FLOAT Alaska LLC: 363 Sale and Insider DIP in Chapter 11

FLOAT Alaska LLC filed chapter 11 on January 26, 2026 with a case built around an insider-financed sale process rather than a conventional operating reorganization. The parent of Ravn Alaska and New Pacific Airlines had already shut down flight operations before the filing, and the First Day Declaration and sale motion show that the estates entered court to preserve aircraft, operating authorities, and related intellectual property long enough to market substantially all assets under section 363.

The estate combines assets with different value drivers: Alaska regional-air-service infrastructure, a dormant long-haul charter platform, three Boeing 757 aircraft, a Part 121 certificate, the np.com domain, and the remnants of FlyCoin's loyalty business. The Final DIP Order and the Committee Objection show that Josh Jones and Jones Holding LLC sit at the center of both the capital structure and the bankruptcy financing.

Debtor(s)	FLOAT Alaska LLC and six affiliates
Primary Brands	Ravn Alaska, New Pacific Airlines, FlyCoin
Court	U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware
Case Number	26-10075
Petition Date	January 26, 2026
Judge	Hon. Craig T. Goldblatt
Claims Agent	Stretto
Current Posture	section 363 sale process for substantially all assets
Key Sale Assets	Boeing 757 aircraft, Part 121 certificate, np.com, related equity interests
DIP Facility	Insider superpriority facility up to $3.33 million, plus roll-up elements

Sale-Driven chapter 11

FLOAT Alaska filed after it had already stopped operating, so the chapter 11 cases are not about keeping an airline in the air while management negotiates with creditors. The docket instead centers on sale architecture: first-day relief, a claims-and-noticing structure, financing to bridge the estates through marketing, and a fast timetable for selling substantially all assets. The Claims Agent Order put Stretto in place early, and the sale motion asked the court to approve bidding procedures, stalking-horse protections, and assumption-and-assignment procedures for contracts that could move with the assets.

The first-day papers describe a parent company that owned Ravn Alaska's regional platform, New Pacific's Boeing 757 charter business, and FlyCoin's token-based loyalty concept, but the estates entered bankruptcy after the operating side had already shut down. The Sherwood retention order approved Sherwood Partners as the debtors' financial advisor effective as of the petition date, reflecting a sale process rather than a long operating turnaround.

The case record has been heavy on sale, DIP, rejection, and retention papers and light on plan-confirmation materials.

Aviation Platform and Asset Mix

FLOAT's business mix did not fit neatly into one airline category. Its earliest platform was Float Shuttle, the Southern California commuter-air startup that bought Ravn's core assets in 2020 and then used that purchase to move into Alaska regional aviation. The acquisition brought the Part 121 operating platform and Ravn brand into the group just as Alaska's regional network remained heavily dependent on air service. The Alaska Aviation System Plan reports that 82% of Alaska communities are not connected to the road system.

The more ambitious piece was New Pacific Airlines, originally pitched as Northern Pacific. The carrier's initial strategy was to connect Asia and North America through Anchorage, using Boeing 757 aircraft on a model built around mid-continent connections and shorter great-circle routings. That strategy never stabilized. Northern Pacific later rebranded as New Pacific Airlines after trademark litigation, and the first-day declaration describes a business that moved away from its original transpacific thesis before eventually shifting to charter operations.

FlyCoin added a third business line that looked more like travel technology than aviation operations. Trade coverage of the launch described a crypto-based loyalty program that was supposed to let customers earn and spend tokens beyond one airline. In the debtors' own telling, however, that business became another source of strain once the crypto market broke down in 2022 and counterparties pulled back. By the petition date, the estate was not one airline looking for a lender. It was a holding structure with a regional airline, a Boeing 757 charter platform that never generated sustained revenue, and a loyalty program that lost its counterparty base after 2022.

How the Business Unraveled

The first-day declaration does not pin the case on a single failed route or financing event. It describes pressure across the estate's three main business lines.

