About FLYING Finance

In August 1927, inspired by Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight, Chicago advertising executive and WWI aviator William B. Ziff Sr. launched a new magazine called Popular Aviation. Renamed FLYING in 1942, it grew into the most widely read aviation publication in the world, chronicling nearly a century of flight, from barnstormers and war birds to the turboprops and business jets pilots fly today.

In 2021, lifelong pilot and digital media entrepreneur Craig Fuller, founder of FreightWaves, acquired FLYING and set out to build something bigger than a magazine. Over the next several years his company, first known as FLYING Media Group and now Firecrown, rolled up dozens of aviation brands and marketplaces, including Plane & Pilot, KITPLANES, AVweb, Airline Geeks and Aircraft For Sale, assembling the largest aviation media and marketplace ecosystem in the industry and reaching more than 750,000 pilots and aircraft owners.

But as that ecosystem grew, one gap kept surfacing: informing and connecting pilots with aircraft wasn’t enough if they couldn’t finance the purchase. In July 2023, Firecrown acquired established aircraft finance broker Sky Allies Capital and rebranded it FLYING Finance, building the answer to “how do I pay for this airplane?” directly into the ecosystem instead of leaving buyers to find it somewhere else.

Today, FLYING Finance is not just a lender; we are the financial engine within a massive aviation ecosystem that includes FLYING, Plane & Pilot, KitPlanes, AvBuyer, Airline Geeks, AvWeb and Aircraft For Sale. Our mission is to create a frictionless, end-to-end buying experience.