Wheels Up on Thursday reported third-quarter revenue of $320 million, about a $100 million decline from a year prior. It also posted a net loss of $144.8 million, compared with a net loss of $148.8 million in the third quarter of 2022.
It was the company’s first quarterly results after being given a $500 million rescue package in August from Delta Air Lines and investment firms Certares and Knighthead and hiring a new CEO, who started in October.
“My recent customer interactions have reinforced the need for our industry to deliver unique solutions that enable customer choice,” said Wheels Up CEO George Mattson during a Thursday earnings call. “Over the last several weeks, we have worked to integrate our corporate sales teams and marketing initiatives with Delta.”
On Oct. 31, Wheels Up launched a corporate member program, Up for Business, focused on Delta’s 45,000 small and midsized enterprise customers, and was “actively engaged with 150 new prospects within the first six business days after launch,” Mattson said.
Historically, the company flew mostly leisure customers, Mattson said, with much of its flying on weekend and holidays, leaving midweek capacity underutilized. “We expect our collaboration with Delta on new commercial engagements will lead to increased corporate customers that typically engage in more midweek flying,” he said. “A higher mix of corporate flying will further leverage our network density and increase our asset utilization and efficiency, driving down our unit costs.”
During the third quarter, Wheels Up’s active members declined 15 percent year over year to just under 11,000. Active users were down 10 percent to about 12,000. Live flight legs were down 21 percent to about 16,600, “reflecting a slowdown in the industry and the company’s efforts to focus on more profitable flying.” Its revenue per live flight leg was down 2 percent to nearly $13,000.
Wheels Up continued with its restructuring announced in May and pivot to more regional flying.
