RALEIGH, N.C. & ENGLEWOOD, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 11, 2026--
flyExclusive, one of the largest private jet operators in the United States, has been named honorary presenting partner of AeroAngel’s Light Up the Sky gala, marking five years of work together that has put nearly 100 seriously ill children and their families on private jets to the medical care they needed.
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The gala will be held Saturday, September 19, 2026, at Wings Over the Rockies Exploration of Flight at Centennial Airport in Englewood, Colorado. The evening highlights AeroAngel’s mission and raises the funds that make additional flights possible. Ticket and partnership information is available at aeroangel.org.
AeroAngel is a national aviation charity that provides free private business jet flights so that seriously ill children can reach distant, life-saving medical care. Its passengers are children who cannot safely fly on an airline but who do not need an air ambulance. The organization relies on donated flights and some paid charter to fulfill its mission.
HOW THE PARTNERSHIP STARTED
The relationship began in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic with a single flight. Five-year-old Ailani Meyers needed to get home to Baltimore after her second bone marrow transplant at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto, California. flyExclusive flew Ailani and her parents across the country with a stop at Centennial Airport. The flight was funded jointly by a flyExclusive aircraft owner and AeroAngel’s Emergency Flight Fund.
In the nearly five years since, flyExclusive has flown close to 100 AeroAngel missions across the country, both donated and paid charter, drawing on its fleet, its crews and its in-house maintenance operation to get families where they needed to be.
“Putting a child on an airplane after a transplant is not something you do with a press release in mind. It takes a crew willing to take the trip, a maintenance team that has the airplane ready and a dispatcher who finds a way to make the schedule work,” said Jim Segrave, Founder, Chairman and CEO of flyExclusive. “Our people have done that nearly 100 times for AeroAngel and they would do it 100 more. Being asked to stand alongside Mark and his team at Light Up the Sky means a great deal to all of us.”
“Nearly 100 flights represent much more than miles traveled. Each one represents a child who needed to reach critical medical care and a family facing circumstances no family should have to navigate alone. For nearly five years, flyExclusive has helped AeroAngel make those journeys possible, and that is what makes this partnership so meaningful,” said Mark Pestal, AeroAngel’s Executive Director and Founder.
“Our partnership with flyExclusive exemplifies an incredible corporate philanthropic synergy that has helped so many children struggling with critical health challenges,” he added. “We’re grateful to flyExclusive’s dedicated and compassionate team and its ‘part of a larger cause’ culture.”
ABOUT FLYEXCLUSIVE
flyExclusive is a vertically integrated, FAA-certificated air carrier providing private jet experiences by offering customers a choice of Fractional ownership, Jet Club, and on-demand charter services to destinations across the globe. The Company operates one of the largest private jet fleets in the U.S., with full operational control over maintenance, refurbishment, and avionics through its in-house MRO facilities in Kinston, North Carolina.
ABOUT AEROANGEL
Founded in 2010 and based at Centennial Airport in Englewood, Colorado, AeroAngel is a national aviation charity that provides free private business jet flights for seriously ill children who need to reach distant medical care and cannot safely travel on commercial airlines. AeroAngel’s flights are made possible through donated private jet flights, paid charter, and the support of individual and corporate partners.
flyExclusive Named Honorary Presenting Partner of AeroAngel’s Light Up the Sky Gala
NEW YORK (AP) — Americans are commemorating the 25th anniversary of 9/11, remembering the shock, the dead and the sweeping consequences of the al-Qaida attacks on symbols of U.S. might and prosperity.
Friday's milestone anniversary brings memorial rituals — wreath-laying, flag-flying, moments of silence, vigils and readings of victims' names — and volunteer projects in tribute to a day that about half of U.S. adults remember as the most historic event of their lifetime, according to a new poll.
For others it's an occasion for private reflection — or, in many schools, education — about the attack that unfolded in a single morning but left nearly 3,000 dead and a decadeslong trail of aftermath, from personal grief to far-flung wars.
Police Officer Casey Kloepfer plans to spend time Friday at the Brooklyn station house where his father, Officer Ronald Kloepfer, reported to work that day before being called to the World Trade Center. He didn't make it home.
Casey Kloepfer was only 4, but he grew up hearing about his father's affinity for helping people and for a job that enabled him to do so. He became an officer this past June.
“It’s big footsteps to fill, but it’s definitely something that I take very seriously and want to continue to honor him and be the best police officer I can,” he said by phone this week. The 29-year-old wears his father’s badge number and even has joined the New York Police Department lacrosse team, which his dad founded.
On Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida extremists hijacked four commercial jets and crashed them into New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
The impacts brought down the World Trade Center's twin towers — icons of U.S. economic power, and among the tallest buildings on Earth — and blew a hole in the Pentagon, the U.S. military's fortress-like headquarters near Washington. The fourth plane also was headed for the nation's capital, officials concluded, but the aircraft went down in Pennsylvania after passengers and crew members stormed the cockpit and fought the hijackers.
