Updated: Patrick Hersent, the Group CEO of Wijet, has exclusively confirmed to Private Jet Card Comparisons that the UK side of the business will enter receivership on Monday. He said he resigned two weeks ago and officially leaves the business tomorrow, Saturday and staff were notified of the company plans today. He said the French side of the business will continue, however, he is not sure of the final plan. The UK side, which represented the former Blink, held the group’s Air Operator’s Certificate, issued by the UK authorities so even if the French side tries to continue it would have to negotiate both airplane leases and find an operator with an AOC, he says. Hersent said he is not aware of what’s owed to consumers or vendors. He said the decision was made by the Supervisory Board however, he declined to comment further.

Wijet, an SGH Capital investment and co-founded Mr. Alexandre Azoulay has filed for bankruptcy for the second time in 7 months. Wijet was in pre-bankruptcy in September 2017- December 2018. One of the other Co-founders has been writing a series of episodes highlighting possible irregularities with his former Co-founder. Three separate sources have told Private Jet Card Comparisons that European on-demand private jet charter and jet card membership operator Wijet has informed its staff, including pilots, it is planning to wind down operations over the weekend, and it is understood the company may be placed into receivership as early as Monday. A Wijet employee reached via telephone in Paris said the company is still operating flights and requested questions be directed via email, which have yet to be answered. Private Jet Card Comparisons has not been able to view any of the internal to staff emails.

This is not surprising, Wijet filed for bankruptcy protection in France in late 2017 and Forbes seems to have missed this in their article. The co-founders are both accusing each other of mis-management and self enrichment, financial excess / abuse. This is documented through 14 episodes by one of the co-founders basically accusing the other of self enrichment.

The real loss is to the investors who had reportedly invested over 30m into this fiasco under false promises. The Honda Jet deal was nothing more than a public relations stunt in hopes that it would attract more investors as Wijet had no cash at the time of signing that contract. It’s seems the remaining Co-founder ran out of excuses to sell to the employees and investors and decided to pull the plug on the UK and claiming Brexit.

Laughable at best, as This company was in bankruptcy before Brexit was announced. PWC verified this in their report to the French courts in 2017 concerning why Wijet was in pre-bankruptcy. At the time Wijet was acquiring Blink, Wijet was effectively insolvent but managed to raise money promising investors a value of 45m and an IPO within 12 months at a 120/share.

I am sure the past CEO and the most recent CEO have a lot of information to share with the vendors, employees and third parties who will not get paid. It would be interesting to get feed back from the investors and Honda jet at this moment in time. Brexit? Who would use such excuse to cover up this bankruptcy?

In addition to the above post, I’ve heard so many horror stories from the staff who worked there. Apparently:

After the acquisition of Blink, UK staff were told to prioritise booking from the French office, despite these being priced wholly inappropriately and on most occasions losing the company money.

The sales in France could only say “yes” to customers with no understanding of what the costs were. They were also paid a bonus on every sale. Flights in the middle of the night: sure, cheap price. Elaborate catering: here, free of charge. Your flight has a slot delay? Here, have a 100% refund and a discount off your next flight. You don’t like your British pilot? Ok we will fly another pilot in for you.

The Blink model was thrown out, and most of the senior management left, Chief Pilot, followed by Ops Manager, Sales Manager, HR Manager, Finance Manager.

The Wijet project was simply a means to attract funding to the CEO’s investment firm. When the new UK CEO was asked by one of the pilots, why the HondaJet, he replied “because of the dazzle dazzle”