Welcome to Own the Jet. My name is Derek
Savage. We are here in Vegas
at the NBAA Base Conference.
This is Business Aviation's largest
conference in North America
that they hold every year.
And this is where everybody comes to talk
about all the new things that are
happening in business
aviation. So we're going to go around,
we're going to talk to some people, we're
going to learn what's
new, learn what they're excited about,
and learn what it takes to
Own the Jet. Welcome to Own the
Jet by Aspen Aero Group, where we share
perspectives from some of the leading
voices in private jet
ownership and business aviation. I'm your
host, Derek Savage, along
with my co-host Jason Spoor,
president of Aspen Aero Group. Join us as
we dive deep into the
mechanics, mindset, and moments that
define jet ownership. And together, we'll
learn what it takes to Own
the Jet. I'm here with Megan
from Boom Supersonic, and you guys are
the company that so many people are
talking about here. You're
kind of the bell of the ball of NBAA Base
this year. And one of the
reasons is you're bringing
supersonic flight back to the market. Can
you tell me a little bit
about that, how that came to be,
what Boom Supersonic is? Sure. Well,
we're thrilled to be here at NBAA Base.
This is our first time.
Our mission is to make the world
dramatically more accessible through
supersonic travel. So
we are bringing supersonic travel back.
Think about getting to
your destination in roughly
half the time. So New York to London in
about three and a half
hours versus just under seven
hours today. So this has been tried
before. And currently I
can't book a supersonic flight,
no matter where I'm going. But if you
guys pull this off, I'll be
able to book a flight from New
York to LA supersonic, right? So what is
it you guys are doing that's
different than maybe what's
been tried before? Sure. It's crazy that
50 years ago, we could go to
the moon and we could travel
supersonically and now neither of those
are possible. And so our
goal is to bring supersonic
travel back. When you look at Concord, it
was a technological model,
but it was very expensive
and a very tight, cramped cabin. So what
some of the things that we're doing
differently is designing
it from the beginning to be
environmentally and economically
sustainable. We're focused on the
passenger experience to ensure it's for
comfort, as well as speed and
performance. And we're working
closely with our customers and our
passengers to bring this to
market. Now, one thing about
flying supersonic is it makes a boom. I
mean, you guys are called boom
supersonic. How are you guys
getting around that? Yeah, so we are
called boom. However, we
have boomless crews. So with our
demonstrator aircraft earlier this year,
it flew two supersonic
flights and in both flights, no
audible sonic boom reached the ground. So
with that, that led to a
change in regulation where
President Trump issued an executive order
to repeal the speed
limit over land. So now with
boom supersonic, we will be able to
travel from New York to LA about 50%
faster than what you
can do today. So in about four hours
instead of nearly six hours.
And you have a little model
here to kind of show what this might look
like. Can we show that off a little bit?
So this is our Overture One or equivalent
of an Air Force One
model. So it is seats 60 to 80
passengers depending on the
configuration. This is sitting outside
the Oval Office at the White
House. And we're also looking at
opportunities for executive
transport, military transport,
anyone that wants to get to their
destination in roughly half the time. So
if you got to get there
fast, you guys are here to help. Exactly.
Nice. Nice. So going
forward, what can I look at as far
as timelines? Like, is this something I
can expect coming out super soon? Or is
this going to take a
while or I'm not trying to hold you to
it. But what can I expect?
Sure. So right now we're building
our core prototype of our engine and that
should be assembled in fire
thrust early next year. And
as our CEO has shared, we're still
targeting to fly by the end of the
decade. Awesome. Great.
Megan from Boom Supersonic.
Thank you so much. Thank you.
So we have another aviation acronym
for you. This is EVUS
Emergency Vision Assurance
System. And I got Jim the head of sales
at EVUS to talk to me
about what that actually is.
So this is the actual unit. So there's
two of these in the
aircraft, one for the pilot,
one for the co-pilot. And in the case of
that, when the smoke starts
coming out, they basically
deploy the unit. So they open up the top,
okay, and then this pull
the unit out. And then once
it's like a ripcord on it, like an air
like a that quite that we
don't want to explode, right?
