Wheels Up Adds Talk & Text and Medevac Service to Member Benefits

Onboard phone calls and texting, and air ambulance service will be added to member benefits at Wheels Up, the New York-based aircraft access program. Kenny Dichter, founder and CEO of Wheels Up, announced the company will install Gogo Business Aviation’s Text & Talk service on its fleet–already equipped with Gogo’s onboard Wi-Fi service–by the end of this year. Talk & Text operates via smartphone apps, allowing passengers to use their own phones as they would on the ground for making and receiving calls and texting.

Dichter also announced an agreement with AirMed International, providing Wheels Up members access to complimentary carriage on the medical transport service’s aircraft. Any member and/or listed passenger within the Wheels Up service footprint who requires medical transport within 10 days of a scheduled Wheels Up flight, and is more than 150 miles from home, can be transported via AirMed to a hospital of choice.

Wheels Up has also added luxury car rental agency Go Rentals to its roster of partners, offering members discounted access to its automobiles.

To help fuel its expansion, Wheels Up (Booth N137) recently raised up to $115 million in new capital from institutions including T. Rowe Price and Fidelity Management.

Dichter said the two-year-old company expects to finish the year with 2,000 members spending an average of $100,000 each, generating an anticipated $200 million in revenue on about 25,000 flight hours. Wheels Up has a growing core fleet of King Air 350i turboprops, supplemented by Citation Excel/XLS jets, operated by Gama Aviation. The company projects revenues of $300 million next year on an expected 40,000 flight hours. Wheels Up is also making efforts to expand its corporate memberships, which currently represent 10 percent of its ranks but generate 20 percent of revenue. Sales reps are appealing to large corporate flight departments pitching Wheels Up as the perfect answer to their supplemental lift needs.

Meanwhile, Wheels Up is planning a European expansion, and expects to have its first King Air 350i on the Continent in 2016. The company notes that 55 of the 57 largest cities in Europe can be reached from three different base locations in Europe, and the most popular route, London City Airport to Paris Le Bourget, is well suited to the King Air.

Looking ahead, Dichter predicted by 2020 the company will have more than 10,000 members and a valuation of $1.5 billion. It will still rely on its core fleet of King Airs, which Dichter calls “the Escalade, the Yukon, the Ford Explorer Eddie Bauer Edition” of aircraft, but in the next decade will judiciously add additional categories, including midsize and large-cabin aircraft, to its fleet.