The fashion for fractional

opinion

by Fayaz Hussain

June 29, 2026

Headquartered in Calgary with offices in Toronto and Montreal, AirSprint serves more than 600 fractional owners.

Private equity firms have always liked flying on fractional aircraft. They also like buying them. Canada’s largest fractional operator AirSprint has been sold to two local private equity investors: Onex Partners and TriWest Capital Partners.

Last year saw L Catterton (the private equity fund of LVMH), KSL Capital Partners and J Safra investing $800m in Flexjet. KKR also led a $350m funding round for Bond (a mixture of equity and debt).

As with those deals the investors are relying on the experience of the company’s management. James Elian will continue to be president and CEO. Judson Macor, who was chairman and founded the company 26 years ago, will become chairman emeritus.

“For the past 26 years, AirSprint’s success has been built on the trust, dedication and support of our employees, fractional owners, partners, suppliers and shareholders,” said Macor. “I am deeply grateful to everyone who has contributed to our journey and helped establish AirSprint as Canada’s leading private aviation company.”

This is a big deal for Canada. AirSprint launched in 2000 with a single PC-12 and now operates almost a third of all business jet flights in the country. It has 46 aircraft, a mixture of Embraer Praetor 500/600, Embraer Legacy 450/500, Cessna Citation CJ3+, and Cessna Citation CJ2+s. And more than 400 employees and 600 customers.

Onex says the investment will be used to grow the company’s fleet and invest in new systems. “Judson Macor founded and grew the company from a single aircraft into a national private aviation platform defined by an uncompromising dedication to its fractional owners, and we’re proud to help carry that legacy forward,” said Faiz Hemani, MD, Onex Partners.

The sale is set to close in the next few months. Jefferies and CIBC Capital Markets advised AirSprint on the sale. Blake, Cassels & Graydon was the legal adviser. Onex was advised by RBC Capital Markets. Goodmans, Kirkland & Ellis and DLA Piper were its legal adviser.

AirSprint has successfully demonstrated that fractional ownership works in Canada, one of the world’s most mature business aviation markets. But building a fractional operator is hard.

Berkshire Hathaway bought NetJets in 1998 and over the next 11 years it lost $157m. This was without Berkshire Hathaway charging any interest. If NetJets had had to source debt it would have been closer to $500m.

“A few years ago, NetJets was my number one worry: its costs were far out of line with revenues, and cash was haemorrhaging,” wrote Warren Buffett, Berkshire’s chairman in his 2011 shareholder letter. “Without Berkshire’s support, NetJets would have gone broke.” NetJets is now extremely profitable.

Flexjet this week formally announced that it is adding the Gulfstream G500 to replace its existing Gulfstream G550s. This is not a surprise. Gulfstream has also agreed to not sell new G500 and G700 deliveries to any other fractional companies.

KKR’s investment in Bond is different. They have gone in before it has started flying. Although Bill Papariella, Bond’s founder, and his team have already successfully provided a good return to KKR when they sold Jet Edge.

It is now a year since Bond placed its 50-aircraft order with Bombardier. It will take delivery of its first aircraft early next year and has already sold all the shares for 2027. All of the first 100 customers – which includes a significant group of billionaires – have also come in as investors.

This is not the first time that Onex has made a big bet on business aviation. In 2007 it bought Hawker Beechcraft with Goldman Sachs for $3.3bn (they used a lot of leveraged debt). Hopefully it will have a better exit with AirSprint.