Who bought whom in aviation: 39 company changes in our directory

We have logged 39 company changes in the aviation directory: 29 acquisitions, 5 closures, 2 mergers, 2 bankruptcies and 1 rename. No buyer appears more than twice: VSE (Desser Aerospace in 2023 and Global Parts Group in 2021) and Vellox Group (Air Maestro and FlightVector). Parts, components and ground equipment is the sector most often bought, and flight schools make up four of the five closures.

These are the changes our directory has recorded so far. They are not a count of every deal in aviation, and 14 of the 39 notes give no year, so we show those as not stated.

The biggest buyers

Of the 29 acquisitions, 27 different buyers are named. Two buyers did it twice. VSE Corporation bought Global Parts Group in 2021 and Desser Aerospace in 2023. Desser distributes aircraft tires, brakes and batteries. Global Parts Group handles parts distribution and repair. Both now sit inside VSE Aviation. Vellox Group took in two aviation software firms, Air Maestro and FlightVector. Their products are now sold as Vellox Ops Suite, Vellox Safety Suite and Vellox Dispatch Pro. The notes do not give a year for either.

Every other buyer appears once. Signature Flight Support bought Landmark Aviation in 2016, and its FBOs now run as Signature. Gama Aviation bought Capital Air Ambulance in June 2025. Destinus bought Daedalean, the Zurich AI avionics company, in January 2026. We list Daedalean twice in the directory, and we counted it once.

Some buyers are not aviation names at all. Gallagher and Sompo bought aviation insurance brokers, Clements Worldwide and W. Brown & Associates. United Airlines bought a flight school and renamed it United Aviate Academy. The largest price in our notes is Parker-Hannifin paying about 6.3 billion pounds for Meggitt. FLIR Systems paid 200 million US dollars for Aeryon Labs, and CAE paid 100 million US dollars, including earn out, for AirAsia's share of its training joint venture in Malaysia.

What kinds of companies change hands

We grouped each company by what its note says it does. Parts, components and ground equipment leads with 11 of the 39 changes, and 10 of them are acquisitions. Flight training comes next with 6, four of them closures, which we cover below. Avionics, drones and aircraft makers and charter, airlines and helicopter operators have 5 each. Software and IT has 4, air ambulance and rescue has 3, and FBOs and insurance have 2 each. One more does not fit a group.

Look at the buyers and a pattern shows. Parts makers and software firms are bought by larger groups that already sell into the same customers. Ontic announced its purchase of Aero-Mach Labs on 1 October 2026. Oshkosh took over JBT's aviation ground support business, which now trades as Oshkosh AeroTech. Eaton owns Souriau, and Victrex owns TxV Aerospace Composites, now called Victrex Composite Solutions.

Name changes often follow a purchase. Westwind School of Aeronautics became United Aviate Academy. Above View Jet Center, an FBO in St. George, Utah, was bought by Freeman Holdings Group and rebranded as Million Air. The one pure rename in our notes is Intermountain Health Flight & Ambulance Services, which brought four US air medical brands under one name in May 2025.

By year and by country

Only 25 of the 39 changes have a year in the notes, so read this as a rough guide. Nine happened in 2019 or earlier, going back to 1996, and 16 in 2020 or later. The busiest years are 2019, 2020, 2023, 2025 and 2026, each with three. Three of the 2026 changes are acquisitions: Daedalean, Aero-Mach Labs and Corporate Aviation, a charter broker bought by V2 Jets.

The United States has 21 of the 39 companies, and 17 of the 29 acquisitions. The United Kingdom has 4, Canada 2 and Australia 2, and eight more countries have one each: Belgium, France, Iceland, Japan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland. Two notes do not name a country.

Closures and bankruptcies

We only count closures that a note confirms with a date or a clear event. That gives 5 closures, and four of them are flight training. Westminster College closed its aviation programme in 2018. Gil Layt's Flying School in Australia closed in 2019 after training pilots since 1974. Falcon Aviation Academy in Georgia closed in 2020. Keilir Aviation Academy in Iceland closed its flight school arm in September 2023. The fifth is Mitsubishi Aircraft, which was renamed MSJ Asset Management in April 2023 and dissolved in March 2024 after the SpaceJet programme ended.

Two companies went bankrupt. Air Belgium was declared bankrupt on 30 April 2025, and its cargo business continues under CMA CGM. MSA Aircraft Products went bankrupt, and Aero Shade Technologies bought its assets in 2016.

