Fly Alliance sells parts business to former CEO

opinion

by Yves Le Marquand

August 24, 2026

Wargo says deal allows him to invest much more capital into the business.

It was only a temporary parting of ways for Kevin Wargo and the aircraft disassembly and spare parts business he started at his former company Fly Alliance.

Altitude Parts, led by Wargo, has acquired all aircraft parts inventory and warehouses from Fly Alliance in a deal worth about $100m.

The transaction, which officially closed last week, includes an Orlando, Florida warehouse with 156 disassembled aircraft and more than 42,000 spare parts, Wargo tells CJI.

Wargo left Fly Alliance, the company he co-founded alongside Christopher Tasca in 2019, back in July after a management buyout. He then took an ownership interest in management and charter firm Sky Travel Solutions through Cove Capital Investments, a company he founded in September 2025 alongside Samantha Nunez. Cove Capital also owns Altitude Parts.

Not long after Wargo left, Fly Alliance approached him to take over the parts business. “We found it best that the parts business got broken off and sold on to me,” he says. “We’ll be doing some more closing elements over the next two weeks. But essentially, the deal took effect as of the 17th of August.”

The deal allows Wargo to invest much more capital into the business.

“Our volume is going to be greatly increased,” he says. “The other variable is we typically had Fly Alliance do the majority of the disassembly of the aircraft and the part certification. While they’ll still be a primary vendor, there will be other vendors too because of the amount of workload needed to keep up with our future inbound projects.”

Under Fly Alliance, the parts business was averaging about three aircraft disassemblies a month over the past three years. Wargo plans to double that input and output and expand into new aircraft types.

“We have typically focused on certain types of aircraft, Gulfstream, Global Express, Learjets. But we are really focused on what is the right value and what the market needs in terms of engines and spares,” he says. “We are taking on our first Hawker 4000.”

Internally, the business will see minimal change. All staff will remain in position. Florida will continue to be the base of operations. Manny Perez who headed up the segment at Fly Alliance joins Altitude Parts as president. The company will also add a head of finance to act as his right-hand. “The two of them will be the driving force for how do we double output, and then how do we reinvest in the parts inventory that we already have,” he says.

Wargo plans to double down on global expansion. “The new exciting element, I would say, from a location standpoint is within the next 12 months, we’ll have actual physical space in the UAE for the Middle East, India and the rest of Asia,” he says.

“We had started doing that, but other focuses with the US business meant it was slow moving. Now we’re on a track to have full warehousing and distributing of parts overseas.”

International expansion will lead to a number of strategic acquisitions. “We’ve gone through the effort of starting up our San Marino AOC, the India NSOP and then our base of operations in Dubai. Those three entities are a big piece of our worldwide operations. Also, the aircraft finance leasing that we’re taking into India is the other big element for our focus,” he says.

Business growth aside, rotable inventory is the top priority. Fly Alliance typically did not reinvest in inventory, it would sell in an outright condition or make a sale in an exchange, take back the core and store it. “Now we’re actually actively pursuing overhauls and repairs of units in order to keep the revenue from that single unit going for years to come, not just a one-time sale,” says Wargo.

“What we look at a lot is the generators, alternators, converters and then wheels and brakes – the high-use parts,” he continues. “But the biggest reason that our business is thriving on the parts side is because of the engine shortage. The spares market and the aftermarket engine programmes need our support in order to keep the contractual obligations met on the aircraft they support while the overhauls take five times longer than they have done.”

Meanwhile, the operations of Altitude Parts and Sky Travel Solutions, which operates 11 aircraft, will remain largely separate.

“Sky Travel allows us to have a management company to hold and maintain aircraft for customers,” says Wargo. “We’re not out there to buy planes and charter them out. But having US Part 135 operations is a key element of management because we need to make sure that we can bring an aircraft in, we can operate it for a couple of years, and then it could end up in the disassembly world down the line.”

Although his passport does not list ‘The Parts Guy’ as his middle name (yet), if a colleague addresses him as such, Wargo is likely to respond. Especially with supply chain pressures forecast to persist.