OneFlight took $300 million in payments for future private flights

Tens of millions on TV ads, ambassadors, sponsorships, and free flights. Here’s what happened at OneFlight, including from the former CFO. As Covid fears spurred a rapid rebound in private jet travel, a sales director at jet card broker OneFlight International emailed CEO Ferren Rajput his resignation letter. “This is no longer a sustainable business model,” the former sales director wrote to Rajput in September 2020. “Sales must bring in enough money to cover flights. As we increase our membership base, flights are going to increase to the point we can no longer cover it. It appears as though we have been robbing Peter to pay Paul, and that we do not have the resources to weather any adverse business conditions.” Six years later, the music stopped. Last week, OneFlight announced it would ground all its flights for 30 days, scrubbed its website, and deactivated its social media accounts. The Colorado-based private jet broker said it will “conduct a comprehensive evaluation of our current operations and status.” It has clients nationwide, and had a sales office in Fort Lauderdale. As customers worry about what will happen to their prepaid flight funds and lawsuits hit the broker, the company’s future is uncertain. Another former sales executive, who was there in the early years, recalls being told that the team needed to bring in an extra million dollars because Rajput wanted to sign Shark Tank’s Robert Herjavec as a spokesperson. Herjavec signed on in 2019. Hall of Fame NFL quarterback John Elway followed in 2021. Then came Courteney Cox, Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Kurt Russell, Kevin Costner, Kevin O’Leary, Anthony Scarmucci, Vanna White, Paul Rudd, and a half dozen golfers, all appearing in support of OneFlight, hobnobbing with customers and prospects. “(Salespeople) weren’t selling a product; they were giving away money.” -Hanno Uys, former CFO, OneFlight International OneFlight’s annual gala in Denver last December was estimated to have cost over $2 million. At the dinner, Herjavec called the company “the embodiment of the American dream.” It may have seemed true. Rajput (below), of Pakistani heritage, grew up in Africa and Hong Kong, according to a blog interview. He immigrated to the U.S. with his parents at 16. The well-known ambassadors gave the company recognition and credibility. “From Florida to California, everyone knows John Elway,” Rajput said in a press release. “He is a proven winner on and off the field, and we are fortunate that he has chosen to put his celebrated name behind our company. I don’t believe someone like John would blindly do that.” Some said the celebrities were important because Rajput served time in jail for tax evasion at a mortgage company he owned before starting the jet card broker. A former OneFlight member from Colorado said that, before the ambassadors and glitzy marketing, none of his peer group had heard of the private jet broker. “We’re the quiet company in Denver that’s making a big impact on the aviation world,” Rajput quipped in the Elway press release. ‘As you can see even $4 million from sales won’t cover us and we are running it too close to the bone as it is. The revenue report currently only shows $117500 coming in, so $900 000 short of the minimum requirement. At this rate we’ll be another $2m short this week even with the MCA’s we got in from Parkview. I can see how far I can push the operators I’m delaying but I cannot hold back $2 million and at some point we will have to pay them if we want to do trips with them. I have $250 000 included for FET payment which is imperative that we keep up and don’t sit with a massive liability EOM. At present we owe $1.3m for Q2 and at this rate our FET liability for Q2 will be around $3m.’ – Email to CEO Ferren Rajput from May 2026 However, ambassadors and high-profile marketing also mattered for another reason. Rajput viewed the hundreds of millions gained from prepaid jet cards and memberships as a means to an end, people familiar with his thinking say. OneFlight’s future lay not in jet cards and memberships, but in its BAJit (Book A Jet) instant jet booking platform (below). The charter booking platform enables flyers to search, book, confirm, and pay for charter flights digitally in one session. It launched as a web-based booking option in 2017. “We are thrilled to roll out our app to the masses,” said Rajput in December 2022, about the launch of the BAJit app. “Flying private should be as simple as flying commercial or even scheduling an Uber.” A video for potential investors in 2023 claimed the company “has transformed jet travel similar to the way Uber changed car travel.” Johannes Uys, OneFlight’s CFO from July 2023 until earlier this month, tells Private Jet Card Comparisons that Rajput viewed the app “as the Expedia for private jets.” Emails between the executives included discussions about attracting private equity and even a possible IPO. Uys, a South African national who goes by Hanno, is currently in an ICE facility in Colorado after being detained in connection with a previous arrest for domestic violence. The Denver Business Journal reported that Uys was prosecuted in his home country for a fraud