Okay, when you basically pull it out, and
it activates, I'm gonna
turn it off because it makes
a lot of noise. And then you stick it on
the glare shield. And then
like a face hugger, dude.
Then once it's on the glare shield, you
just deploy it the rest
of the way and it fills up.
And as you see here inside our simulator
simulator. So this is a deployed EVAS
unit. So this is the
IVU portion, it allows you to see your
instrumentation and outdoor windscreen.
We looking good? We good to go? All
right, Jim's gonna narrate this. I don't
know if you can hear
me. Jim's gonna narrate this and let you
know what's happening as it's happening.
All right, so we're gonna do is put them
in the simulator first.
And once he's in, we're
gonna fill it with smoke.
And as you can see, at this point, you
can no longer see his instrumentation.
But as he pushes his mask up against the
front, if you went around to
the front, you can actually
see his face actually up against the
unit. And I'm gonna
evacuate the smoke. So that way he
doesn't get stuck in there too long.
Okay, so yeah, I made sure to kind of
like lean back and see what
it was like to not be able to see
anything. If I didn't have
this in front of me, I'm blind,
basically, as soon as I mean, it's a
simple idea, right? You just create a
cavern that doesn't get
smoke in it. But yeah, you put your face
up to thing, and you can
see everything and you can fly
and land the jet safely in an instance
where smoke's everywhere.
Right, exactly. That's the
whole idea is you want to keep it simple.
Because when you're in an
emergency, you want to make it
as easy as possible to pilot to basically
fly, make sure he's flying
the airplane. So he deploys
it and so flies his airplane. Nice,
great. Evas, get one for your jet.
Because that's awesome.
One thing that a lot of people
are talking about this year
at base is the importance of
connectivity and being able to connect
your devices while you're on your jet.
And to talk a little bit
more about that is Michael here with
GoGo. And GoGo is like one of the big
names, if not the big
name, you tell me it's the big name. The
only name, no brand X. But
you guys work on connectivity
for jets, right? Can you tell me a little
bit about that? Well, so
GoGo acquired SD last year,
which pretty much brought two of the most
well-reputed companies
together for connectivity
for airplanes. And it created a company
that has the ability to
provide something that is purpose
built for our customer base. We believe
in multi-orbit multi-band for
connectivity. We're in a
privileged position because the market is
demanding better
connectivity. And we have all
the different elements to make that
happen for our customers on a global
basis. Nice. So what are you
excited about to share with people at
base this year? I think that
like a lot of the technologies
that we have been designing and
innovating over the past
couple of years are coming to
fruition and into the markets. Leo is the
new bus word. And that I'm
sorry, what is the buzzword?
Leo is the new buzzword. So of all these
different satellites
orbits, it used to be
geos and now it's Leos. And we're going
to have that low earth
orbit. There's so many acronyms
in aviation, Matt, it freaks me out. How
many acronyms? It is scary,
right? Yeah, it just means
that the satellite is a little bit closer
to earth. It helps with certain
applications. And we've
added multiple products in that realm
over the last couple of years. And
they're all coming to
market now. And we've seen a huge demand
for both that. But also
for our legacy air to ground
products, we're coming out with 5G
technology, doing flight
tests here in the near future.
And then the geo products, which has been
the basis for many of
our customers for years.
And combining that with the services that
we also have for the
pilots in the cockpit,
we have like that ecosystem that is
purpose built for private
aviation, which quite frankly,
I feel is unbeatable in the market. So
nice. You have some
products here that you guys are
showcasing. Can we talk a little bit
about this? So what's this
thing? The two things that you're
seeing here is our Leo products, these
low earth orbit. We have a smaller
version that can go on
pretty much any airframe, but down to
some of the more general
aviation sized airframes. And then
we have a bigger full fully capable
antenna that can go on anything from mid
to super size to larger
airplanes. And so this guy is the big guy
that goes on the bigger
airplanes. If you have a global,
for instance, and you would probably go
for something like this in
combination, for instance,
with 5G, which is a which is this fellow
that goes on the bottom of
the airplane. Or if you have a
smaller plane like a like a King Air or
you know, a Phenom 300, then
you would go for a product like
this. And we've just received the PMA
certification for this. We're actually
doing demonstration at
the show. The airplane of 604 is out by
LAS. And we're doing well,
we're almost full, but we're
doing customer demonstration flights with
that product. And this is
already flying on a lot of
airplanes right now. And we have a ton of
orders in for that. So this
is this is some of the newest
things in combination with with the next
generation of air to ground.
