Private aviation company Flight Options has raised new funding from Directional Capital, an investment firm headed by Flight Options founder and chairman Kenn Ricci, private equity firm
Private aviation company Flight Options has raised new funding from Directional Capital, an investment firm headed by Flight Options founder and chairman Kenn Ricci, private equity firm Resilience Capital Partners, and members of the company’s management team.
HIG Capital also remains an investor.
‘We are confident that increasing the involvement of Kenn Ricci and the management team that helped pioneer the private aviation industry will result in a stronger company,’ says Steve Rosen, co-chief executive of Resilience Capital. ‘We look forward to continuing our involvement as Ricci and the team focus on growing the company.’
Flight Options is a private jet aviation company with a fleet of more than 110 aircraft that provides a full suite of services to businesses and high net-worth individuals. It provides fractional ownership programmes to over 1,400 owners and members.
‘This is an exciting investment for the Flight Options team. We have assembled an investor group and management team that is passionate about the business and is committed to the industry for the long term. While we are aware that the short term continues to contain challenges for our industry, we are confident that with the continued focus on delivering exceptional service and operating efficiently, we will be able to seek out opportunities and markets where we will continue to flourish,’ says Ricci.
Ricci is a principal of Directional Capital which since 2003 has owned and operated various private aviation enterprises in the aircraft support, operations, and technical services industries.
Headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, Resilience Capital Partners is a private equity firm specialising in investing in lower middle market companies within a broad range of industries. Its investment strategy is to acquire companies with solid business prospects in a wide variety of special situations including underperformers, corporate divestitures, turnarounds, and orphan public companies. Since its inception in 2001, Resilience has acquired 16 companies with total revenue in excess of USD1.5bn.