“In the course of history, there are a few moments that divide time into, really, what came before” and after, President Donald Trump said at a 9/11 remembrance in Washington this week. The Republican, who was in his native New York on Sept. 11 and has often recounted his memories, plans to attend the Pentagon's anniversary ceremony Friday.
Former President George W. Bush, who was in office on 9/11, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden and current Vice President JD Vance convened for the observance at the National Sept. 11 Memorial in New York. Other administration officials headed to the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania.
Planned remembrances extend far beyond the attack sites, from beams of light projecting from New Hampshire's Mount Washington to a stair climb at Mississippi State University's football stadium to a ceremony at Honolulu's 9/11 memorial.
Traditionally, there are no political speeches at the New York commemoration, where relatives read all the victims' names, punctuated with moments of silence at key points in the attack timeline. For the first time, this year's ceremony will add a silent moment to honor people who were exposed to the clouds of toxic dust released by the twin towers’ fiery collapse and have since died of cancer and other illnesses. Questions remain about how many people developed health problems linked to the dust.
It's a reminder of how the attacks' long shadow has reached into many corners of life in the U.S. and beyond.
The U.S.-led global war on terrorism included invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan — the latter Washington's longest war — and detentions and harsh interrogation of terror suspects in an international network of secret CIA prisons. The U.S. found and killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011, but accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed still awaits a trial 23 years after his capture.
The attacks changed U.S. air travel, prompted new federal surveillance and intelligence-gathering powers and banking regulations, and generated ongoing debate over the balance between security and freedom. The Department of Homeland Security, many state anti-terrorism laws and billions of dollars in state and local counterterrorism funding all are post-9/11 creations.
So, too, is the culture of individual vigilance summed up by the slogan “ if you see something, say something.”
Sept. 11 generated a wave of patriotism that propelled some Americans to join the military, fire departments, police forces or other public agencies. But amid the national unity that many remember, the attacks also fanned mistrust, prejudice and hate crimes directed at Muslims.
In the quarter-century since, Muslim Americans have played a growing role in public life from statehouses to Congress to New York City Hall, where Zohran Mamdani is the city's first Muslim mayor. Yet he faced some criticism for attending the anniversary ceremony at ground zero, something his predecessors have done for years.
Some complaints came from Republican ex-Gov. George Pataki and 9/11 victims’ relatives, who cited among other things past remarks that some of Mamdani's political associates have made about the attacks. Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican, also inveighed against Mamdani attending, though the two shook hands Friday as they and other officials awaited the start of the observance.
Mamdani, a Democrat, said earlier this week that he loves the city and country and wants the anniversary to focus on victims' families, first responders and New Yorkers who helped one another after the attacks, which he called a “horrific act of terror.” The 34-year-old mayor was an elementary school student in New York on 9/11.
Sept. 11 isn't a federal holiday, but Congress has designated it both Patriot Day and a National Day of Service and Remembrance.
“One appropriate way to remember is by serving,” says Jay Winuk, who lost his brother Glenn Winuk and then co-founded the volunteer organization 9/11 Day with friend David Paine. The group helps people find meal-packing and other volunteer opportunities and this year arranged for dozens of Times Square billboards to pause their advertising at 9:11 a.m. Friday.
Instead, they will simply display the time.
Service members unfurl a flag on the 25th anniversary over the portion of the Pentagon's west side that was struck by an airliner hijacked by terrorist, on Friday, Sept. 11, 2026, in Arlington Va. (AP Photo/John McDonnell
Rosanne Spirito, 49, and daughters Sabrina, 22, and Amanda, 20, who lost their sister Catherine Lisa LoGuidice, stand at a reflecting pool on the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Friday, Sept. 11, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Adam Gray, Pool)
Service members unfurl a flag on the 25th anniversary over the portion of the Pentagon's west side that was struck by an airliner hijacked by terrorist, on Friday, Sept. 11, 2026, in Arlington Va. (AP Photo/John McDonnell
Members of the New York Fire Department and New York Police Department rehearse ahead of memorial observances on the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, at the site of the World Trade Center on Friday, Sept. 11, 2026 in New York.
Members of New York Police Department carry a US flag ahead of memorial observances on the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, at the site of the World Trade Center on Friday, Sept. 11, 2026 in New York. (Olga Fedorova/Pool Photo via AP)
Phillip Flood, 48, watches as the Tribute in Light is tested over the skyline of lower Manhattan, Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026, in Jersey City, NJ. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, center, speaks to FDNY commissioner Lillian Bonsignore, right, during a memorial to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026, in the Staten Island borough of New York. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)
Members of the FDNY march with flags during a memorial to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026, in the Staten Island borough of New York. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)
An American flag flies, with the lower Manhattan skyline in background, Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026, in Jersey City, NJ. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