scheme in 2009. Uys disputed the report. The article link was also sent anonymously to this website, and Uys says both his given name and surname are common in South Africa. He is now concerned that if OneFlight fails, he will be made the scapegoat for what he sees as a more complicated story that began long before his arrival. Earlier this week, a jet card customer from California filed a lawsuit alleging the company had the “hallmark of a Ponzi scheme.” While much of the media attention about private jets focuses on apps and carbon emissions, since Covid, the industry has had numerous challenges that fall below the radar. Private jet operators have had to figure out how to meet near-record demand amid higher costs and shortages of parts, pilots, and maintenance technicians. Supply chain issues, particularly impacting older aircraft that make up a large part of the charter fleet, keep jets grounded for longer periods of time and impact reliability, a major issue since the biggest reasons for flying privately are to save time and not be delayed. Private jets face the same air traffic snafus, weather reroutes, and ground holds as airlines. Add in the spikes in jet fuel prices from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the 2026 Iran War. Many brokers sell charter flights one by one. They cost them out based on the operator’s price, then mark them up quote by quote to ensure a profit. Others like OneFlight sell fixed-rate jet cards and memberships with guaranteed availability; they give customers a contracted hourly price for any route they choose in the primary service area. For jet card members, that means paying the same price for a two-hour flight anywhere in the PSA. For most programs, the PSA encompasses the Continental U.S., with over 5,000 airports. Whether they are flying from New York to Miami or Minneapolis to Santa Fe, their cost is based on that contracted hourly price. A key jet card perk is that clients only pay for when they are flying in the jet – occupied hours in industry lingo. That means when setting fixed hourly rates, the broker, in this case OneFlight, must charge enough to cover any repositioning costs the operator charges before and after the flight. Flyers like the fixed rates as they know in advance approximately how much each flight will cost. What’s more, the hourly rate is generally locked in for at least a year. Fixed-rate jet card brokers can lose money on a given flight. That’s especially true if the broker needs to source a last-minute replacement aircraft from another charter operator, if their first contracted pick has to cancel for whatever reason. While ad hoc brokers often pass these additional costs to customers, fixed-rate programs generally cover them at no extra charge. OneFlight’s BAJit jet card also enabled flyers to cancel domestic, non-peak day flights up to 72 hours before departure without penalty. However, OneFlight still may have been obligated to pay cancellation penalties to the charter operator, something that ad hoc brokers typically pass to the client, but which larger jet card programs absorb. OneFlight is thought to have over 1,500 members in its jet card program. In a business where the markup from the operator’s price generally averages just 10-20% before overhead, guaranteed fixed-rate jet cards are risky for sellers. A OneFlight investor deck claims it mitigated some of that risk “with live flight tracking technology that matches customer itineraries with the best positioned aircraft” from over 600 operators that provide the inventory for brokers. A pivot to dynamically priced charter flights booked via its app, said Uys, which jet card members were already using, would eliminate the risk of jet card guarantees. The investor deck listed growing non-member ad hoc flights as a key growth opportunity. Needless to say, jet cards have downsides for consumers, too. Downsides that can turn hopeful customers into unsecured creditors at risk of losing their money. To get jet card perks, you typically must pay in advance, with most programs requiring a minimum $100,000 deposit, a membership fee, or both. In the 2023 investor deck: ‘From OneFlight’s inception (in 2010), profitability from flights alone has been an elusive objective, difficult to realize across all flight services rendered. This is due to the logistical complexity of scheduling the right aircraft, when needed, and at the departure point required by BAJ members. Membership fees have more than covered the greater costs of individual flights than fares received.’ Gross profits, the company said, “have been achieved entirely through membership fees.” At the time, membership fees ranged from an initiation fee of just over $10,000, then $50,000, which would allow members to fly up to 25 hours on a pay-as-you-go basis, or $160,000, which would give 100 hours of access. However, as deals increased, it appears membership fees dropped, and the focus shifted to increasing cash deposits and offering outrageous amounts of free flight credits. OneFlight, like most programs, doesn’t escrow those funds. Some companies keep those prepaid funds in segregated accounts, while others deposit them into operating accounts that fund the business. When OneFlight suspended flight activity earlier this month, it had built up around $300 million in deferred revenue, according to documents reviewed by Private Jet Card Comparisons. (We had previously reported over $150 million in payments for future flights.) The deferred revenue includes those jet card deposits and payments for future charter flights from its app. Much of it apparently came from deals sophisticated UHNWs believed were too good to pass up. Jet card deals often offer one or two hours free when you buy 25. OneFlight’s deals offered 100% matches of extra free flight credits to cash, free private jet flights to Europe, and more. Uys says when he joined OneFlight in 2023, payments for future flights and memberships were not tracked as deferred revenue, because they were non-refundable. He says accounting was arcane, poorly organized, and kept on spreadsheets. It was difficult to discern what additional free flight credits customers had been promised. Rajput’s vision for its BAJit app would require fund raises or an IPO, both of which would require GAAP compliance. Uys addressed the need to change how OneFlight was accounting for payments to secure future flights in an email he sent Rajput in August 2024. He wrote, in part to comply with GAAP, “[J]etcards and non-refundable deposits will be seen as liabilities (or obligations) instead of income. It only becomes income once we charge the customer account for a flight. We will be forced to recognize these as liabilities on the balance sheet and only recognize the income portion when flights are taken.” “When we provide cash credits,” wrote Uys, addressing customer bonuses. “We are really adding to our obligation to provide the members with additional flights in excess of what they paid. This creates a further obligation on us. The auditors and analysts will want to see our books and see it reflected on the balance sheet.” In a return note to himself, Uys wrote, “Ferren said verbally he’s not ready to make the change.” An investor deck and sales brochure both highlight the company’s inclusion on the Inc 5000 list of fastest-growing companies in 2020, 2021, and 2022. Positions perhaps gained via the aggressive accounting of jet card sales. A year later, in June 2025, Uys wrote in an email to Rajput: ‘I do know that you do not like this concept of revenue recognition, but this is the only way we will get our accounts signed off by auditors and be compliant with GAAP. I need your agreement on this principle before we can go ahead with the implementation (of the new accounting system). If we keep accounting for non-refundable deposits as revenue, we will not have audited accounts.’ Asked about early concerns, Uys answered, “I didn’t initially want to pick on a business that had been there for 13 years.” He added, “At that time the (deferred revenue) exposure was small ($6.3 million in 2022 per one investor presentation.” While OneFlight brought in over $250 million in cash from selling jet cards in 2025, money was always going out the door. It had to pay charter operators, including complimentary flights for ambassadors and those offered in promotions. There was extensive advertising and sponsorships. Uys says bills for the endless stream of TV ads featuring Herjavec and Elway on cable news channels had to be paid weekly. Then there was rent, salaries, commissions to salespeople, expenses related to several jets, including the branded Gulfstream that appears in the TV commercials, and so forth. By the end of the year, the company only had around $7 million on hand. By mid-2026, it had fallen to the low hundreds of thousands of dollars. On July 31, 2026, OneFlight agreed with Swift Funding Source to sell future receivables at a large discount. These troubles came before Ruby Dalton, OneFlight VP of Human Resources, sent an internal email (below) to employees. It led to Private Jet Card Comparisons’ initial report on the company’s troubles. “The challenges referenced (by concierge coordinator Haley Hilton in her resignation letter) are not new to leadership and have already been communicated openly by our CEO,” wrote Dalton, adding, “He is actively addressing the financial and operations issues that developed under previous CFO’s leadership and is taking the necessary steps to strengthen OneFlight’s financial position and long-term stability.” Dalton is Rajput’s sister. At the time of her email, Uys was already in detention. Uys says he believed in Rajput and the app’s future until he learned about Dalton’s email. He became wary that his role in the company would be misrepresented. Rajput, Uys says, didn’t return calls or contact him while he was in detention. Rajput’s main concern seemed to be retrieving his CFO’s laptop, two sources say. OneFlight had sold Swift $2.29 million in future receivables for $1.65 million on July 31, 2026, according to the report filed with the Colorado Secretary of State on August 31, 2026. Additional research shows over a dozen similar UCC filing statements dating back about five years. Uys says most were related to similar merchant cash advances. Other filings were for financing the purchase of a Gulfstream large jet Rajput wanted, which Uys recalls was around $15 million. Additional research shows one other was related to the purchase of a Citation XLS. However, Uys says high-cost advances on receivables were not new and had been going on before he joined. An email to Rajput (above) from May 6, 2026 shows OneFlight was living hand-to-mouth, as some had suspected. Uys says looking back, as he got a better grasp of the business, he believed that the future was in the BAJit app. Despite concerns, he thought they could lower borrowing costs by cleaning up the company’s financials and using a private equity-backed revolver. Asked why he didn’t quit, Uys says that since moving to the U.S., he had been living paycheck to paycheck. As a foreign national married to an American, he had to be cautious in how he approached Rajput. He says his ability to stay in the country and work depended on his job covering household bills. He says he has no savings and is broke. Uys wanted to build a financial foundation that would let OneFlight raise money, cut borrowing costs, and support Rajput’s vision of turning the company into an Airbnb or Amazon for private jets. Uys says he had reasons to be optimistic. Other companies in the industry were pursuing the Uber-jets strategy too. About 10 websites claim to offer some version of booking private jets the same way one books an airline flight. Unlike many start-ups that pop up from a basement and claim to have solved the digital conundrum, OneFlight was generating top-line revenue, growing fast with over $100 million in sales, and, most of all, jet card members were already booking flights through its online platform. OneFlight’s attempt to be like Expedia for private aviation, like most players, gets mixed reviews. A current OneFlight member says, “The app is excellent.” Of the BAJit app, he wrote enthusiastically: ‘It gives ability to book flight, including choice of jet, which is subject to change, but if not available get equal or upgrade. (You) can also see year of plane and when interior and exterior have been renovated as well as safety ratings. (The) app shows number of seats and if fuel stop is required. Booking also adds preloaded passengers on app and specific concierge requests – transportation and food and beverage for trip. All flights show total price before booking. OneFlight calls three to seven days before flight to confirm details are all correct. Once booked, confirmation is immediately sent back in writing with all details included. The cost of flight is deducted from account balance. If cancelled per policy, flight credits are added back to account. This entire process can happen in minutes. The app shows complete history of current and past flights booked. (It also) offers access to empty legs (and) all account info is on the app – current account balance and a complete history of deposits to account and flight cost deductions, so everything I needed – no need to contact flight ops or account manager. I never had an issue with the app (and) used it multiple times over several years including five flights this past summer.’ Another BAJit member agreed. He tells us, “The website was excellent. I never had a glitch with it. The layout was very good you would put the trip information in hit enter then it would give you a list of planes by size and price to choose from…Once you picked the plane, it would give the cost breakdown, then you would click to book it. It was very well thought out and operated perfectly, and the staff was excellent to work with.” However, it’s not clear how well the technology functioned behind the scenes. One insider says, “The tech was very basic. It was never accurate. And clients would use it to book the cheapest option.” Haylee Hilton, the concierge coordinator whose resignation email prompted the coverage of the financial issues at OneFlight, says for all the hoopla, the digital booking platform was a dud. She said many jet card customers preferred to call, text, or email their requests. For her clients, only about 50% booked online, and for those bookings “pretty much 100% had issues” that required human intervention. If this was the future, the flight plan was going to be bumpy. The BAJit app has a 2.2 rating in the Apple Store, and 4.0 in the Google Play Store. One reviewer wrote, “Horrible app, nothing like what the commercial leads you to believe. Functionality is very bad, and it doesn’t work at all for getting ‘instant pricing,’ like they say.” The BAJit app was always twice the price of Wheels Up or (Vista Global’s) XO, so (despite the deals), I thought, maybe that’s where they are making money. – OneFlight jet card client Another comment said, “If you’re looking to spend $90,000 to fly across the country, then this app might work for you. This app is just stupid.” A jet card client said, “The BAJit app was always twice the price of Wheels Up or (Vista Global’s) XO, so (despite the deals), I thought, maybe that’s where they are making money.” Another OneFlight client liked the app but said the aircraft she received was often different from the one she selected, so she wondered what was going on behind the interface. Yet another jet card member says, “They pitch you how nice it is to pick your plane on the app, and then you don’t get the airplane you picked.” He says after that happened a couple of times, “I thought, this tech is cool, but I guess