The original North Pacific strategy broke early. The company built New Pacific around a route thesis that assumed viable overflight patterns between North America and Asia. That became harder after the United States barred Russian aircraft from U.S. airspace and Russia responded with its own restrictions. IATA later described how the conflict forced carriers onto longer routings. In the first-day declaration, management says New Pacific also lacked the ETOPS capability needed to adapt the concept quickly, leaving the airline with an expensive long-haul platform whose original route plan no longer worked.

Crypto stress hit FlyCoin just as aviation execution got harder. The FlyCoin venture launched into a market that lost most of its value within months. NPR's account of the 2022 crypto crash describes an ecosystem that lost value as major platforms failed and token prices fell, while the debtors say FlyCoin's partner network and banking relationships were disrupted during that period.

Labor pressure and route competition weakened Ravn's core economics. Alaska's airline market was already dealing with tight pilot supply. Local reporting described carriers struggling to find more pilots, and the Regional Airline Association said the sector faced a structural pilot shortfall as major carriers hired faster than the training pipeline replenished crews. The debtors say those shortages drove severe attrition inside the group. The first-day declaration also says competition intensified on key Alaska routes, including Dutch Harbor, where Aleutian Airways entered one of Ravn's most important markets.

The Alaska network kept shrinking before the shutdown. The retrenchment did not happen in one day. Reporting in 2024 described 130 job cuts at Ravn Alaska, and Alaska Public Media later chronicled how communities were coping after Ravn pulled out of the Aleutians. Those reports line up with the debtors' account of route closures, staff reductions, and a business that was already getting smaller before the bankruptcy filing.

New Pacific lost its scheduled-service identity before it lost the rest of the airline. By March 2024, New Pacific had ended scheduled flying and shifted to charters, matching management's description of abandoning the original route plan in favor of charter revenue. In late 2025, local and trade reporting described the last stage: Ravn Alaska shut down statewide flights, Alaska Public Media reported that Ravn called it quits, and Aerospace Global News wrote that New Pacific shut down around Thanksgiving. Anchorage Daily News later described the airline that had planned to connect Alaska and Asia as gone.

The final cash break came from the charter side. The debtors say a missed charter payment created a payroll shortfall that forced the group to stop flying on November 26, 2025. The PJS claim filed by Private Jet Services Group says New Pacific ceased all flight operations on November 26, 2025 and that PJS terminated the charter agreement for cause that same day.

Insider Financing and Sale Milestones

The filing record shows a capital structure dominated by Josh Jones and Jones Holding on one side and aircraft debt associated with NFS Capital on the other. The first-day declaration says the debt associated with the Boeing 757s and four engines stood at about $22.4 million on January 16, 2026, that Jones Holding had acquired those rights, and that separate Jones Holding secured promissory notes totaled about $11.3 million as of the petition date. Management also said the estates owed more than $10 million to non-insider general unsecured creditors and nearly $22 million of convertible notes held by Jones or related family trusts.

The debtors' final financing package gave Jones Holding a senior secured superpriority postpetition facility up to $3.33 million, plus roll-up treatment for prepetition secured obligations, but the committee objected that the proposal shifted value to an insider under a compressed timetable. The committee objection argued that the transaction should be judged under the entire-fairness standard because Jones was simultaneously an insider, prepetition lender, equity holder, and proposed DIP lender. It also argued that the original collateral package reached into assets that unsecured creditors would otherwise look to for recovery, including the Part 121 certificate, np.com, tax refunds, insurance proceeds, commercial tort claims, and avoidance actions.

The final order preserved avoidance actions for the estates, carved the np.com domain out of the base DIP collateral package, and created estate-first sharing thresholds for both categories of proceeds. The settlement also included an additional $100,000 funding component earmarked for committee professional fees or other administrative costs.

Under the final DIP order, the debtors had to obtain a bidding-procedures order within 30 days of the petition date, hit the bid deadline within 45 days, conduct an auction within 50 days if needed, obtain a sale order within 60 days, and close within 70 days. The later Sale Notice set a March 16, 2026 bid deadline, a March 18 auction, and a March 25 sale hearing.

