What’s The Latest With Global Airlines, That Strange Airbus A380 Startup?

There are a lot of questionable “airline startups,” but arguably none as unusual as Global Airlines, which wants to bring back the “golden age” of travel with Airbus A380s, or something.

In the spring of 2025, the airline actually operated two roundtrip flights to New York out of Europe, for reasons that most of us couldn’t really make sense of. For that matter, this was part of a wet lease agreement with Portuguese charter company Hi-Fly, given that Global Airlines lacks its own operating certificate.

Shortly after the plane operated those flights, it entered long term storage, as it needs to undergo heavy maintenance, which costs millions of dollars. The company’s founder, James Asquith, has suggested that this will happen, but blames delays on general industry constraints, which is a bit questionable…

Anyway, we haven’t heard a whole lot about the company since last July, so what has been going on over the past 10 months? Well, not a lot, though there are some interesting things I notice…

Global Airlines investor changes, winding up petitions

There are a couple of interesting things worth noting. First of all, if you look at court cases in the UK, it looks like two winding up petitions have been filed since the Global Airlines A380 has been put into storage. Now, both were dismissed… either way, you don’t typically see these kind of winding up petitions for otherwise healthy companies.

Second of all, and equally interesting, Tom Stokley has left the board of Global Airlines. He’s also the co-founder of OnlyFans, and was basically the most legitimate person associated with this operation (it’s not like we can give that title to former Etihad CEO James Hogan, given his track record).

Make of this what you will, but I do find those two details combined to be quite interesting.

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James Asquith’s net worth has reportedly plummeted

Global Airlines founder James Asquith is… well, quite the guy. And if we’re to believe these ridiculous lists, then his financial situation has gotten much worse in recent times. In 2025, Asquith appeared on The Times’ 40 richest people under 40 list, which claimed he has a net worth of £183 million, making him richer than Adele.

This was also based on the claim that Holiday Swap had a £300 million valuation in 2022. This is the whole reason that Asquith has some amount of credibility (among some), as this is a home rental platform that has been described as a competitor to Airbnb, and in 2023, claimed to have 10 million users (more on that in a bit).

Anyway, this year’s The Times’ 40 under 40 list was just released, and Asquith is nowhere to be found, with the “poorest” person on the list having a net worth of £100 million. So I guess that Asquith’s net worth decreased by a lot year over year. I’ll let everyone decide for themselves what to do with that information.

Holiday Swap website & app just taken offline

Let me emphasize once again that Holiday Swap was reportedly worth £300 million in 2022, and had well over 10 million users. So, how is that aspect of Asquith’s business going, since we’re to believe that this is a total goldmine?

Well, Holiday Swap has been fully taken offline. The website is gone. The app doesn’t work. I messaged Asquith about this to ask if he had a statement, and he said “redeveloping it yup.”

For a website so major, you’d think an announcement would be put up on the website, on social media, etc. You know what’s even more unusual? Holiday Swap has now been down for a substantial amount of time, and I can’t find a single comment online about this. Like, I can’t find a single person talking about it on Facebook, X, etc.

I mean, Holiday Swap has 1.7 million followers on Facebook, and not a single one of those people has a single comment about the service just disappearing? It’s almost as if… well, never mind.

Bottom line

While James Asquith is continuing to insist that everything is great at Global Airlines and big things are coming soon, I do think it’s worth talking about the latest at the airline, given that we’ve seen almost no additional updates since the A380 was parked last July.

However, it does seem that some stuff has been going on in the background, and it’s mostly not very positive. Since then, we’ve seen the OnlyFans co-founder leave the board, and we’ve seen two winding up petitions filed (though ultimately dismissed). We’ve also seen founder James Asquith’s net worth reportedly plummet, if you’re inclined to believe the numbers in The Times’ 40 under 40 list.

And perhaps most significant of all is that Holiday Swap, the “Airbnb competitor” that reportedly had 10 million users and was worth £300 million, has been taken offline, and seemingly no one cares. Like, not even one of the company’s 1.7 million Facebook followers, best I can tell.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again — this will all make a very interesting Netflix series one day.