you are just a regular broker.” Hilton recalls that in one internal session, Rajput said he was positioning OneFlight as a technology company. Hilton commented, “We all just looked at each other.” Uys says the crescendo of financial troubles stems from three sources: big spending on advertising and marketing, Rajput’s personal spending and luxury lifestyle, but most of all, OneFlight’s deeply discounted promotions. The latter raised eyebrows with both flyers and the industry. Earlier this month, Rajput said the marketing had helped build the brand, adding, “We are restructuring by cutting costs we don’t need anymore.” Of the promotions, Uys says, “(Salespeople) weren’t selling a product; they were giving away money.” A Labor Day jet card deal offered a $500,000 jet card for 50% off, with an additional 10 hours on a heavy jet—roughly $650,000 worth of flights, for just $250,000 in cash. In the same interview with Rajput earlier this month, he defended the deals when he addressed Dalton’s memo. “The promotions are loss leaders,” said Rajput, “But those loss leaders drive a lot of business. The phones ring, we create more business. The point is you sell 10 cheap cards, and you get those customers for the next four or five years.” The company had long inferred that it sold only a small percentage of clients at discounts, limiting promotions to five or 10 customers. Former sales executives say discounted deals had been offered since well before Covid, although nowhere near recent levels. Deals, OneFlight executives contended, were mainly to attract new customers. It seems now that wasn’t the case. OneFlight sales data from earlier this year, covering two different four-week periods, show plenty of giveaways. In one span, 58% of 124 deals included complimentary flight credits. The average free credit was over $175,000 per deal, plus credits that were based on the cash paid. While the broker took in over $22 million in cash for future flights – deferred revenue – it did so while offering more than $13 million in bonus flight credits. Four customers also earned a free one-week superyacht cruise; others got discounted $30,000 round-trip flights to Hawaii, and still more received 10 free hours on a large cabin jet. Since OneFlight is a broker, it sources flights from charter operators, though it tried to fulfill some bonus flights on the handful of Gulfstream and Citation jets it owns. While the cost of Part 135 charter flights varies widely (brokers buy flights from operators who price them dynamically), experts say jet card brokers typically pay at least 80% of the trip value, leaving 20% as revenue. With the margin, they have to pay overhead like rent, salaries, commissions, advertising, marketing, and so forth, including those bonus flights. Back in 2023, OneFlight was losing money on flights. Back then, it told investors it was “confident” that, via competitive bidding from operators, it would “realize gross margins of 3% to 12% on the vast majority of the flights” going forward. In other words, OneFlight (based on the guaranteed jet card pricing) expected flight costs to be at least 88% of trip value. From this snapshot, OneFlight had sold at least $35 million worth of future flights, including the credits, yet was taking in just $22 million in cash. That works out to a 59% bonus for buyers. Most jet card deals offer one or two free hours if you buy 25 hours, or sometimes a first flight free, maybe three hours. Generously assuming the cost to fulfill those future flights was only 80% of their value, OneFlight would have needed $28 million in cash to pay charter operators when customers wanted to fly, about $6 million more than the money OneFlight had taken in. The 2022 investor presentation showed the company took in $44.3 million for flights, while paying operators $52.4 million. Or, as the 2020 resignation letter stated, “Sales is required to bring in enough money to cover flights.” Beyond that, OneFlight was accelerating spending on advertising and marketing. Through early August, it had spent over $30 million, more than it did in all of 2025. OneFlight sold over $250 million in jet cards last year, with 2026 jet card sales just shy of $200 million by early summer. Yet despite numerous television ads and golf and racing sponsorships, about 70% of jet card transactions in a one-month window were from existing customers. Sources familiar with the company say these sales weren’t because customers needed to replenish their account funds. Instead, the new deals were sold as upgrades or add-ons for members who already had funds in their accounts. Another 15% of jet card sales were categorized as referrals. Former reps say these were mostly clients’ friends who wanted in on the giveaways. So, only about 15% of transactions in that period came from new customers, attracted by ad and sponsorship spending. “Once we had a new client,” said a former salesperson, “That person would be called on extensively until they were tapped out. Promotion after promotion.” He added, “I would bring clients on and regularly solicit them again for more funds in a few weeks before they had even flown with us.” The rep said the pressure to call clients who had just made a deposit and ask for more money was unrelated to their