The Scissortail Brief | July 6–12, 2026

This week's briefing focuses on three major primary headlines: the NTSB's preliminary report on the Laredo crash, where physical evidence points to a specific sequence of events; the collapse of the fragile Iran ceasefire, which Trump declared is "over" as fuel markets begin to react; and the passing of Senator Lindsey Graham at age 71, whose Budget Committee chairmanship was instrumental in making 100% bonus depreciation permanent for business aircraft. Beyond these main stories, we also look at the first speed record achieved by the Bombardier Global 8000, break down this week's fuel prices, and provide a comprehensive weather brief for the days ahead.

Safety: NTSB Preliminary Report on the Laredo Crash

The NTSB released its preliminary report on July 10, three weeks after the June 16 crash of a NetJets Citation Latitude on Loop 20 in Laredo. The report contains a detailed factual sequence and physical evidence recovered from the wreckage.

Investigators found a fractured fuel tube assembly and a broken fuel pressure switch in the right engine, along with major damage to the right engine's starter generator. The report lays out a chain of events consistent with those failures.

Early in the flight from Los Cabos to Austin, the crew noticed an unusual low-frequency vibration and a humming noise, "like a fan is on, you can feel it in the dashboard." They called NetJets Flight Operations and Maintenance Control. During that call, the aircraft generated a "BOTH ON ADC 1" alert related to the Air Data Computer. Maintenance believed the vibration was likely an avionics cooling fan behind the instrument panel, an explanation the NTSB says was consistent with the ADC warning. The vibration cleared. The crew ran the checklist and, after consulting with maintenance and flight ops, elected to continue to Austin.

Near the Mexico-U.S. border, the aircraft began generating a cascade of alerts: "FUEL BST PUMP ON R," followed by "FUEL PRESS LOW R," then "ELEC TRU FAIL R" and "WSHLD HEAT INOP R," then "FUEL LEVEL LOW R." The pattern moved from a right-side fuel problem into a right-side electrical failure. The crew declared an emergency with Monterrey Center, was handed to Houston Center, reported a generator failure and multiple system failures, and requested an immediate diversion to Laredo.

While established on final approach, the right engine flamed out. Seconds later, the left engine failed too. The first officer asked Laredo Tower if there was an open field to the right of the aircraft suitable for an emergency landing. Controllers told them there wasn't. Just the highway. The crew put the aircraft down on the northbound lanes of the Bob Bullock Loop, roughly a mile southeast of the airport. Video showed two separate bursts of fire while the aircraft was still airborne. On touchdown, it sheared off light poles, struck a vehicle, and came to rest on its side, straddling the edge of an overpass.

While investigators can follow a clear physical trail regarding the right-side fuel and electrical cascade, the report provides no obvious explanation for the left engine's failure. The loss of power in the left engine, occurring just seconds after the right, lacks a definitive cause and remains the central open question as the investigation moves into its next phase.

NetJets Chairman and CEO Adam Johnson wrote to customers following the report's release. He noted this is the only time in more than 7.2 million engine hours flown on the Latitude fleet that NetJets has identified an aircraft experiencing cascading DC and AC generator failures alongside a corresponding fuel-line failure. He said NetJets has conducted a comprehensive review of manufacturer-issued procedures for in-flight generator failures and has implemented new operational guidance, developed in coordination with the NTSB and FAA, that fills gaps in the original Latitude checklist. Johnson wrote that he remains fully confident in the Latitude and continues to fly it as his own primary aircraft.

The investigation includes the FAA, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, NetJets, NJASAP, Textron Aviation, and Pratt & Whitney Canada. A final report with probable cause is expected within 12 to 24 months.

Geopolitical: The Iran Ceasefire Is Over. Fuel Markets Are Reacting.

We told you last month that the situation in Iran was fragile. This week it seems to have broken.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the U.S. struck Iran in retaliation for attacks on three commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump, speaking at the NATO summit in Turkey, declared the ceasefire "over" and called further negotiation with Iran "a waste of time." The U.S. also revoked Iran's ability to openly sell crude oil on the world market. By Wednesday evening, WTI crude was trading around $75 a barrel and Brent around $79, both up sharply from the low $70s at the start of the week, though still well below the near-$120 peak seen at the height of the war in the spring.

Some context on how we got here. The June 14 MOU and the June 17 formal signing produced a genuine, if brief, reduction in tension. Regional Jet-A and SAF prices began declining through the back half of June as the Strait of Hormuz partially reopened. That's the improvement we reported in recent Briefs. But the underlying framework was never fully stable. Iran declared the strait closed again on June 20, citing continued Israeli strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon as a violation of the agreement, a claim the U.S. disputed. Traffic through the strait never returned to pre-war levels even during the best weeks of the ceasefire. This week's escalation is the most serious test of the MOU since it was signed, and by Trump's own words, it has failed that test.