Then all of a sudden you have a
very powerful combination between you
know, if you have
predominantly domestic US flights, but you
also have, you know, less flights outside
of North America, then you have full
coverage for where were
you going. So what kind of connectivity
can I expect from
something like this looks pretty
substantial, like this is way bigger than
what I'm used to seeing as
far as I get the upwards of
200 megabits on these these types of
installations. Here you'll
get somewhere around the 6070
max and out there. And here we'll you'll
end up with the 5G to be in
that 4050 megabits. And so
in combination or by themselves, you're
fully you're fully
satisfying the user experience on
board the airplane for for the type of
operation that are there. So
if I wanted to stream episodes
of on the jet, right, if I wanted to,
like if I wanted to get my tik tok
channel going and I'm
up on my jet doing like tik tok videos
and dancing and all that
stuff, I could do that with one of
these. Yeah, you can do that with any of
the products. Yeah, yeah. I
mean, like, what we always
do is that of course, with with a
customer, we'll go through what their
operational requirements
are and make sure that we offer the best
combination of products or the best
product for that kind of
operation so that you have the best
capex, you have the best opex. But you
also you have the user
experience that that you want to want to
give the pilots or the
passengers on board the airplane.
So if I if I come to your booth today,
and I'm like, you know what, I
am sold on this, I want to get
one of these in my, you said you're
demoing one on a 604 Challenger,
Bombardier Challenger 604.
Is that right? Okay. If I have one of
those, and I want to get one of these, do
I have to go through
like my maintenance people? Or do you
will you sell it to me
directly? How does that work? So we
have a wide array of partners that are
doing some of these
installations, the PMA that we
received for this on the 604 is through
standard error. But we
have a ton of very good, long
standing partners that you can go
through. So you can pretty much go with
whatever your favorite
maintenance facility is, and then get the
product there. Because of
course, you also need somebody
to actually put it on. And, and yeah, we
have that great network of
partners that will do that for
you. Nice. So what's on the horizon for
GoGo? Like as we go
forward, what do you think is going
to be the most exciting thing about
connectivity with with business aviation
in the next few years?
I think, well, like I said earlier, we're
privileged because the
today, the connectivity
on an airplane is almost as important as
the safety of flight,
right? So we're in a privileged
position where customers are demanding to
have connectivity on their
plane. And I think what we
are seeing and what is really exciting is
that not only is there a huge
pull from the market to have
connectivity, but also they want
something that is purpose
built for their type of mission.
The airplanes that you're seeing are
becoming more and more
capable, they're flying further,
they're, you know, better comfort on
board the airplane that
there's always an incremental
increase in the performance of these
airplanes. And many of our
customers have a global reach.
And one of the exciting things for us is
that we have a portfolio
that no matter where your
operation resides, and no matter what
your operational
requirements are on a global basis,
we have the combination or the products
to satisfy those needs. And
like, you know, like this is
exciting. We're just scratching the
surface. There's a huge
demand for these products.
Because this is brand new.
Like you just came out with this.
These just came out, right? 5G is right
around the corner. Our geo
services has already been
and been successful in the market for a
period of time. And they
continue to be very successful,
both at the OEM, but also in the
aftermarket. And our data link services
for the pilots has just
continued to grow over the years and just
strengthen our ability
to give a full ecosystem
to the customer. So the older systems,
I'm guessing they're on the
4G system or the LTE system?