flying. Instead, it was about the company’s standing against sales targets. Weekly minimum targets appear to have been just over $8 million, which would mean $400 million in jet card cash for 2026. In one sales meeting, a manager urged his team to work the weekend, adding, “Ferren is on call for any call for anybody,” to approve deals directly. The rep says, “If (clients) had cash, nine times out of 10, it was getting approved.” However, another rep says it was more nuanced. He says that for a deal that was already out on the market, for example, $100,000 for 20 hours on a light jet, he would just sell it. Clients, he says, would sometimes counter hoping for a better deal. The standard procedure would be to visit Mark Dismuke, the executive VP of sales. Dismuke would then try to close the deal, though the former rep said there was a limit, and prospects didn’t always end in a sale. Steve Simard, founder of Cypress Jet, worked as a broker at OneFlight from February 2024 through December 2025. Simard describes the sales environment as intensely aggressive and high-pressure. Simard said: ‘We were often required to be in the office 10 or more hours a day, and I had a toddler at home and another baby on the way. There was a lot of yelling and screaming. I was in the Marine Corps in my 20s, so that didn’t rattle me the same way it did many of my colleagues, but it was tough. It seemed like more than normal sales pressure. It felt like everything was hanging in the balance every single day, regardless of how well we were doing.’ “When I started, it felt like a normal brokerage business,” said Simard. “Then we started doing these crazy deals.” According to Simard (pictured below), sales representatives were repeatedly instructed to approach existing clients with supposedly limited time offers. Representatives were told only a certain number of deals were available, that several had already been claimed, and that clients needed to act quickly. “They would tell us to say the deal would never be available again,” Simard says. “And then a week later, there would be another deal.” Simard says the pressure extended to clients who wanted time to consider an offer. “That never made sense to me,” Simard says. “If someone wanted a little time to read over the agreement or talk it over with their spouse or financial advisor, we were supposed to tell them the deal was off the table.” Simard says the pressure to generate new deposits was constant, including from clients who already had substantial sums in their accounts. In a notebook (below) he kept during his employment, Simard wrote on October 16, 2025: “$1 million by noon. Bring me anything. Get a commitment.” The instruction came from Dismuke. Simard says Rajput held daily morning meetings with the sales team and was also regularly on the sales floor. “Rajput would say things like, ‘Nobody goes home until we get a deal.’ Then we would be told to work all weekend.” Looking back through his daily notebooks, Simard says the frequency of the promotions stands out. “It was hard to keep up,” he says. “Every day, it seemed like there was another deal better than the one before.” Simard says, “I didn’t feel right calling up someone who already had over $200,000 on account and had maybe taken one flight with us, and asking them for more money, regardless of the deal.” Simard says representatives were also instructed to target customers who already had upcoming flights booked. For example, he says, if a customer had a $30,000 flight scheduled, the customer might be offered that flight at no charge in exchange for wiring another $100,000 to OneFlight. If an upcoming flight cost $60,000, Simard says the requested additional deposit might be $200,000 or $250,000. According to Simard, those offers required approval from Dismuke or, in some instances, Rajput. Simard says he would often walk into Dismuke’s office, and the two would call the customer together. During those calls, Simard says Dismuke sometimes presented approval of the offer as an exception for that customer. But Simard says based on his experience, approvals were routine. “I don’t remember many of these deals getting turned down,” he says. Simard says the amount a customer already had on deposit was not treated as a reason to stop soliciting additional funds Jeremy Ricks’ lawsuit (pictured above), filed earlier this week, names the company, its CEO Ferren Rajput, Executive Vice President of Sales Mark Dismuke, and John Crandall, a sales executive. Ricks alleges the same behavior Simard described. He recalls Rajput saying words to the effect of: “I don’t care how much money they have on account. Call them.” Over time, Simard says, the frequency and increasing size of free credits and flight hours began to concern him. He says he eventually concluded the pattern did not seem sustainable, which was one factor in his decision to leave the company. Another sales rep who has worked at multiple jet card brokers said targeting customers with already high balances is not normal. He said there would be end-of-year balance top-off incentives or a quarterly promotion. A typical deal would include $10,000 in bonus credits for adding $100,000. A former salesperson at Sentient Jet, part of the Flexjet group (and where jet