The Scissortail Brief | June 29–July 6, 2026

Happy belated Fourth of July, Fam. We're a day late this week due to some summer travel coinciding with my wife’s birthday, but here we are, dispatching from beautiful Vail, CO.

This past week, a heat dome cooked the eastern half of the country through the holiday along with flight schedules. Fuel is below $7.50 nationally for the first time since February. The NTSB still hasn't published the Laredo preliminary, but new details are emerging about the crew's day. Farnborough is two weeks out. The World Cup knockout rounds have started. And the public comment window on NetJets' petition to extend crew duty times for Global 7500 and 8000 operations closed July 2.

Safety: Laredo Update: New Details, Still No Preliminary

The NTSB has not published the preliminary report on the June 16 NetJets Citation Latitude crash in Laredo. As of today, that's 21 days since the accident and nine days past the informal two-week target NTSB investigator Mitchell Gallo mentioned at the June 18 press conference. That's not unusual for an investigation at this level of complexity, but we’re all waiting with bated breath.

What has emerged from credible secondhand accounts in pilot forums is a detail about the crew's day. According to a source described as a recently retired NetJets employee, the accident crew was on their fourth leg of the day. The reported route: Denver to Scottsdale, Scottsdale to Ensenada, Ensenada to Los Cabos, and then the accident leg from Los Cabos to Austin (diverted to Laredo). That’s four legs with two border crossings.

That routing, if confirmed, puts a different lens on the crew's report of low fuel. A Citation Latitude has roughly 2,700 nautical miles of range. Los Cabos to Austin is approximately 1,200 nautical miles. A trip that short shouldn't produce a low fuel emergency. Whether fuel planning, misfueling on the ground in Cabo, or something else drove the crew's report will be answered by the FDR and CVR. The NTSB will have analyzed both recorders by now. The preliminary, when it publishes, will be the first public look at what they show.

NetJets is staying mum, as they should.

Regulatory: NetJets Global Crew Duty Petition Comment Window Closes

The public comment window on NetJets' petition to the FAA for extended crew duty limits on Global 7500 and 8000 operations closed July 2.

As covered in a prior Brief, NetJets is asking for authorization to fly its Global 7500 and 8000 to their full endurance of 16-17 hours with four-pilot crews, and to extend the maximum duty period from 20 to 21 hours for those operations. The petitions are filed under 14 CFR 135.269, the Part 135 rules governing unscheduled three- and four-pilot operations.

The comment docket, FAA-2026-3840, drew substantive opposition. The Private Aviation Safety Alliance argued the FAA should not alter fatigue-related guardrails for a single operator through an individualized exemption, and that any reconsideration of ultra-long-range Part 135 duty limits should happen through a broader rulemaking process available to all certificate holders. Several NetJets crew members filed comments of their own, noting that current crew rest facilities on the Global 7500 are inadequate for flights at the limits already permitted, let alone extended ones.

The FAA will now review the comments and make a determination. There's no fixed timeline for that decision. Given the accident at Laredo and the scrutiny on NetJets operations generally right now, the petition faces a more complicated political environment than it would have a few weeks ago, I think..

Calendar: Farnborough Airshow, July 20–24

Across the pond, Farnborough International Airshow runs July 20–24 in Hampshire, UK. The show is the largest biennial aerospace trade event on the calendar in even-numbered years, alternating with Paris in odd years. More than 1,500 exhibitors from 48 countries are expected, along with 80,000-plus trade visitors.

For bizav, Farnborough is primarily a product and order announcement platform. The static display this year includes the Bombardier Global 8000, which will be flying in the display program. The Falcon 10X, which completed its maiden flight on June 19, will be notable by its presence or absence from the display. Dassault traditionally uses Farnborough to advance its sales narrative and the 10X is in active flight test.

TAG Farnborough Airport is the venue airport itself, which creates unique operational conditions. Slots at TAG are effectively fully allocated for show week six months in advance. Operators who haven't pre-arranged arrival and parking should plan on alternates: Biggin Hill, Northolt, Oxford Kidlington, and Luton are the commonly used diversionary airports, each requiring a ground transfer. On display days, TAG's airspace is closed for several hours for flight demonstrations, which affects both inbound and outbound timing.

For U.S. operators with clients attending, the operational planning for a Farnborough trip is more complex than a standard transatlantic. ITAR documentation for any aircraft with restricted equipment, UK GAR (General Aviation Report) requirements, slot coordination, and customs pre-clearance all need to be in place ahead of departure. If clients haven't asked you about Farnborough logistics yet, now is the time to raise it.