But yeah, but there's even a place for
that, right? Because some
customers, they want longevity of
this service that they already have on
their airplane. LTE is
great for them there. 5G is
going to get a capacity boost. So if you
want something that is
even more than what you have
today, you go for that. So it's like you
have a flavor for all the different
segments, and all of
our products coming together also with
our routing platform and
everything. It's coming together to
actually provide the best user experience
for all the different
segments that we're in. So all the
verticals are covered, which is really
exciting for us. It's good
for us to be there. So if you
want to watch the newest episode of "On
the Jet" on your flight, you
got to get one of these bad
boys. Okay. And not only watching that
episode, but also it doesn't matter where
you are in the world
to watch that episode, you can watch it,
right? Because I mean,
like I said earlier, some of
these airplanes, they have a global
footprint. And you can't have great
service in Las Vegas when you
take off. But then when you land in
London, then you have no service, right?
Right. You will need
to have the same user experience across
your entire mission
profile. And that's really where
we set aside for any other vendor out
there. Awesome. Michael,
go go. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. I
really appreciate it.
So I'm here with Jake from Standard
Arrow, and Standard Arrow is an MRO.
Jake, can you tell me
a little bit about what that means to
somebody that's owning a jet? Sure. So
right from the start,
MRO, maintenance, repair, and overhaul.
So Standard Arrow is a hundred year
company in this space.
We cover the full spectrum of AVV. So
you've been around as long
as flight. We've been around a
long time. And so the Wright brothers use
you. That I don't know, I
would have to go back and
check. But in the sense of what we cover,
we're airlines, we're
business aviation, we're military,
we do it all. Engines, specifically here
for business aviation,
engines are a core part of
our business across Standard Arrow
specifically as well in business
aviation. But we also do
interiors, avionics, upgrades. Think
about any time you own
the aircraft. Obviously,
you've got to maintain it. You've got to
keep it running. You
might want to take it from
what you have in your interior today to
do a significant
upgrade. We can do that with you
from your cabin to your cockpit. So if I
buy like, let's say
I'm buying an older jet,
something that's been around for a while.
Would one of the things I
want to do is take it to
Standard and be like, hey guys, I need
some new cup holders. I need
some new carpet. I need some
new, I need like check out the engines,
make sure this thing's going
to run. Yes. So engine part of
it core part of the business, right? So
keeping that maintained,
keeping it flying, helping you
with your major checks with your ongoing
maintenance. But then yes, you've got a
vision for how you want
to upgrade that, maybe have inflight
connectivity. Again, change up, upgrade
your interior. Again,
we can be a partner with you for that.
Nice. Is there anything
that you guys are talking about
that's new with Standard Arrow here at
base? Not necessarily new,
but we're again, we've got
an eight alive APU teardown to show our
capability and what we can do there.
Just over here on the booth, we've got
SATCOM connectivity here
on the booth. Obviously,
our engines, like I said, we've got a
couple cutaways here that
really showcase our core business.
But again, we are a hundred year
provider, global provider,
we got 50 plus locations here,
7,000 employees. We know MRO. Nice. So if
I'm somebody that's
getting into jet ownership,
and I want to learn a little bit more
about Standard Arrow,
and let's say I'm in that
situation where I'm buying a jet for the
first time, and maybe
it's not a brand new jet,
maybe it's something that's been around,
maybe somebody was
smoking in it, or maybe I don't
like the color of the interior, or maybe
it's an old ass engine and I got to do
something about that.
How do I get a hold of you guys? What's
the best way to start
interacting with Standard Arrow?
Standard Arrow.com, great place to start.
Again, we've got
locations all over. We can be your
partner, whether you're in the US,
whether you're in Asia, whether you're in
the Middle East. Again,
we can be your partner for whatever your
aircraft needs are. Awesome.
Thank you so much for talking
to me, Jake. Thank you. Appreciate it.