cards were invented in 1999), said, “We would never call someone for more funds unless they were out of funds or did not have enough to complete the trip they are booking.” At his current company, he said, “We typically reach out when they are getting low on hours too, just to be helpful and avoid a commotion.” Multiple salespeople described OneFlight’s approach as “a sweat shop” and “boiler room,” with hundreds of outbound dials per day required. Since current clients would get tired of being hit up to add funds, reps said the strategy was to have a constant flow of differentiated offers. During another similar period this year, only 56 of 141 deals included free flight credits, although they were hefty, averaging $166,000. Those 56 deals brought in $10.6 million in cash, but cost $20 million in future flights, when factoring in bonuses. During that same period, 25 other transactions brought in $7.5 million, but promised a free round-trip private jet flight to Europe. If purchased separately as a Part 135 charter flight, the flight could easily cost $300,000. Four more transactions were for 50 hours in a light jet at $200,000, or $4,000 per hour. The average cost for light jets at the time was $8,456 per hour, across the Private Jet Card Comparisons program database. What’s more, all the free trips to Europe and discounted light jet sales appear to be from current customers. OneFlight also sponsored the McLaren F1 team alongside Mastercard. It is estimated to have cost around $12 million in cash and free flights. While it may have helped branding and awareness, during the two four-week periods reviewed, F1 was credited with only a single sale. That deal was $125,000 in cash for $250,000 in flight credits, a 100% bonus. Less than a handful of transactions appeared to approach industry averages. Uys and others say nothing happened at the company without Rajput’s blessing, and the CEO focused heavily on sales. While cash from jet cards sold in 2026 more than doubled year over year, costs skyrocketed. Payroll expense increased 50% year over year, and advertising and marketing more than doubled. G&A was up nearly 100%. Money paid to operators for flights was up 259% YoY. Net loss, over $100 million in 2025, was increasing. Net loss was around $90 million by summer, with about a quarter attributable to interest payments. While OneFlight’s eyebrow-raising deals and big marketing created smoke, the fire was hidden. No notable litigation against the company came from vendors or customers, as there had been with AeroVanti. In fact, OneFlight had a significant judgment in its favor against an aircraft lessor back in January. Unlike Jet It, there was no glimpse into its finances. And unlike Volato, privately held OneFlight didn’t have to publish financial results. However, an internal email shows the company was struggling to keep current with operators and the companies that had provided the cash advances as early as May 2026. Uys said the juggling act was largely the same as when he started. A receptionist said that during her time at the company, vendors would call daily to ask to be paid. The ability to send cash out the door, Uys says, was directly tied to the wires coming in for jet card deposits and funds from merchant cash advances. While Rajput and Dismuke were constantly seeking updates on deals, reps say, Uys was omnipresent, tracking clients’ cash wires for prepaid jet cards. Jet operators noted a rash of payment issues in early August, from posts in a private online forum. In most cases, operators eventually got paid and flew for OneFlight again, albeit with stricter payment requirements. Still, several operators say things weren’t normal. Brokers will use a credit card hold when booking a flight. They then save the credit card fee by wiring the money for flights. OneFlight, operators say, would end up paying with the card on file in some cases, eating the additional fee, thousands of dollars. At the same time, charter operators, who often run airplanes on a tight schedule, praised OneFlight clients for being on time. Perhaps partly because one of its jet card perks was free car service to and from the airport. Jet card members, some facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential losses, say they were happy with OneFlight’s service and the quality of the operators it used, and while skittish about the deals, still went in for more when offered. One member says he had passed on most of the deals, rebuffing his salesperson’s efforts to buy more since he already had a substantial balance. However, he finally succumbed to an offer to join the Diamond program that guaranteed fixed rates with 24 hours’ notice instead of the standard 72 hours. He says in addition to his balance, he is now out an additional $200,000 and is questioning what the salespeople knew in these final months. One OneFlight jet card client accumulated hundreds of thousands of dollars in credits, 10 free hours on a heavy jet in the U.S., and a free round-trip to Europe. The client said a friend with a fractional share in NetJets also jumped in after hearing about the deals. A competitor is asking OneFlight customers to provide their contracts. It offered to match funds for former BAJ jet card members. The