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Pilot to Pilot is the podcast for anyone who flies — or dreams about it. Host Justin Siems sits down with airline captains, bush pilots, CFIs, and everyone in between for honest conversations about the path to the cockpit, the grind of the career, and the love of flying that keeps us coming back. Whether you're a student pilot chasing your first solo or a captain with 20,000 hours, there's a seat for you here. New episodes weekly.
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Speaker 1:Hey, V Nation. What is going on? And welcome welcome back to the Pilot to Pilot podcast. My name is Justin Sims, and I am your host. Currently out on a trip.
Speaker 1:Flying has been a grind. And let me tell you, having a magazine and a podcast and flying full time, sometimes you gotta get creative where you're gonna record. So here we are in the hotel recording the intro to get it out for you guys as soon as possible. Today's episode is from magazine volume three with Steve Giordano with Nomadic Aviation Group Ferrying Big Metal. We talk about everything and anything, Ferrying Big Metal, what they do, what Bob and him do, and just how cool of a part of an industry it really is.
Speaker 1:So hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you do, please leave us a review on iTunes or Spotify. Follow us on Instagram. And, of course, we just announced volume four, what the cover's gonna look like. So go to Instagram, like that post, share it, buy it, of course, if you haven't already.
Speaker 1:The magazine is unreal, and thank you so much for the support. Aviation, hope you're having a great day. Without any further ado, here's Steve from Nomadic Aviation Group. Steve, what's going on, man? Welcome.
Speaker 1:Well, I I keep saying this. I'm like, welcome back to the Pilot to Pilot podcast, but this is not the podcast. It is the magazine, which is crazy that this will be the third volume of the magazine. I mean, you know, when I started the podcast, I only yeah. I mean, I reach out to you and you're like, yeah, this too.
Speaker 1:Was like, sweet. Let's go. But Absolutely. It's crazy to think that there's even three of these because when I started the podcast, I was like, I'm gonna do this podcast maybe for four months and be like, alright. Peace.
Speaker 1:I'm out. But people kept listening. My wife was right. Apparently, she knew that I had some kind of talent to talk in a microphone even though public speaking was one of my biggest fears. So here we are.
Speaker 2:Here we are, man. And I can relate having recently started a pod and I'm like, let's go let's go weekly. And then Yeah. You know, and now I'm like, oh, why did I say that? But every time I drop it, it's all the, you know,
Speaker 1:so Yeah. Gets the views and you're like, oh, dude, let's go daily. Let's do it. Do two a day.
Speaker 2:Oh, God. I would be divorced in a week.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, I'm not gonna say that I haven't told you to do a podcast for a while, but I think I I've been telling you to do a podcast for a while. So don't give me any credit.
Speaker 1:It's cool. I don't need the credit for it. But Dude,
Speaker 2:you you were the one who got the gears moving in my head. Yeah. For sure. And I didn't know how that was gonna turn out. I mean, because cockpit casual is just so produced.
Speaker 2:Right? Like, you know, I sit there and I edit and cut for a month per episode, sometimes more. So it's it gives you a chance to get it right, and I'm a perfectionist with the media stuff. And the pod, the thing that scared me was I'm like, how am I gonna be able to, like do this in a in a take basically with minimal editing so it's sustainable? Just you get used to it.
Speaker 2:Right?
Speaker 1:Dude, people I've learned that people want more real than more perfect. Right? Like, obviously, there's a place for perfection. There's a place to make the most beautiful video, the most beautiful whatever it is that you need and that can be your YouTube channel, that can be maybe you can make Netflix movies one day, but like there's also a such a medium for just like real world conversation, real world videos and everything. It's like, not everything has I've learned not everything has to be perfect.
Speaker 1:It's okay if you mess up. It's okay if you go, you know, like it's okay if you cough. It is what it is. Right? Obviously, you don't want the whole episode to be that or, you know, the whole episode were like,
Speaker 2:Well, I'll say the fur there was a learning curve. Like, the first one, I'm like, man, I say, and, you know, like, a 100 times a minute. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Yep. But edit then out too many of them, then now your voice is like, what? And it's just like, that doesn't sound alright either.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're going on episode six and Look at you guys. Starting to catch on, man. Good.
Speaker 1:I love it. No. I mean, what you do is very unique. Right? Like everyone and one of the coolest things about this podcast that I've said before in the magazine too is just sharing stories of how people have built their time, how people make money in aviation, and where, you know, you're kind of sold on the fact, like, you have to be an airline pilot, you have to be whatever, you have to be this to to enjoy a career in aviation, to make money, to provide for your family, but that's not true.
Speaker 1:You can be a CFI, you can work for Textron Aviation, you can ferry big planes, you can do anything essentially in aviation and still call yourself an aviator or still call yourself in the aviation family, which I think is really, really cool, and you can't do everywhere else.
Speaker 2:Yeah. For sure. And and, I mean, to some degree, there's almost limitless options, but, you know, at some point, you have to make enough to provide for your family. It's expensive to live in 2026. Right?