All right, now we're here with Richard
from Cutter Aviation,
and Cutter is one of the oldest FBOs. The
oldest FBOs in the country
operating, yes. Great. And
what they do, so if you want Phillips 66
fuel in your jet, you would
definitely want to talk to
someone like Richard from Cutter about
that, because they can
help refuel your jet with
only the finest. Only the finest. What
can you tell me about the
relationship that you guys have
with Phillips 66? So, Phillips 66 and
Cutter established a
relationship years ago where
arguably the FBO that has been branded,
putting Phillips 66 fuel
into general aviation aircraft
and commercial aircraft for a really long
time now. And we're coming up on our
100-year anniversary in
two years, and there's some synergies
there with Cutter Aviation and how long
we've been in business
with Phillips 66. They're going to be
celebrating 90 years in business, so
there's a lot of collaboration
that goes between Phillips and the Cutter
brand. Nice. So, if I'm due
to the world of jet ownership
and I'm just getting into it, where can I
expect to see Cutter as
I'm flying my jet? Yeah, so,
Cutter Aviation is located throughout the
entire southwest,
Arizona, Colorado, Albuquerque,
and California. Nice. Is there anything
that I should know about
fuel options? Do you only
have the Phillips 66 fuel? Is that what
you guys are, you're all in
on that? Yes, we're all in on
a Phillips 66 brand of fuel. Like I said,
we've had a long-standing
relationship with a Phillips 66
brand, and we love working with our
Phillips 66 partners. Nice. Is there
anything that's happening
at base that you're really excited about
as a brand or as, you
know, are there any innovations
that are happening in the world of fuel
or in the world of FBOs that you're
excited to talk about
today? There's been a huge push in some
of the renewable energy and
sustainability type products
throughout the entire industry. One of
the things that I like
about being co-branded with
Phillips is that there's a strong
initiative there as well. So, they're
pushing the industry
and technology and fuel, so we're excited
to be a part of that. Nice.
And then finally, what would
you say sets Cutter apart? Because if I'm
flying into one of these, you know,
regional airports or
someplace where Cutter has a presence,
I've got an option on the FBO that I go
to. What would you say
makes Cutter a good choice? Yeah,
Cutter's a great choice because we're
still family owned and
operated. Have been that way from the
20th session since 1928. What sets the
support from a lot of
the big box FBOs, if I can use that term,
you know, your signatures
in Atlantis of the world,
is that we're still family owned. You can
reach the owner myself in senior
management relatively
easily. So, we know a lot of our
customers on a first name basis, which is
not a lot. You can't
really say that about a lot of the other
FBOs that are out there.
Nice. Richard, thank you so
much for spending a few minutes with me
and yeah, keep an eye
out for Cutter Aviation.
All right. So, I'm here with Jeff Roberts
from AirCare. And AirCare
has a big presence here at
base every year. And Jeff, can you tell
us a little bit about what
AirCare does? Yeah, AirCare has
three primary product groups. Our
cornerstone product is our emergency
procedures training.
We've got six fixed base operations
around the country. And we
also have mobile assets. So,
it's a combination of training specific
hardware that we use with
our content, our program,
our instructors are clearly the strength
of that product. So, that
lends sort of into when you
start talking about the medical side of
emergency procedures
training, it sort of lends into our
telemedicine product. So, we offer
telemedicine, includes medical kits,
medical equipment. And
then since we touch so many crew members
around the country, it
makes sense for us to do private
placement and temporary placement for
both pilots and flight
attendants. Okay, great. So, the big
takeaway is that you help make sure
people in their in terms of
their health and safety, when it
comes to flying around on private jets,
have all of their bases
covered. We do. We joke around the
office, we don't sell cigarettes, we sell
safety. Yeah. So, if I'm
going to own a jet, thinking about
it too, it's like I may not have that
part of it figured out
because if I'm at home, I've got my
doctor, I've got my hospital, I go to my
clinic, I go to whatever.
But if I'm traveling, maybe
overseas somewhere or maybe somewhere
that maybe I don't have all that
infrastructure set up,
I might need to talk to somebody like
Eric here. I might need to have you guys
on the short list of
people that I connect with. Yeah. Yeah.
Our tagline for our
telemedicine product is a
plan for the unplanned. So, I agree with
that. I think also as a new owner, I
think people take for
granted the role of a flight attendant or
role of a well-trained
crew when it comes to an
undesirable event on an aircraft. What
are some of the
things that happen? I mean,
there's got to be tons of situations.