company says members are sending two, three, or four separate contracts. Members have four or five times as many flight hours as they would use in a typical year. A lawsuit, filed in Colorado earlier this week, alleges a Ponzi scheme. Jeremy Ricks, a OneFlight member, claims that before he even signed his first contract, there was an upsell. Then another upsell right after. His lawsuit alleges similar tactics to those described by multiple customers and former employees to Private Jet Card Comparisons. Like others, he says salespeople and managers portrayed the offers as limited to push a decision. A few days later, Ricks says he saw an “identical promotion still being offered to other customers.” Customers noted that OneFlight carried an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau. Sales reps and their managers would point to the endless ambassadors, golf and racing sponsorships, and broker certifications from Argus and Wyvern. They touted the black branded jet, the company headquarters, and the continuous TV ads as signs of success and stability. OneFlight finally missed a pay period yesterday, although a notice claims the company will pay employees. Two lawsuits have now been filed. High-profile clients are putting on the pressure. Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis sent a demand letter. Rajput has retained an attorney. Former federal prosecutor Michael Song has “represented clients in both civil and criminal fraud investigations and investigations pending with federal agencies.” His practice includes “securities fraud, bribery and gratuities, tax fraud, immigration fraud, counterfeiting, mail and wire fraud, bank fraud and money laundering.” With so many of OneFlight’s deals going to existing customers, the losses customers are now facing may not be quite robbing Peter to pay Paul, as the former sales executive who quit in 2020 posited. It seems it was money from Paul to pay Paul. Several sources say Rajput has told people that funding is on the way. Uys says there were discussions with investors prior to his detention, although he declined to name companies. If Rajput can find a way forward, it wouldn’t be the industry’s first near miss. In 2023, Wheels Up had nearly $700 million in deferred revenue when it neared bankruptcy, before Delta Air Lines, which already had an interest in the company, led a $500 million investment. That recapitalization diluted then-shareholders by 90%. Asked how Rajput responded to his resignation letter in 2020, the salesperson said he was told he “knew absolutely nothing about running a business.” Uys says he is unsure of the full picture. He says Rajput pulled all the strings. Uys says he didn’t have visibility into the full breadth of what was happening financially at the company. Several insiders say Uys was more an accountant than a CFO. While dreams of unicorn valuations powered by digital booking have so far been short-lived for companies like JetSmarter, or yet to be realized, as with FlyHouse and Surf Air, Uys believes OneFlight could still reach prominence on the back of the BAJit app. “I didn’t think it was fraud,” he says. Other sources say Rajput’s lavish lifestyle, including expensive sports cars and other luxury items, is likely to draw scrutiny. Members would be unsecured creditors in a bankruptcy. They want to know where the money went. One customer says he is most concerned about employees. Not the salespeople, but the support staff. “Yes, rich people lost a lot of money. I’m mad about it. But I am sure there are a lot of people there who needed the paycheck. The support team was really great. It’s really those people I am thinking about.” Rajput’s attorney declined to comment. Dismuke did not respond to a request for comment. AeroVanti’s CEO Patrick Britton-Harr was convicted earlier this year on six counts of wire fraud related to $15 million in payments from its Top Gun members that were supposed to buy airplanes. A former CEO estimated the company owed as much as $50 million. That included unpaid sponsorships to the Chicago Cubs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. PlaneSmart, a Texas-based operator run by his brother, is trying to restart the AeroVanti program. Britton-Harr, who is facing a second trial for medical testing fraud, is seeking a new trial. Verijet, another charter operator, filed Chapter 7 last year, causing $10.5 million in jet card losses. Publicly traded Volato abruptly ended its jet card and fractional program in 2024. This led to a number of lawsuits, Most of which appear to have been settled. It sold most of its aviation assets to FlyExclusive. Fractional operator Jet It filed for Chapter 7 last year after grounding its fleet in 2023. The shared aircraft owners had to pay off liens against their airplanes before they could recoup money through selling their HondaJets. Charter operator JetSuite’s 2020 Chapter 11 bankruptcy saw jet card members lose over $50 million. Cirrus SR-22 operator Imagine Air shut down in 2018. Its subsequent Chapter 7 filing showed it owed between $1 million and $10 million. Zetta Jet, another operator, filed for Chapter 11 in 2017. It owed charter, jet card customers, and vendors over $50 million. Giancarlo Diago Cevallos contributed to this report.