Wheels Up Sues FlyExclusive over Contract Dispute

Wheels Up claims FlyExclusive illegally terminated an agreement to provide supplemental lift.

By Mark Huber • Contributor

July 6, 2023

Wheels Up filed suit against FlyExclusive yesterday, claiming that the company arbitrarily and illegally terminated its charter flight agreement over the July 4th weekend. The move had the potential to disrupt the flights of 75 Wheels Up passengers. For its part, FlyExclusive claims Wheels Up has an unpaid bill of $917,000.

In a complaint filed with the U.S. District Court for New York’s Southern District, Wheels Up accused FlyExclusive of “baselessly” demanding $600,000 in two separate additional payments for flights over the weekend that Wheels Up said it had already paid for via “tens of millions of dollars in deposits” provided to FlyExclusive under a “fleet guaranteed revenue program agreement” (GRP). The agreement has been in force since Nov. 1, 2021, and was scheduled to run for 18 months of normal operations and a 10-month “draw-down” period to allow FlyExclusive to reintegrate capacity allocated to Wheels Up into FlyExclusive’s regular operations. Wheels Up said the deposits were sufficient to cover six months’ worth of flight activity. The GRP provided Wheels Up access to specific FlyExclusive aircraft and guaranteed FlyExclusive a set number of flight hours for each aircraft assigned to Wheels Up, reconciled on both a monthly and quarterly basis.

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