Target flies into Asheville as the retailer charts a turnaround

Target Corporation's Gulfstream G280, tail N686BE, flew from Jackson County Airport to Asheville Regional Airport on June 9, 2026, a 20-minute hop that touched down just after 10:38 a.m. local time. The brief flight, at 19,000 feet, followed a day of longer hops across the country, from Minneapolis to Dubuque to Atlanta to the Carolinas.

The same week, Target is preparing for its annual general meeting on June 10, where shareholders will vote on the re-election of executive chair and former CEO Brian Cornell and lead independent director Christine Leahy, per a filing from activist investors reported by Yahoo Finance. The labor-affiliated SOC Investment Group and others have urged a vote against both, citing strategic missteps and rolling back diversity initiatives. The trip to Asheville — a region with no Target store presence but home to executive retreats and board-connected properties — puts the retailer's new CEO, Michael Fiddelke, in the region as he works to convince investors that first-quarter comparable sales growth of 5.6 percent, reported May 20 via CNBC, marks a genuine recovery.

The arrival caps a week of heavy flying for Target's fleet: the same jet had recently shuttled from Los Angeles to Minneapolis, and from Chicago to Wilmington, North Carolina. Such patterns echo the retailer's habit of deploying corporate aircraft for board governance and investor relations — a quiet airlift of strategy, parked in the mountains ahead of a pivotal vote.