Traffic and World Cup: Knockout Rounds Begin

The FIFA World Cup Round of 32 began July 4. The tournament moves to the knockout format with 32 teams competing in single-elimination play. Match locations are now concentrating in specific venues rather than dispersed across all 16 host cities simultaneously, which is where the traffic model changes from the group stage.

WingX's analysis through the opening weeks confirmed the pattern we reported last week: smaller host-city markets like Seattle and Kansas City are seeing the largest percentage surges in bizjet activity (Seattle roughly doubling its normal daily traffic), while large hubs like New York and Los Angeles absorb the extra activity without notable strain. As the bracket concentrates matches in fewer venues with higher stakes, the pressure shifts toward the airports serving the quarterfinal and semifinal sites. The semifinal venues host matches July 15 and 16. The final is July 19 at MetLife, with Teterboro and its 100,000-pound MTOW limit as the constrained gateway for heavy jets.

NBAA's World Cup operational resource page has been updated with current PPR information, TFR schedules, and host-city airport guidance. For any operator still managing client travel to knockout-round matches, that page is the starting point.

Fuel: First Time Below $7.50 Since February

As of July 6, the national average for Jet-A across 3,211 reporting FBOs is $7.48 per gallon, per GlobalAir data. That's down from $7.59 the prior week, and the first time the national average has been below $7.50 since the Hormuz disruption drove prices up in late February. The Central region is lowest at $6.56. Alaska remains highest at $9.07.

At the wholesale level, the global average jet fuel price stood at $116.63 per barrel as of July 1, per IATA/Platts data. That's down 17.6% from June's $141.64, and the continuation of a sustained multi-week decline that began after the Iran MOU was signed. The North West Europe jet crack spread, which peaked above $121 per barrel in early June, has compressed significantly as Middle East supply risk is priced out of distillate markets.

To put the full move in context: the U.S. Gulf Coast jet fuel spot price peaked around $3.93 per gallon in April. As of the most recent EIA data, it's back around $3.57. That's still up from February's $2.26, but the direction has clearly reversed.

The 60-day negotiation window under the Iran MOU has roughly four weeks remaining. The Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire has held more durably than many expected. If the window closes with a permanent agreement, wholesale prices could continue to ease through the back half of the year. If it collapses, the progress of the past three weeks will reverse quickly. Budget planning accordingly.

Weather Impact: The Eastern Heat Dome and What It Did to Operations

The story of the past week weather-wise was the heat dome that settled over the central and eastern U.S. through the Fourth of July holiday. At its peak, more than 74 million people were under heat alerts. A strong ridge of high pressure parked over the Mississippi and Ohio river valleys drove high temperatures into the low 100s, with heat index values reaching as high as 115 degrees from the Ohio Valley out to the East Coast.

For business aviation, extreme heat is a performance and planning problem, not just a comfort one. Hot air is less dense, which reduces both lift and engine performance. That translates directly to longer takeoff rolls, reduced climb performance, and in the worst cases, weight restrictions. For operators at airports with shorter runways, the density altitude math on a 100-plus degree afternoon can force a real decision: reduce fuel and add a stop, offload passengers or bags, or wait for a cooler part of the day. Teterboro and Westchester, both with runway lengths that already constrain heavy jets, are exactly the kind of fields where an afternoon heat event turns into a payload conversation.

The knock-on effect for anyone flying commercial connections or repositioning through the major hubs was worse. The same ridge that produced the heat energized a classic "ring of fire" storm pattern around its northern and eastern edges, with clusters of thunderstorms firing daily from the Plains through the Great Lakes and into the Northeast. Aviation trackers documented thousands of delays and several hundred cancellations across the U.S. on the worst single days of the period, as convection collided with peak holiday-weekend schedules. Ground stops and diversions at busy hubs cascaded through connecting networks.

For the bizav operator, the heat dome was a reminder of the value proposition: while commercial travelers sat through ground stops and cancellations at congested hubs, private operators with schedule flexibility could shift departures to early morning or late evening to sidestep both the worst heat and the afternoon convective cycle. That flexibility is exactly what clients pay for, and weeks like the past one make the case better than any sales deck.

We had our own lesson in it. We scheduled a flight for clients in the early afternoon during the worst of the heat, one of the passengers is heat sensitive, and the aircraft never got down to a temperature he was comfortable with. The crew had run the APU for an hour ahead of boarding specifically to have the cabin cool for arrival, and on a short leg in that kind of heat, it still wasn't enough. Nobody did anything wrong. The airplane did what it was going to do in those conditions on that short a flight.

