Wheels Up CEO looks beyond order of 105 King Airs (+video)
Kenny Dichter took delivery of Wheels Up’s 35th King Air 350i on Friday and said the company will probably need more than its original order of 105 airplanes.
Dichter, founder and chief executive of the New York-based private aviation membership company, said Wheels Up will likely need more planes than the historic Beechcraft King Air order it made two years ago.
Speaking to several hundred Beechcraft employees Friday morning at the Textron Aviation East Campus, Dichter said Wheels Up signed on its 1,600th member this week.
“We’ll be better than 2,000 by year end,” he said.
He said that since placing the $1.4 billion order for the King Air 350i’s – the largest of the King Air family and the model with the longest range – the company’s projections have changed.
“We think the market opportunity in North America is more than 200 airplanes,” Dichter said.
The company also plans to expand to Europe in the next year to 18 months, where Wheels Up will need between 100 and 150 airplanes.
“And then the rest of the world,” he said. “So that’s the opportunity, probably two or three times bigger than we thought two years ago. And that means we’ll keep you all busy for awhile and keep the factory rolling.”
“We have had just a great partnership with Kenny Dichter and the Wheels Up team,” Textron Aviation CEO Scott Ernest said at the delivery ceremony. “They are, I would say, partners through and through.”
The King Air that Dichter took delivery of on Friday was painted pink for a purpose.
Wheels Up plans to use the nine-passenger turboprop plane to increase awareness of breast cancer and raise money to support the Dubin Breast Center at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, Dichter said. He brought Elisa Port, chief of breast surgery and co-director of the Dubin center, with him to Friday’s event.
He said Wheels Up hopes to raise more than $1 million with the airplane in the next year. It will do so through its own monetary donations as well as through solicitations of its members and business partners.
“We want this to go every year to fight breast cancer and to fight cancer in general,” Dichter said.
Reach Jerry Siebenmark at 316-268-6576 or jsiebenmark@wichitaeagle.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jsiebenmark.
This story was originally published August 28, 2015 at 11:18 AM with the headline "Wheels Up CEO looks beyond order of 105 King Airs (+video)."