Wheels Up has agreed to purchase six new Embraer Phenom 300E aircraft, valued in total at about $90 million, the private aviation company announced Thursday. Deliveries are expected to begin in the third quarter of 2027.
The order "shows that we have a view on demand growth into next year that clearly demonstrates the need for additional lift, and we wanted to take some of that need off the table as we complement our ongoing activities in buying aircraft in the secondary market, which has been our focus to this point and will remain our primary focus," Wheels Up CEO George Mattson told BTN. "It's the first order for new jets from the OEM that Wheels Up's ever made."
The company closed the third quarter with 43 aircraft in operation and expects one more delivery before year's end, Mattson said. "As we look out to the end of next year, we expect that to grow to 50 to 60 aircraft," he added.
Wheels Up in October 2024 announced its fleet transition to Embraer Phenom 300 and Phenom 300E and Bombardier Challenger 300 and Challenger 350 aircraft.
The company also is transitioning customers to its Signature Membership program, introduced in September 2025, and is sunsetting what it calls its memberships, the last contracts of which should expire by the end of next year, Mattson said.
Signature members now exceed legacy members, according to the company. There were 1,500 Signature members at the end of the third quarter, up from about 1,200 members as of June 30. About 1,000 of the current Signature members are converted legacy members, Mattson said, adding that third-quarter revenue from Signature members increased 120 percent year over year.
"The third quarter was noteworthy in that Signature revenue is now more than half our revenue, which is great," Mattson said.
Corporate accounts are counted as part of the Signature program. Third-quarter corporate bookings, which also include Wheels Up's charter business, was up 38 percent year over year, according to the company.
Corporate demand is "strong here in the U.S., and demand is very healthy in Europe," Mattson said, adding that they are the first and second biggest markets, respectively. As for vertical demand, "financial services is a heavy user, travel agencies, the tech sector. And we're organized to go after those industry verticals in coordination with Delta."
Delta Air Lines is part of an investor group that in August 2023 provided $500 million to Wheels Up in exchange for a 95 percent stake in the company. Wheels Up and Delta since then have continued to integrate their sales teams.
Wheels Up Q3 Metrics
Despite citing increased demand and growing corporate bookings, Wheels Up reported another loss for the third quarter.
"We're still working through a lot of transitory headwinds," Mattson said. "We just retired in the last few months the legacy fleet. We're retraining pilots, we're optimizing staffing levels, we're taking planes out of service to paint them, do new interiors, install satellite Wi-Fi. So, there's all these transitory inefficiencies that are still headwinds to the improved financial performance that we're already showing. Those headwinds start to abate as you look into the forward-looking quarters."
The company's third-quarter revenue was $164.8 million, down from the $185.5 reported a year prior. Wheels Up reported a net loss of $89.4 million compared with a net loss of $83.7 million in Q3 2025.
Third-quarter gross bookings declined 15 percent to $225.4 million. Private jet gross bookings also declined 15 percent to $178.4 million from $209.7 million a year prior.
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