Yeah. What are some of the things that
happen that you guys
can help specifically? Yeah. I mean, high
level, we train people
on egress. Having a plan,
the minute you hear something is bad. You
need to make sure the cabin
is secure. Take care of your
passengers. In-flight fire, obviously a
big concern. Hypoxia
awareness is another thing
we're really known for. Okay. So, you
train the crew on knowing
all this stuff. Yeah. I mean,
it's really two or three days of exposing
people in a lot of cases to
what they just didn't know.
And so, getting people positioned to just
be aware of risks and
then to actually give them
some framework. We use a lot of
checklists, a lot of acronyms to make.
Oh, I know about the acronyms.
I've been working this aviation angle for
a minute now. It's
acronyms everywhere. Yeah. I mean,
what are some of your favorite acronyms
you guys have? Oh, boy.
You're going to put me on the spot.
I don't know what they all mean, but like
test prep is one that just drives
preparing the cabin,
getting everybody ready. So, if you're
unlucky enough or
unfortunate enough to hear from the
cockpit, "Hey, we got trouble and we need
to get the cabin secure because we're
going to land hard."
We've trained people to have that cabin
ready and everybody ready for the best
outcome they can have
in a matter of 30 seconds. So, it's a
little that. We train on water, water
survival, rafts. So,
we really try and get the crews very
familiar with the emergency
equipment where, if things
work out, you could go your whole career
without ever having to
touch that stuff. But if the
occasion happens, yeah, if you need it,
you need it. Yeah, that's really
important. So, when somebody
does these, gets trained in these things,
what's the outcome of
that? Do they have some kind of
like certification or some kind of
license or some kind of thing that you
provide to them that
shows me as an employer that I'm bringing
somebody to the table that
understands these things?
Yeah, we do offer a certification. It
really comes down to the
operator and what training
the operator shows the authority, but
we're undefeated with
regard to the authority, right?
So, we'll hand an operator. I like that
you're operating
undefeated in this realm.
But yeah, we hand our, you know, we'll
train them. We'll hand the
compliance package to them.
They show the authority. This is how
we're trained. And in
terms of a freelance pilot,
a flight attendant, I like to see, and I
do see, having training
and showing that you have
emergency procedures training on your
resume and yet your
current helps when you go to...
Yeah, I definitely would have heard that
guy versus the one
that's like, "Nah, it's fine.
You'll be fine." So, if we want to talk
about AirCare's presence here at Base,
what are you excited about this year? Is
there anything new? Is there anything
that you guys are maybe talking about
that maybe you haven't talked about as
much before? Anything
that you're excited about elsewhere in
the show that you want
to talk about with Base?
I'd like this show because it gives us a
chance to connect with our customers
to really talk to our customers and
prospects about what's
driving their decision making
and their buying decision in this little
segment we're in. Other than that...
It's just a chance to get to know people.
No, I mean, honestly,
that's what it is for me, man.
It's a chance to get to know people and a
chance to get to meet
people that otherwise you might
not have met. And now, as I'm talking to
people that are getting into jet
ownership, I'm like,
"Are these guys AirCare certified or do
they know what they're
doing if you start choking or
have a heart condition or anything like
that? Or let's say you need
to make an emergency landing
and what to do, do these guys know what
to do?" So, that's who
they come to you for.
Yeah, you're really right. We have a few
case studies.
Fortunately, we don't have a lot of
case studies, right? There aren't a lot
of plane crashes. But
in the last few years,
we've had a couple of really serious
accidents where there were
fatalities and the flight
attendants that were trained by us and
followed our procedures survived, saved
other people's lives,
and that's a huge deal.
Hell of a sales pitch, man.
Well, Jeff, thank you so much for talking
to me and thank you
for being on Own the Jet.
And I hope you have a great time here at
base. Great. Thank you.
All right. Thank you. A lot
of people, a lot of interviews, a lot of
products, a lot of services.
That's just day one of NBAA's
base conference here in Vegas for 2025.
Join us for the next
episode where we'll be talking to
even more people here at base on day two
for what it takes to own the
jet. Thank you for watching
Own the Jet. If you want to see more Own
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