✈️New Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Filing - Avenger Flight Group LLC✈️

Flight training co. files chapter 11 to effectuate a prearranged sale

On February 11 and 12, 2026, Fort Lauderdale-based Avenger Flight Group, LLC and twenty affiliates (collectively, the “debtors” and together with their non-debtor affiliates, the “company”) filed chapter 11 sale cases in the District of Delaware (Judge Walrath).

Founded in ‘12, the company operates a third-party commercial aviation simulation and flight training biz, utilizing fifty full-flight simulators (each, a “FFS”)* and fifteen flight training devices (each, a “FTD”). Due to costs, its customers — “blue-chip” airlines, low cost carriers (“LCCs”), regional airlines, charter operators, and training operators — opt not to have pilots earn their wings in the sky and, instead, contract with the company to train them in plane-like cabins that look like this:

Source: Docket 33

In theory it’s a good market too; CRO, ex-independent manager, and first-day declarant, Lawrence Perkins (of SierraConstellation Partners, LLC (“SCP”)) claims that “more than 250,000 estimated new pilots [] will be needed worldwide by 2032 . . . .”

Which is why, after starting out with two FFSs in Fort Lauderdale and expanding in ‘15 to a second location and two more machines in Vegas (😎), the company went on a rip over the next decade, adding US facilities in Fort Worth, Irving, Orlando, and Minneapolis and abroad in Madrid, ES, Monterrey, Cancun, Mexico City, MX, Medellin, CO, Rome, IT, Warsaw, PL, Frankfurt, DE, and Tel Aviv, IS.**

To fund that rapid expansion ☝️, there was obviously debt. Specifically, in June ‘21, the company entered into a $155mm term loan facility with Arbour Lane, Marathon Asset Management, Vulcan Capital (since succeeded by the spun-out Cercano Management), and MidOcean Credit Partners (the “prepetition TL lenders”).

Certain of the debtors also owe SIM International B.V. (“SIM International”), “… one of the largest manufacturers and lessors of flight simulators in the world …,”*** for the construction for, and leasing to, the debtors of eleven FFSs, as well as a loan from Export Development Canada (“EDC”) for a A320 flight simulator. Oddly, the balances of both secured slices of debt weren’t disclosed in the first day papers, 🤷‍♀️.

But that is likely driven by the debtors, SIM International, and the prepetition TL lenders having ironed out their issues ahead of filing, which *spoiler alert* involves a lender-led credit bid and a second-day hearing settlement, which pays SIM International €626.2k and provides the framework for a go-forward relationship. EDC ain’t as clear; its agreement, unlike the FFSs, is totally up in the air, 😉 — the debtors don’t even acknowledge “…the validity, priority, enforceability, extent, or allowance of …” its claims and liens.****

Anyway, here’s where the debtors’ problems arise. Have at it, Mr. Perkins: