Wheels Up chief sales officer Mark Briffa stepping down

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by Yves Le Marquand
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Briffa

Most recently, Briffa led global sales across Wheels Up's membership and charter businesses.

Mark Briffa is stepping down from his role as chief sales officer (CSO) of Wheels Up, in the interim he will be replaced by David Godsman.

Briffa, an industry veteran of more than 30 years, will remain with the company through to the end of August. He spent just over four years with Wheels Up and 26 with Air Partner, which was acquired by Wheels Up in 2022, before that. Most recently, he led global sales across the membership and charter businesses.

David (aka Dave) Godsman, who serves as chief digital officer, will lead global sales on an interim basis while the search for the next CSO is underway. Godsman has played a central role in designing and implementing the Wheels Up’s new sales and service model and will assume the sales business’ existing reporting structure, according to a press release.

The news follows last week’s internal announcement that Mike Bowman has joined Wheels Up as executive vice president, Global Corporate Sales, following an 18-year career at Delta Air Lines, where he most recently led Delta’s corporate sales partnership with Wheels Up for three years. He will report to Godsman and lead corporate sales strategy globally across enterprise customers, industry verticals and small-to-medium enterprises (SME).

Last week, Wheels Up reported a second-quarter net loss of $107m, wider than the $82m loss in the same period last year, as transformation costs from its fleet overhaul weighed on results.

On the flip side, the company’s premium Signature membership programme doubled year-to-date and operational metrics hit record highs.

“Wheels Up made meaningful progress this quarter, completing our fleet modernisation, reaching record levels of operational reliability, strengthening our Delta partnership and building momentum with our Signature Membership,” said George Mattson, Wheels Up CEO.

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1 Comment

  • Respected Conquer says:
    August 10, 2026 at 7:26 pm

    The business world is a roller coaster, but some business decisions are harder to understand than others.

    Air Partner was founded in 1961, the same year John F. Kennedy became president. For more than six decades, the company built a name, a customer base, relationships, infrastructure, and experience in the aviation industry. Then, in 2024, that legacy ended up under the control of a company that was barely a decade old.

    The problem was not that Wheels Up wanted to acquire Air Partner. Older companies have been acquired by much younger companies many times before. Amazon, AOL, Google, and countless others have purchased established businesses and successfully integrated them. But there is one enormous difference. Those companies had the financial strength, profitability, or demonstrated business model to support their acquisitions.

    Wheels Up did not.

    Wheels Up had never been profitable during its entire existence. That fact should have been a giant red flag. How does a company that has failed to prove that it can consistently make money justify acquiring a business with more than 60 years of history?

    This was not simply a case of a young company buying an old company. It was a financially troubled company taking responsibility for an established business.

    That distinction matters.

    Acquisitions are supposed to create value. The acquiring company should bring capital, operational expertise, technology, management strength, or some other advantage that allows the combined organization to become stronger than either company could have been alone.

    Instead, Wheels Up was itself struggling to survive.

    The aviation industry is already one of the most difficult businesses in the world. Aircraft are expensive. Maintenance is expensive. Labor is expensive. Fuel is expensive. Insurance is expensive. Customers expect exceptional service, and there is very little room for operational mistakes. Add a company with a history of massive losses and an unproven path to profitability, and the risk becomes enormous.

    Air Partner had survived recessions, changes in aviation, technological disruption, and more than six decades of economic cycles. Wheels Up had not even existed for a fraction of that time.

    Experience matters. Capital matters. Profitability matters. Management discipline matters.

    And perhaps most importantly, you cannot ignore the financial reality simply because an acquisition looks strategically attractive on paper.

    Wheels Up did not have a proven record of profitability before taking on Air Partner. That should have raised serious questions about whether the company was actually in a position to preserve and build upon what Air Partner had spent decades creating.

    Sometimes the biggest mistake in business is not buying the wrong company.

    It is buying the right company at the wrong time, with the wrong balance sheet, and without the financial strength to make the acquisition work.

    That is what makes the Wheels Up and Air Partner story so troubling.

    Reply

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