Wheels Up Experience, an upstart in the membership-driven private jet industry, is retooling its business model and consulting with restructuring advisers to try to survive the post-COVID era and avoid the bankruptcy filings that have plagued other pandemic darlings, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Air travelers flocked to Wheels Up after the pandemic’s onset, helping the company go public in a mid-2021 merger with a special-purpose acquisition company. Since then, its stock price has dwindled from a $110 high to a fraction of that amid widening losses and the unexpected departure in May of founder and former chief executive Kenneth Dichter. The private jet service is now refocusing on its busiest flight corridors and curtailing service elsewhere. It has also hired restructuring lawyers from Kirkland & Ellis as it evaluates its options, a company representative said. The representative said Wheels Up is “working with a number of advisors and industry participants around securing new strategic investments, raising capital, and executing previously disclosed strategic divestitures.”