Speaker 2:So, fortunately, there are a lot of good paying options when it comes to piloting. I mean, I've watched you kinda move through the the career over the last few years. I think I did your pod. Was it like I don't even know that you were, like, flying professionally yet. I mean, besides, like, CFI or something.
Speaker 1:I don't know what I was doing when we did last. I think I might have been in NetJets. I think I was at NetJets but I think it was early on in NetJets.
Speaker 2:Very early
Speaker 1:was like very like I was I was there was no one in the world that was more high on NetJets than me when I first got hired. Bro, this is what I'm doing for the
Speaker 2:rest of
Speaker 1:my life. This is amazing. I love it. It's still I mean, I'm not knocking. I'm still a great company, but I just learned, that things change.
Speaker 1:Right? Like you what you want out of your career and you can speak on that too because you were the airline route and then maybe something in your life changed. Now you're like, well, I wanna have more flexibility. I wanna be at home. How can I be home more?
Speaker 1:Well, okay. I'm gonna go start my own company, which ironically, you probably were gone more to start out with and now home more. But, you know, it's it's just things change. And I learned that you can't say never, and you'll never say never. And I would never knock net jets because you never know if there's a day in my life where I'd be like, hey, maybe I need to go back there, whether furloughs or I just think that that's the best option for my family and my career.
Speaker 1:You never know. You never never know.
Speaker 2:So it's funny that you're touching on this so early in the interview because this is something that, you know, when someone says, like, give me your your your strongest piece of advice. Like, what is your summary breakdown of, like, advice for new pilots? And it is always, always, always, always to keep an open mind because there's gonna be twists and turns. This is not a, you know, factory job you're gonna do for forty years and then retire, or, you know, this is you're not gonna get hired by a law firm and make partner and get out. I mean, it's a turbulent business, and everything is determined by the economy, the price of oil, you know, world geopolitical events.
Speaker 2:There's there's so many factors that that can turn this into a wild ride that there is no doubt that everybody who is involved in the profession will go through something at some time with regard to career instability. And I'll say, I've done a lot of stuff. It's not just like, you know, CFI airline pilot, ferry pilot. Like, I've done a lot of different stuff in aviation business over the years, and we could touch on that. And and I think it's actually a really interesting story how I transitioned from being an airline pilot and the decision, the tough decision to walk away and hang up the wings.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But I would say some of the best no regret experiences that I've ever had in life have come as a result of walking into uncertainty and then riding it out. Yeah. You know, to get into that, and I'll try to keep it as quick as possible, but it was a tough decision. So I started ferrying planes when I was at the airlines.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:My kind of I kinda reached airline hireability right around 09/11. Not a good so my timing no. My timing was Not
Speaker 1:good time.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It was it was potentially the worst. In fact, I was hired at Allegheny at that at that time. Oh, I never
Speaker 1:ended Yeah. Up
Speaker 2:And I and I ended up never flying the line due to nine eleven. And I I got some training and some experience under my belt, and then I went back. I flew for Cape Air for a while. I was flying caravans, know, feeder freight before I got a job at Shuttle America on the Saab, and then eventually as a street captain on the Dash eight at Mesa, and then into the airline world. But, you know, my dream was to be an airline pilot since I was a little kid.
Speaker 2:Like, I never was into military aviation. I was never into any aerobatics. It was always airliners. I was fascinated by them. I think it's probably because that's what's accessible to you as as a kid growing up, and it was only a little accessible.
Speaker 2:I was on a plane twice before I was a pilot. Like, seriously.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, passenger at, like, the age of four and then, like, at the age of, like, 12 or something. So I had limited experience with it. We didn't have a whole lot of money, and I knew it was something that I wanted to do. And coming up during that 09:11 time, I mean, it was, like, bounced from job to job, like, just nothing nothing survived no career opportunities survived for very long. And so that path set me onto kind of a ladder climb up up the regional ranks.
Speaker 2:And then by the time I was ready to really start applying to, like, a Delta or United or American or Southwest or something like that, I mean, you know, now we're looking at, like, it's 2004, which you know, the 09/11 effect was still going strong. In fact, there were still, you know, tens of thousands of pilots on the street from the majors taking the mid grade jobs. So there I mean, I interviewed it at Air Tran at that time. It was me and, like, 10 fighter pilots in the interview, you know? Needless to say, didn't get the call.
Speaker 2:Right. And it was a blessing. And so I ended up at Allegiant, which was a startup at the time. They had a handful of MD eighties, a Vegas base that was it. And I you know, I'm like, bigger metal, faster airplane, let's do it.
Speaker 2:I mean, I wasn't really into living in Vegas, and and I did it. And pretty quick, I I you know, it was great. I mean, I I enjoyed what I was doing, but I wasn't making a lot of money. So I was looking for ways to make more money. So that's how I met Bob, and I started, like, moonlighting because he had all these m d 80 ferry flights going on.
