Wheels Up Signs Honeywell and Av8 Maintenance Contracts as It Consolidates Fleet to Two Aircraft Types

Wheels Up has signed two maintenance agreements as it expands its fleet and focuses on operational reliability. Earlier this year the operator consolidated its fleet to two aircraft types, the Bombardier Challenger 300/350 and the Embraer Phenom 300, and it achieved its highest completion rate in the second quarter.

The first agreement is an aftermarket support plan with Honeywell Aerospace covering the Challenger 300/350 fleet. Honeywell's Fleet Maintenance Service Plan (FMSP) provides fixed-price coverage for scheduled and unscheduled maintenance of Honeywell products, including avionics, auxiliary power units, engines and control systems. The plan builds on Honeywell's traditional Maintenance Service Plan, which is typically used by individual aircraft owners or small fleets, and is customized for large fleet operators with a focus on uptime and availability.

The deal also includes access to Honeywell's Ensemble digital maintenance solution, which is designed to proactively monitor engine conditions. A Wi-Fi-enabled engine data gateway collects performance data from the engine control system during flight and transmits it securely to Honeywell after each flight. Wheels Up's maintenance team can view engine health data at any time through a web or mobile application, and alerts are also available through the Camp maintenance portal. Ensemble is also designed to facilitate digital engine data sharing between maintenance records.

The second agreement is a five-year contract running through 2032 with Av8 for Phenom 300 landing gear maintenance, covering landing gear overhaul and gear exchange. Holtz said Av8's landing gear exchange pool helps minimize aircraft downtime by returning aircraft to service without waiting for assets to be repaired, and he expects the agreement to support greater maintenance availability as the fleet expands. Av8 says it holds more than 300 FAA parts manufacturing approvals for the Phenom platform and a portfolio of in-house designated engineering representative repairs.

Asked whether more MRO contracts should be expected, Holtz said the company is continually pursuing new opportunities to strengthen its maintenance capabilities as it expands its Phenom and Challenger fleets, and that strategic partnerships remain important to operational efficiency, reliability and long-term growth.

Narrowing a fleet to two types changes what a maintenance contract can do. With one Challenger family and one Phenom model, an operator can buy support at the scale of each type rather than for a scattered mix, and a provider can price a fleet-wide plan against a known configuration. Fixed-price coverage of this kind moves part of the cost of unscheduled events from the operator to the supplier, which is the practical meaning of a plan built around uptime and availability.

The two deals attack downtime from different directions. The Honeywell plan pairs coverage with continuous engine monitoring, aimed at catching problems before they ground an aircraft. The Av8 contract works after the fact, with an exchange pool intended to put an aircraft back in service without waiting for a repair to be completed. Both are about the same economics: for a charter and fractional operator, an aircraft on the ground is lost flying, so reliability is increasingly bought through supply agreements instead of being built only in the operator's own shops.

The next marker is the Av8 term itself, which runs through 2032 and will show whether exchange-pool access keeps pace with a growing Phenom fleet. Holtz has indicated further MRO partnerships are being pursued as both fleets expand, so additional contracts of this type are the development to follow.