allegedly doing this by their sales team telling people, well, you should have a company registered in Cyprus or Turkey or other places and then you can sell flights on this platform. But I'm also kind of like, duh, like that's what most of these people did. Like, I don't think a salesperson needed to tell them that. I've been to Cyprus. There's a lot of Russian people there doing business. Like, I don't know how much is this, it's like Avinodes fault or this is just like.

Preston Holland: Exactly.

Jessie Naor: how people have been getting around sanctions for like the last 10 years.

Preston Holland: Yeah, it's I that blaming the marketplace is kind of, again, naive to understand, naive to understanding how our industry works. Now, that said, where does the ⁓ onus KYC fall? I think that's like the big question of this ⁓ is ultimately responsible, you know, for KYC. So, you know,

Jessie Naor: Yeah.

Preston Holland: Group CEO Oliver King comes out and says, these allegations do not reflect how we operate since April 2022. We have proactively removed all sanctioned entities and continue to enforce strict KYC controls. If there are attempts to bypass these safeguards, we want to know and we'll take action. But again, if you are doing KYC on your brokers and you are doing KYC on your operators, those are your two customers. Like, is that, I don't know.

Jessie Naor: Right.

Preston Holland: Is that your who responsibilities the KYC I don't think Avinode is offering customer KYC services.

Jessie Naor: Yeah, look. Well, I think one of the things that the investigators did was they posed as a Russian or someone who was flying Russian clientele and talked to people at the organization, said, how do I do this? And they guided them on how to do it by registering other places. But again, it's like we didn't get the transcript of those conversations. So like how much of it was the reporter not really understanding versus how it was interpreted.

Preston Holland: Yeah, I don't know. It's a sticky wicket. I don't envy that them. Well, last story of the day, we do have six or seven stories for you because it's a busy news week, is that there has been an AD issued for the Challenger and 605s pretty much immediately after our interview ⁓ with the Hop A Jet folks. So that's pretty interesting. Jessie, you've done the deep dive here. So what can walk us through?

Jessie Naor: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so this Directive affects 450 airplanes (CORRECTION: If you go back to our conversation with Barry last week, I think he wanted this come out. And wonder I haven't talked to him since this has out, but I think one the things that I saw in here is this is only for airplanes that experience like hung starts or things that seem kind of, you know, hung start-ish, you know, hot starts, that sort of thing. So I do have to wonder. A how many? how many people may not notice, you know, a hung start or something like that. Their crews just weren't trained for it. I would hope a lot more given the case that just came out, but I hope that people do pay attention and you know, when there's any problem with that engine and maybe even there's talk about borescopes in here doing corrosion inspections on that VG system that we talked about last week. hope that everyone takes it seriously and goes for this. And I hope also other engine manufacturers look at this and say, hmm, if we notice some issues, we need to be more open about doing borescopes and listening to customers when they have an issue.

Preston Holland: Yeah, I think that there's been a lot of talk around corrosion over the last couple of years. I mean, it's always a topic of conversation, but it's something I think that keeps coming up more and more and more. mean, I think back to your and my experiences, you know, we think about the Kenn Ricci episode, corrosion a giant topic. We think about our visit to AB jets corrosion, doing the quiet technologies, inlet technology. to avoid corrosion from the onset. Talk about corrosion. The Hop A Jet that's corrosion. There's a lot of people talking about this in the industry, even if it's necessarily from the manufacturer level, but it's from kind of the next layer of folks. A lot of brokers that contemplating, know, borescopes and contemplating corrosion inspections and contemplating pre-purchase inspections and scopes. think that this is an issue that's not.

Jessie Naor: Mm-hmm.

Preston Holland: I don't think that it's getting put to bed yet. I think this is another step in the corrosion conversation. But I don't think that that corrosion conversation is even remotely close to over.

Jessie Naor: . Yeah, and I think it's a conversation that has to be had. Look, I mean, this, all about safety. You know, our industry doesn't exist unless it's safe. So going have to be a reckoning between engine manufacturers not wanting you to do borescopes when you're on a plan. Because it's like, what do have to hide? We know that there's going to be issues inside of an engine. The question is like, what's the tolerance level and what do we allow to continue to fly and what are we not? What's the criteria for that? And it really shouldn't be proprietary. I mean, you look back at how the airlines have done safety over the last 50 years, safety is not proprietary. That should be an open book no matter what. So I love to see it. I think this case, the lawsuit in particular, is going to open up a lot of these conversations as it should. it's a matter of blame. It's not a matter of pointing fingers at someone, but it needs to happen. Even if that means when you open something up, it's going to be a million dollar repair to an engine because we don't need unsafe engines in this business.

Preston Holland: Yep, exactly.

Jessie Naor: See you around.

Preston Holland: Well, Jessie, that has been another awesome episode of the VIP seat podcast. As a reminder everybody, we bring you the top five stories in business aviation, and we try and give you a little bit of insight and nuggets of what you should know. That way you're a little bit smarter on your way the office so that you can talk to your colleagues. Share with a friend. That's the best way to help us grow this show. ⁓ The way to help us grow this show is by reaching out to our sponsor, ABJETS. They're awesome. We really appreciate their support on the show. They help make sure that we can have important conversations ⁓ and you the news. So we really appreciate them. Go subscribe the newsletter at thevipseat.com. We have a redesigned website. It's beautiful. It's awesome. So go take a look at that. Share it with a friend. Share the newsletter with a friend. It's the digestible email version of this podcast that gives you a lot of context and relevancy. Share that with a friend. It really means a lot to us. Until next week, which we have a couple exciting upcoming guests. So just to tease that, some really interesting conversations coming here on the VIP seat. We will see you all next week.

Jessie Naor: Alright, well speaking of GoGo and Starlink, it's a great opportunity to talk about our sponsor AB Jet because they have equipped their entire Challenger 3500 fleet with Starlink. And I can tell you from our experience actually in the aircraft recording a podcast, it is exceptional and it's way better than any home Wi-Fi I've had.

Preston Holland: Yeah, it is tough to get air to ground from feet, which is where we recorded the podcast with them. instead going down, we went up into Starlink and it was awesome. So thanks to ABJets for sponsoring this week's of the VIP Seat podcast.