Corporate aviation advisory · Engagement record
Out of a signed contract. Into a better one.
A multi-state automotive retail group had already signed an LOI and wired $921,000 non-refundable into a five-year fractional aircraft commitment worth $11.93 million. It was the wrong program, the wrong aircraft, and the wrong annual hours. TRH Aviation was retained to get them out of it — and into a structure that actually matched how they fly.
$8.296M
Total savings delivered
69.5%
Committed spend reduced
$460K
Recovered from forfeiture
5yr → 36mo
Term commitment
01 — The inherited position
A binding agreement, signed before we arrived.
The client held an executed letter of intent for a 125-hour, five-year fractional share in a Citation Longitude. The deposit was paid, non-refundable, and the program was structured around an hour volume the company did not fly. Every path out carried a penalty. Most advisors would have managed the contract. We unwound it.
- Program
- 125-hr fractional share · Citation Longitude
- Term
- 5 years, no adjustment window
- Contractual term spend
- $11,930,000
- Capital at risk
- $921,000 non-refundable
02 — Root cause
Four structural faults in the original deal.
Fault 01
Hours exceeded demand
125 contracted hours against a flight profile that reconciled closer to 100. The overage was paid for whether flown or not.
Fault 02
Five-year term risk
An $11.93M obligation locked across five fiscal years, insulated from any change in the group's footprint or travel pattern.
Fault 03
Dead capital
$921,000 paid against a $4.7M asset share — non-refundable, and on every standard reading, forfeited on exit.
Fault 04
No room to move
Penalties attached to hour changes and program amendments. No upgrade path, no scaling, no exit that didn't cost.
03 — The engagement
Fifteen moves over two years.
Every step below was executed by TRH Aviation on the client's behalf — analysis, strategy, negotiation, execution, and the stewardship that continues after the ink dries.
Phase 00
Inherited position
June 2023
25-hour Citation Sovereign jet card placed in service
A two-year card, valid for two years. It becomes relevant again at the end of this story — because someone has to remember it exists.
Pre-engagement
LOI executed · 125-hour, 5-year fractional Longitude
$921,000 paid non-refundable against a $4.7M share of the asset. Contractual term spend: $11,930,000. Signed, binding, and already in motion.
Phase 01
Diagnostic
Engagement · week 1
Contract forensics
Line-by-line review of the executed agreement. Restrictive provisions, penalty triggers, and every clause that touched the deposit were isolated and mapped — including the ones that would later become leverage.
Engagement · week 2
Usage modeling against actual demand
Historical flight activity, city pairs, and seasonality modeled against the 125-hour commitment. The gap between contracted and required capacity became the quantitative basis for everything that followed.
Phase 02
Strategy
Engagement · month 1
Multi-phase negotiation strategy set
Rather than a single ask, the exit was sequenced: preserve the deposit, then replace the program, then rewrite the economics. Each stage was designed so the provider kept the relationship while the client kept the capital.
Phase 03
Negotiation
Round 01
Exit from the signed fractional agreement
Opened the position with the provider's contracts and sales leadership: the client would remain a customer, but not on this paper. Alternative scenarios were presented showing what the relationship looked like under each.
Round 02 · pivotal
$460,500 pulled back from forfeiture
50% of the non-refundable deposit was reallocated rather than lost — and not simply credited. The reallocated balance was made applicable to additional hours or to an aircraft upgrade within a 12-month window.
Milestone
Round 03
Replacement structure defined
A 100-hour, 36-month lease on the Citation Latitude — right-sized cabin, right-sized hours, one third of the commitment horizon. Access to private aviation was never interrupted.
Round 04
$249,056 lease deposit eliminated
The standard refundable lease deposit was removed entirely by restructuring payment timing to annual prepayment. Monthly management fees were rebuilt as a scalable structure tied to actual usage.