Outside flight training, there are 27 acquisitions against 1 closure and 2 bankruptcies. Inside flight training, there are 4 closures against 2 acquisitions.

Every case in our directory

Companies link to their pages in the directory. Where we list the buyer, the buyer links too. Two rows cover several companies at once, so they have no single link.

Company	What happened	Buyer or new name	Year	Country
Above View Jet Center (FBO)	Acquired	Freeman Holdings Group (now Million Air)	Not stated	United States
AD OPT	Acquired	IBS Software	2019	Canada
AerData	Acquired	Boeing	Not stated	Netherlands
Aero-Mach Labs	Acquired	Ontic	2026	United States
Aeryon Labs	Acquired	FLIR Systems	Not stated	Canada
AETC Ltd	Acquired	PCC Airfoils	1996	United Kingdom
Air Maestro	Acquired	Vellox Group	Not stated	Australia
Asian Aviation Centre of Excellence (AACE)	Acquired	CAE	Not stated	Malaysia
Aviation, Avionics and Instruments Corporation (AAIC)	Acquired	Sunvair	2015	United States
Capital Air Ambulance	Acquired	Gama Aviation	2025	United Kingdom
Clements Worldwide	Acquired	Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.	Not stated	United Kingdom
Corporate Aviation	Acquired	V2 Jets	2026	United States
Daedalean	Acquired	Destinus	2026	Switzerland
Desser Aerospace	Acquired	VSE Corporation	2023	United States
FlightVector	Acquired	Vellox Group	Not stated	United States
Global Parts Group	Acquired	VSE Corporation	2021	United States
Heli-Union	Acquired	Sabena technics	Not stated	France
JBT AeroTech (business of John Bean Technologies)	Acquired	Oshkosh AeroTech (Oshkosh)	Not stated	United States
Jet Edge International	Acquired	Vista Global	Not stated	United States
Landmark Aviation	Acquired	Signature Flight Support	2016	Not stated
Meggitt	Acquired	Parker-Hannifin	Not stated	United Kingdom
Sandel Avionics (display business)	Acquired	Nighthawk Flight Systems	2022	United States
Souriau	Acquired	Eaton	Not stated	United States
TxV Aerospace Composites	Acquired	Victrex (now Victrex Composite Solutions)	2020	United States
Varga Enterprises	Acquired	Aero Performance	2015	United States
Volansi (assets)	Acquired	Sierra Nevada Corporation	2022	United States
W. Brown & Associates	Acquired	Sompo International	Not stated	United States
Westwind School of Aeronautics	Acquired	United Airlines (now United Aviate Academy)	Not stated	United States
Worldwide Aircraft Services	Acquired	Air T	2023	United States
Auckland Rescue Helicopter Trust and Northland Emergency Services Trust	Merged	Northern Rescue (joint venture; helicopters rebranded Westpac Rescue Helicopters in 2026)	2019	New Zealand
Era Helicopters	Merged	Bristow Group (combined company uses the Bristow name)	2020	Not stated
HELP Flight, Intermountain Life Flight, Classic Air Medical and CareFlight of the Rockies	Renamed	Intermountain Health Flight & Ambulance Services	2025	United States
Air Belgium	Bankrupt	Cargo business continues under CMA CGM	2025	Belgium
MSA Aircraft Products	Bankrupt	Assets acquired by Aero Shade Technologies	2016	United States
Falcon Aviation Academy	Closed	Not stated	2020	United States
Gil Layt’s Flying School	Closed	Not stated	2019	Australia
Keilir Aviation Academy (flight school arm)	Closed	Students taken over by Flugskoli Reykjavikur	2023	Iceland
Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation	Closed	Renamed MSJ Asset Management in 2023; dissolved 2024	2024	Japan
Westminster College (aviation programme)	Closed	Not stated	2018	United States

How we collect this

When we check a company page and find a dead website, a redirect to another brand, or news of a deal, we write a short change note on the listing. We then check the note against the company's own announcement or a news source. This table also draws on the running log of confirmed mergers and renames we keep. We leave out duplicate pages that we merged ourselves. We also leave out companies whose website simply disappeared, because that does not prove they closed. We write "Not stated" when the note has no year.

Spotted a change we missed? Send us the source and we will add it. Source: company change notes in The Flying Engineer directory, checked against company and news sources, October 2026.