What it taught us is that customer education carries as much weight as operational planning here. A passenger who knows going in that a short summer-afternoon leg may start warm, and why, has a very different experience than one who's expecting the cabin to feel like a hotel lobby the moment they step aboard. We've added that conversation to our own client playbook: on short legs during extreme heat, we now flag the cooldown limitations up front, before the flight, not as an apology after the fact. It's a small thing, but it's the difference between a client who understands what they're getting and one who's negatively affected by it.

The practical takeaways for the summer ahead: on extreme-heat days, build performance planning into every departure from a shorter runway, brief clients early if a fuel stop or schedule shift is likely, and treat the early-morning departure window as the premium slot it becomes when the afternoon forecast includes both triple-digit heat and convective buildups.

Weather Brief: Lower 48 Outlook

The pattern this week is driven by two quasi-stationary fronts and a building central-U.S. heat ridge. All of the following is from the NWS Weather Prediction Center discussions issued the morning of July 7.

The Northern Plains and Upper Midwest are the severe weather focus early in the week. A shortwave rounding the ridge anchored over the Four Corners moves through Montana into Minnesota, and the Storm Prediction Center has a Slight Risk (2 of 5) of severe thunderstorms over the Upper Midwest and Northern Plains on Tuesday, shifting to the Central Plains, Central High Plains, and Upper Great Lakes/Upper Mississippi Valley on Wednesday. Hazards are frequent lightning, damaging wind gusts, hail, and a few tornadoes. WPC carries a corresponding Slight Risk of excessive rainfall over the same corridor, with soils already wet from recent rain raising the flash flooding sensitivity. Operators transiting north-south through the Plains and Upper Midwest should build flexibility into scheduling Tuesday through Thursday.

The Mid-Atlantic has a Slight Risk of excessive rainfall Tuesday. A quasi-stationary front from the Mid-Atlantic through the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys is producing showers and thunderstorms, with locally heavy rain potentially exceeding 3 inches from southwest Pennsylvania into central Virginia and northeast North Carolina. Localized flash flooding is the concern for urban areas, roads, and low-lying areas. Southern New England, including eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, sees lingering showers from a wave of low pressure tracking south of the region, with hourly rates around an inch possible.

The Southeast is hot. Dangerous heat and humidity persist through midweek, with heat indices in the range that pose real risk without cooling and hydration. The heat footprint is shrinking on the eastern side of the country early in the week but rebuilds strongly into the weekend.

The Southwest is building heat as well. Extreme Heat Warnings and Heat Advisories are in effect through midweek across parts of Arizona and Southern California. An influx of moisture over the Southwest, Great Basin, and Rockies is triggering late-afternoon and evening thunderstorms Tuesday and Wednesday, with monsoonal storm coverage expected to increase across the Southwest late this week into the weekend.

The Gulf Coast and Florida see the standard diurnal pattern, with afternoon and evening thunderstorms firing from daytime heating and moisture, more active Tuesday than Wednesday.

The weekend medium-range story is heat. A broad upper ridge expanding over the central U.S. will drive temperatures 10-20 degrees above average across the Northern Plains this weekend, with major heat risk there and renewed major-to-extreme heat risk across the Southeast. Heat indices of 105-115 are possible in both areas. A deepening trough along the East Coast should bring some relief to the East by early next week.

For Texas operators specifically: central Texas is running cooler than a typical early July, with Austin's highs in the upper 80s this week following an unusually wet June. The southern Plains will see heat gradually build through the week as the central-U.S. ridge expands, but the extreme heat this week is centered on Arizona, Southern California, and the Southeast, not Texas. The Northeast and Upper Midwest are the corridors that need the most operational attention through Wednesday.

World Cup semifinal matches are July 15 and 16, with the Final at MetLife on July 19. The medium-range guidance points to a deepening East Coast trough bringing some relief to the Northeast around that window, but check the airspace and current forecast closer to those dates.

That's The Brief

The Laredo investigation will produce its preliminary when the NTSB is ready, and the new detail about the crew's four-leg day adds context to the fuel question. The NetJets petition docket is now closed and in the FAA's hands, at a moment when that's not ideal timing for NetJets. Farnborough is two weeks out. Fuel is below $7.50 nationally and continuing to ease. And the World Cup knockout rounds are the operational planning variable through the Final on July 19.

The Week in One Sentence: The NTSB Laredo preliminary remains unpublished at 21 days as new details point to a four-leg day with two Mexico crossings before the accident flight, the NetJets Global crew duty petition comment window closed July 2 with substantive opposition in the docket, FBO Jet-A dropped below $7.50 nationally for the first time since February as wholesale prices fell to $116.63 per barrel, and the World Cup knockout rounds began July 4 with semifinals July 15-16 and the Final at MetLife on July 19.