Whether this is a full return to the February-through-May disruption or a sharper but shorter-lived spike is the open question. An economist at Oxford Economics described the likely pattern as "on-and-off" rather than a clean return to full-scale conflict, noting Trump left an off-ramp by saying U.S. negotiators would continue talking even as he called the ceasefire dead. Tanker traffic through the strait has slowed sharply but not stopped entirely. Kpler data showed 41 crossings on Tuesday versus 36 on Monday, though it's unclear whether those transits occurred before or after the strikes.

For operators, the practical guidance from a month ago still applies, with the caveat that the downside risk just became a lot more real. Retail FBO pricing had been easing through late June on the earlier ceasefire. That easing is now in question. Wholesale prices lead retail by several weeks, so if this week's escalation holds, expect the recent FBO price relief to stall or reverse over the coming month. Build fall fuel budgets with a wide range, not a point estimate, and revisit that range weekly rather than assuming a trend line holds.

Note: Senator Lindsey Graham

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina died Saturday night at his Capitol Hill home, at 71, from an aortic dissection. He had just returned from his tenth wartime visit to Ukraine.

Graham chaired the Senate Budget Committee. That committee is the vehicle for reconciliation bills, which pass the Senate on a simple majority rather than the 60 votes most legislation requires. As chairman, Graham was one of the people most directly responsible for getting the One Big Beautiful Bill Act through the Senate and to Trump's desk in July 2025. That's the bill that made 100% bonus depreciation permanent for business aircraft and other qualifying property, replacing a phase-down schedule set to hit zero by 2027. Every client who's bought a jet under full first-year depreciation since January 2025 has Graham's committee to thank for the fact that provision made it into law and stayed there.

He was also a longtime advocate for a more assertive American posture toward Iran, going back years before this spring's war. Whatever view anyone holds on that approach, his position had a direct hand in shaping the policy environment behind the Strait of Hormuz situation and the fuel story this Brief has tracked since February.

Graham, 71, was seeking a fifth Senate term this November. His death leaves South Carolina's governor with the task of appointing a successor, with several names already circulating.

Fuel: Weekly Price Analysis and Current Trends

As of July 10, the national average for Jet-A across 3,207 reporting FBOs is $7.45 per gallon, per GlobalAir data. The Central region is lowest at $6.57. Alaska is highest at $9.07. SAF sits at a national average of $9.41 per gallon.

Although this retail number initially appears to signal a continuation of the price relief observed through late June, it reflects the market prior to this week's escalation. By July 1, the global wholesale benchmark had fallen 17.6% to $116.63 per barrel from June's $141.64, a decline predicated entirely on the assumption that the June 14 MOU would hold. As this week's events have made clear, it did not.

Wholesale typically leads retail by several weeks in either direction. The $7.45 national average reflects the improving trend of the past month, not this week's strikes and Iran's renewed threats against Gulf shipping. If the situation stays escalated through the rest of July, expect that number to start moving the other way in wholesale data first, with retail following into August. If it cools back down, as it has twice already this year, the current trend could hold or even continue.

As noted in the geopolitical section above, our practical recommendation remains unchanged: avoid relying on a solitary fuel projection for autumn planning. Instead, establish a flexible range and reassess it on a weekly basis, rather than monthly, until the market stabilizes.

OEM: Bombardier's Global 8000 Sets Speed Record

Business jet speed records don't come around often, so this one is worth flagging, even though the flight itself took place back on June 5. Bombardier's Global 8000 completed its first FAI-pending speed record on a mission from Montreal to Nice, France, carrying passengers to the Monaco F1 Grand Prix. Bombardier CEO Éric Martel was on board. The Montreal-to-Nice leg took just over six hours.

At Mach 0.95, the Global 8000 is now the fastest civil aircraft since the Concorde retired, running at what's effectively the ceiling for subsonic production aviation. Gulfstream's G700 is rated to Mach 0.925 by comparison, so the gap translates to somewhere between 30 and 50 minutes saved on a transatlantic crossing depending on winds.

Cruising at 41,000 feet, the Global 8000 maintains a cabin altitude of just 2,691 feet, the lowest in production business aviation. While most jets in this class pressurize between 4,000 and 6,000 feet, comparable to the elevation of Flagstaff, Arizona, spending six to eight hours at those higher altitudes during a transatlantic crossing can leave passengers dehydrated, fatigued, and with a headache. By comparison, a cabin altitude of 2,691 feet is barely noticeable.