Creditor Pressure Points

Bischoff Aerospace objected to the proposed sale treatment of Boeing 757 tail number N628NP in the Bischoff Objection, arguing that it had performed AOG maintenance work, invoiced New Pacific $730,000 after receiving a $200,000 deposit, and held a mechanic's lien that required at least $550,000 plus attorneys' fees to be protected from sale proceeds. Bischoff later withdrew the objection, but the filing shows how specific aircraft assets generated lien disputes once the estates moved from shutdown to sale.

Private Jet Services filed a claim for $18,863,022 based on alleged breach-of-contract and rejection damages tied to the charter program. Its proof of claim says New Pacific's cessation of service cost PJS multi-year sports-client relationships, replacement and mitigation expenses, and other lost business value.

The debtors then obtained the Rejection Order authorizing rejection of the PJS Program Charter Air Transportation Services Agreement and other contracts effective as of the petition date. The order removed ongoing contract obligations from the estates and left the size of rejection-damages claims to the claims process.

What the March Sale Process Covers

The sale process is broader than a simple aircraft auction. The Sale Motion says the debtors are marketing substantially all assets, including the Boeing 757 fleet, associated parts and tooling, the Part 121 certificate, the np.com domain, and ownership interests in other entities. The debtors also asked to designate stalking-horse bidders and approve bid protections of up to 3% of the stalking-horse purchase price.

The np.com domain was carved out of the base DIP collateral in the final order, reflecting its stand-alone value as a negotiated point between the committee and the DIP lender.

The sale notice requires qualifying bids and deposits by March 16 and contemplates a March 18 auction if multiple bids materialize. The docket does not yet show a filed chapter 11 plan or disclosure statement.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is FLOAT Alaska in this bankruptcy case? FLOAT Alaska is the lead debtor and the parent company for the businesses that operated as Ravn Alaska, New Pacific Airlines, and FlyCoin. The group combined a regional Alaska carrier, a Boeing 757 charter platform, and a token-based loyalty business under one holding structure, as described in the first-day declaration and in reporting on the 2020 Ravn asset purchase.

When did FLOAT Alaska file chapter 11? The debtors filed on January 26, 2026 in the District of Delaware under lead case number 26-10075. The filing came after the companies had already shut down flight operations, so the case began as a sale-and-wind-down process rather than an in-service airline restructuring.

Why did the company file after shutting down operations? The debtors say the filing followed a layered collapse: the transpacific model was weakened by Russian airspace restrictions, FlyCoin lost momentum during the crypto-market crash, Ravn faced pilot shortages and route retrenchment, and New Pacific ultimately lost liquidity after the charter business failed. Management's version of that timeline appears in the first-day declaration, while the PJS filing describes the final shutdown from the charter counterparty's side.

Who is financing the chapter 11 case? Jones Holding LLC, the insider lender tied to Josh Jones, is financing the case through a superpriority DIP facility capped at $3.33 million. The final order also preserves estate value by excluding np.com from base DIP collateral and limiting how avoidance-action proceeds can be used to satisfy the DIP.

What assets are being sold? The estates are marketing substantially all assets, including three Boeing 757 aircraft, related parts and tooling, the Part 121 certificate, the np.com domain, and certain equity interests. The sale motion and sale notice also contemplate stalking-horse bidding and assumption-and-assignment procedures for contracts that could move with a transaction.

Has the court confirmed a restructuring plan? No confirmed plan appears on the docket. The near-term deadlines instead point to a March sale process, with the sale notice setting a March 16 bid deadline and a March 25 sale hearing.

What is the biggest unsecured-creditor issue so far? PJS filed an $18.9 million proof of claim tied to New Pacific's alleged breach of the charter agreement, while the committee separately challenged the insider DIP structure and its effect on unsecured-creditor recoveries.

Who is the claims agent in the FLOAT Alaska bankruptcy? Stretto is the claims and noticing agent for the case. The claims-agent order authorized Stretto to maintain the claims register and handle noticing functions, which is standard for a multi-debtor chapter 11 filing with a sale process and a growing creditor body.

For more chapter 11 coverage, visit the ElevenFlo bankruptcy blog.