Round 05
Flexibility written into the paper
The provisions that make the program adjustable were negotiated in, not assumed:
- 01Hour adjustments in 25-hour increments
- 02Aircraft upgrade — including Challenger 350 class — without penalty
- 03Reallocated deposit applicable across both
Phase 04
Execution
October 2024
Latitude lease executed · $8.296M saved
Year One carried 107.8 allocated hours. The five-year, $11.93M fractional obligation was gone.
Milestone
Phase 05
Stewardship
Q1 2025
First quarterly pacing review
Flight activity, hours consumed, and program balances reconciled and delivered in the client's own accounting format — not the provider's portal export.
April 2025
Invoice audited to the tenth of an hour
An invoice covering four flights and 12.9 hours was reconciled line by line against contracted hourly and fuel-variable rates. Confirmed correct, and cleared for payment.
May 2025
7.1-hour billing variance caught
Portal usage read 60.4 billed hours; invoices supported 53.3. The discrepancy was flagged and a full usage summary demanded from the provider before it could compound into a year-end reconciliation problem.
Milestone
May 2025
4.4 expiring jet-card hours recovered from the calendar
The Sovereign card had gone unflown for six months, with 4.4 hours set to expire within weeks. Flagged for use or written confirmation of forfeiture — value nobody else was tracking.
04 — Financial impact
Where the $8.296 million came from.
Original commitment · 5-year fractional
$11,930,000
Restructured commitment · 36-month lease
$3,634,000
- Program restructuring · hours, term & fee reset
- $7,586,444
- Deposit reallocation · 50% of $921,000 preserved
- $460,500
- Refundable lease deposit eliminated
- $249,056
- Total delivered
- $8,296,000
05 — Before & after
Same access. Different agreement.
| Item | Before | After · TRH negotiated |
|---|---|---|
| Structure | Fractional share purchase | Operating lease |
| Aircraft | Citation Longitude | Citation Latitude |
| Annual hours | 125 | 100 · 107.8 allocated in Year 1 |
| Term | 5 years | 36 months |
| Committed spend | $11,930,000 | $3,634,000 |
| Upfront capital | $921,000 non-refundable | $460,500 preserved and redeployable |
| Lease deposit | $249,056 standard | Waived · annual prepayment terms |
| Hour adjustments | Penalized | 25-hour increments, no penalty |
| Upgrade path | None | Challenger 350 class, 12-month window |
| Reporting | Provider portal | Quarterly pacing + custom finance reporting |
06 — Who we sat between
One advisor, two sides of the table.
Client side
- Ownership / principal
- Authority on term and capital
- Finance & accounting
- Budget structure, invoice reconciliation
- Executive scheduling
- Trip demand, service expectations
Exclusive advisor
TRH Aviation
Sole point of negotiation, analysis and reporting
24/7 on-call
Provider side
- Contracts & legal
- Exit language, deposit treatment
- Sales leadership
- Program substitution, relationship retention
- Billing & operations
- Rate confirmation, usage reporting
07 — Ongoing stewardship
The negotiation ends. The oversight doesn't.
Live Year-One pacing on the 100-hour Latitude lease, reconciled independently of the provider's portal.
107.8
Hours allocated
64.1
Used per portal
43.7
Hours remaining
+7.1
Variance flagged
Open item
Full usage summary requested
To confirm whether the 7.1 additional portal hours were billed, or whether credits remain unreflected on the account.
Expiring value
4.4 jet-card hours expiring
Unflown for six months. Use-or-forfeit confirmation demanded in writing from the provider.
The relationship
Most of this work is invisible from the outside.
A signed contract undone without litigation. Half a non-refundable deposit brought back. A deposit waived, a fee schedule rebuilt, an upgrade clause written in. And then, quarter after quarter, someone reading the invoices closely enough to find 7.1 hours nobody else noticed. That is what exclusive advisory looks like when it's done properly.
Ongoing scope
- Exclusive aviation advisory
- 24/7 on-call trip support
- Quarterly activity & pacing review
- Program-by-program flight routing
- Custom finance reporting
Client and provider identities withheld · figures as reported