When clients inquire about these next-generation, ultra-long-haul aircraft, make sure to emphasize the cabin altitude specification. Although a record-breaking speed captures better headlines, the cabin pressure metrics are equally critical, if not more so, for overall passenger comfort.

Weather Brief: Lower 48 Outlook

The dominant story right now is dangerous, potentially record-setting heat across the interior West and northern Plains. An intensifying upper-level high centered over the western U.S., working in concert with a trough digging toward the Pacific Northwest, is driving anomalous heat from the Great Basin into the northern Plains. The heat wave peaked Sunday with triple-digit highs common across that corridor, and a few all-time high temperature records were in jeopardy, including the all-time highs of 107 at Salt Lake City and 108 at Billings, Montana. Expect that heat to gradually ease over the coming days but remain well above normal through the week.

The wet weather is concentrated in two separate corridors. A Slight Risk of excessive rainfall covers portions of Kentucky and Tennessee, extending into southern Virginia and the Carolinas today, driven by a deepening closed low and slow-moving convection, with precipitable water values between 1.75 and 2 inches, supporting locally heavy rainfall rates. The ground in that region is already saturated from recent rain, so it takes less new rainfall than usual to cause flooding there. That means isolated to scattered flash flooding is likely this week even though the storm system itself isn't especially strong or well-organized.

A second Slight Risk of excessive rainfall develops Monday into Tuesday across Texas and the central Gulf Coast, expanding deeper into Texas with this morning's update. Embedded shortwave energy migrating westward under a sprawling upper ridge over the Northern Plains, combined with increasing southerly moisture transport, is expected to produce precipitable water values exceeding 2 inches over central and eastern Texas, potentially topping 2.25 inches in east Texas. The setup favors backbuilding, training thunderstorms, meaning some areas could see repeated rounds of heavy rain rather than a single pass.

The severe weather threat for the back half of the week centers on a surface front dropping south across the eastern U.S., driven by a seasonably strong mid-level trough over northern Quebec and northwesterly flow extending from the Upper Midwest into the Mid-Atlantic. Multiple shortwaves and jet streaks are expected to ride that flow, so this is a multi-day severe weather setup rather than a single-day event, running roughly from the central and north-central U.S. into the Mid-Atlantic later in the week.

The medium-range picture (the 6-10 day outlook, valid July 14-18) favors drier-than-normal conditions across the Great Lakes, central and northern Plains, and South Florida, while the Gulf Coast, Carolinas, and Desert Southwest, especially southern Arizona, trend wetter than normal. Hotter-than-normal weather is favored across the northern Plains, the West, and the Florida Peninsula, with most of the rest of the Lower 48 also leaning warm. Southwest Texas, southeast New Mexico, and the eastern Great Lakes into the Northeast are the exceptions, expected to run closer to normal.

For Texas operators specifically: central Texas is in the Slight Risk zone for excessive rainfall Monday into Tuesday, with training thunderstorms and localized flash flooding the primary concern. That's a shift from the relatively quiet, cooler-than-normal pattern we described in recent weeks. Build in extra fuel and a solid alternative for anything routing through central or east Texas early this week. The extreme heat is centered well to the north and west of Texas this time, in the Great Basin and northern Plains, so density altitude isn't the primary Texas concern right now, precipitation is.

That's The Brief

This week is highlighted by three major developments: the preliminary report from Laredo, the collapse of the Iran ceasefire, and the death of Senator Graham. The Laredo preliminary report provides the industry with its initial look into the final approach, establishing a clear physical trail on the right side but leaving the left side as an open question. With the Iran ceasefire breaking down, the fuel outlook that inspired cautious optimism over the past few weeks must be reevaluated, and the standalone fuel section above details exactly where the numbers stand today. On the legislative front, Senator Graham's committee is the reason permanent law governs bonus depreciation for business aircraft rather than a countdown clock, representing an incredibly direct bizav connection in Washington. Bombardier's speed record and this week's weather patterns round out the remaining coverage.

The Week in One Sentence: The NTSB's Laredo preliminary report found a fractured fuel tube and broken fuel pressure switch in the right engine along with starter generator damage, with the cause of the subsequent left engine failure still undetermined, the U.S.-Iran ceasefire collapsed this week after renewed strikes and Iranian attacks on commercial shipping, sending oil prices higher and putting recent fuel price relief in question, and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, whose committee delivered permanent 100% bonus depreciation on business aircraft, died Saturday at 71.