Platoon orders Longitudes, Flexjet wins against IRS

opinion

by Fayaz Hussain

June 1, 2026

Platoon Aviation has a floating fleet and does all trip planning in house.

Deniz Weißenborn, CEO and founder of Platoon Aviation, is busy. This week he announced an agreement with Textron Aviation for 12 Citation Longitudes. Next week the German charter business will get its 12th Pilatus PC-24. Most importantly, he and his wife are adapting to the delivery of their first child a few weeks ago.

Platoon Aviation will receive four Longitudes in 2027. Textron Aviation says that it will be the largest operator of Longitudes in Europe. It is already the largest charter-only operator of PC-24s. Platoon will have an owned fleet of 30 aircraft by 2030. The Longitudes will allow it to fly further – opening routes from northern Europe to the Middle East.

Weißenborn grew up in southern Germany. When he was 11 years old he attended the Aero Friedrichshafen Air Show. “It fuelled my passion for aviation,” says Weißenborn. He learnt to fly gliders and small aircraft at Friedrichshafen Airport.

He joined operator Air Hamburg in 2015 managing internal travel and moved into sales. In 2021 he launched Platoon Aviation with Harm Müller-Spreer, a real estate entrepreneur based in Hamburg, investing. Müller-Spreer had owned aircraft but had not enjoyed it.

The company name came from a sail racing team and yacht that Müller-Spreer owned (the sailing team has now been renamed Platoon Aviation). Müller-Spreer encouraged Weißenborn to look at having a new aircraft type and they ordered 12 PC-24s.

“We don’t depend on anyone other than ourselves. I don’t need to go to five, six, seven people to get an aircraft,” says Weißenborn. “We have one person who sits in an office next to me. If we want something like the Longitude, we look into it, I pitch it and then we fly to Wichita.”

But they do not rush things. The Longitude order took two years. It is now looking at placing another light jet order.

Weißenborn is 33 years old. He was 27 when he launched the company and he sees himself as one of group of younger CEOs shaking up German business aviation.

“Air Hamburg [which was bought by Vista in 2022] was the Harvard of business aviation. They gave us a lot of responsibility when we were young. They taught us to be self-responsible employees. It didn’t work for everyone but look what happened. Platoon happened; Luminaire happened; ELBJets [a charter broker] happened.

“Another guy started an aviation IT company that is supporting airlines. Some started their own CAMO [Continuing Airworthiness Management Organisation] support companies. A lot of self-employed people grew out of these little seeds they planted.” Luminaire ordered nine Cessna Citation Latitudes at Aero Friedrichshafen.

Platoon Aviation has a floating fleet and does all trip planning in house. More than 95% of its bookings come through brokers.

“We see brokers as our extended arm to our end clients, and they help us in making things possible that we do right now,” says Weißenborn. “Without great brokers, I wouldn’t be in the position to order 12 Longitudes.”

But he is concerned about some new entrants. “We have a lot of one-man freak shows who go on Instagram as brokers but don’t know what they’re doing. Then they promise their passengers the world,” says Weißenborn. “My first question is: have you heard about Eurocontrol flow management? If they haven’t, I hang up.”

Flight Options (Flexjet) wins against IRS

Kenn Ricci, chair of Flexjet, is on a litigation streak. In January, Honeywell settled a three-year dispute relating to engine programmes. Now he has won an appeal against the US Internal Revenue Service worth $39m in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals .

The IRS case covered taxes between January 2009 and March 2012. Flight Options (now Flexjet) was correctly charging a 7.5% ticket tax on flights. In 2004, the IRS argued that this should also apply to the monthly management fees that fractional owners also pay.

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals said that by definition a ticket tax only applies to individual journeys, not overhead costs. The court also found that operators had not received clear policies. Ricci appealed the Flight Options’ ruling 12 months ago.

This week, the judges delivered the answer Ricci was looking for.