Speaker 2:So that was, like, twenty o four, twenty o five is how I started kind of as a contractor. And then I just kinda fell in love with the mission. I just fell in love with going to different places every time, crossing oceans, flying in plain clothes, not answering to anyone. Right? Like just, with Bob I was a contractor, but I was an equal.
Speaker 2:I mean, we went out, but I wasn't like I mean, sure, I learned a lot from him, but it wasn't like this contentious cockpit situation that sometimes you have at the airlines.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, you know, I I contracted for Bob in parallel for years, which took me away for a long time from from home. You know, it was airline job, flying job, you know, ferry flight, repeat over and over again. Then I then I started having kids and I and I scaled back on the ferrying and then I got back into it. But come 2014, fast forward, Bob and I are now partners and, you know, the business has legs and infrastructure and we've built this this company that specializes in this very niche task. And, you know, we I was making more money from that than the airlines.
Speaker 2:And it came a time where I was like, look, this I'm either gonna be a ferry pilot, owner of Nomadic, or I'm gonna be an airline pilot. You can't do both. Mhmm. My wife very much agreed, like, pick one, you know? And it was a really hard decision because my whole life I wanted to be an airline pilot, I wanted to wear the epaulettes, I wanted to fly passengers around.
Speaker 2:It's almost like an ego prestige kind of thing, not just this dare I say stability, there's no stability. A paycheck, you know, a paycheck that you collect and then go home and then you're not working. Like, I work twenty four seven now. I feel that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But but bored being an airline pilot, you know, you get off work and then and then you live life. And then that's just not possible as a, you know, being self employed. So it was a tough decision. And I remember I remember like kinda walking through the Air and Space Museum right around the time, 2014, right around the time I entered the Smithsonian when I when I decided to quit the airlines. And this was, like, maybe a week before I made the decision.
Speaker 2:I was there with my kids. We were walking around. And, you know, I'm a you know, I I I'm sappy with the nostalgia, and like being in there in the Air and Space Museum, you know, you feel pride because you're a part of that community, and at the same time, you know, you're in awe. It's just a really cool place. And I remember, like, I'm standing at the crossroads where I'm either gonna be, you know, this is my identity for the rest of my life, or there's gonna be like this whole new thing where there's opportunity to do something different.
Speaker 2:And just the stories that you absorb while walking through that museum are kinda what just pushed me over the edge where I'm like, yeah, I wanna kinda break from the pack and do something different. Maybe not anything that's ever gonna be in the museum, but like, do something that's mine. And I did it, man. A week later, I threw out my uniforms in the trash and that was it. Mailed my IT back.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Kept it. No. Do you think you would have made that same decision if you never made it to the airlines? Like, let's just say, you know, you met up with Bob before you got hired at Allegiant and you started ferrying planes. Do you think you could have gone full in on this without having that experience of already being an airline pilot?
Speaker 2:That's a really good question. I would say definitely not. Because I had airline pilot as something in my head for so long. It was so burned in from like age eight
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That having never have done it, I think I would have always felt like a failure, maybe. Not that what I'm doing is any less or any more.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's just different, right? But like having not done what I always wanted to do, I I could confidently say there's there's no way I would've left to go to the airlines. Having had the airline experience that I had, that being turbulent, uncertain, bottom feeder kinda carriers,
Speaker 1:I
Speaker 2:knew at the point where I was ready. I knew that I was ready, and I knew that I wouldn't miss it as long as I was able to be successful because I did it for twelve years, you know, really.
Speaker 1:It's like you're try. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I tried. And I feel like I was successful. I upgraded to captain quickly. I was high on the seniority list.
Speaker 2:I actually was a union organizer there. I was part of the the push, the first failed drive, and then the second successful drive. So, you know, I did it. I've been there, done it. And maybe it wasn't the prestige of United or American or Delta, but, you know, it was the same damn job.
Speaker 1:And,
Speaker 2:you know, I could have done it for more money and I chose to do this for more money instead. And honestly, even if I made less money, I would still be doing this.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And you know what's funny is like I kinda had the same thing too, right? Like even the whole time I was doing aerial survey, when I was doing freight, when I was flying in net jets or flying fractional, I always was like in my brain, I was like, yeah, but a real pilot is an airline pilot. And it's like, don't know what it is that, like, that's just what the viewpoint is for majority of pilots. And Yeah.
Speaker 1:I would and there are people who don't think that. There are people who can do whatever and it's no issue. But there is in the back of a lot of pilots heads, like, yeah, but it didn't really make it until I go to the airlines. And then it's like, alright, well, now I'm at Allegiant, which is no knock on me. It's just how people think.
Speaker 1:It's like, but I'm not at Delta, American, United, Southwest. And then when I also found myself, people answer questions, oh, who do you fly for? It's like when I had to stop explaining why I don't fly for the airlines and I can just answer that question, that's when I know that I made it as a pilot. Right? So it's like
Speaker 2:Put yourself in my shoes. How do I answer that question? Who
Speaker 1:do I fly for? Yeah. It's just it's just really interesting and this goes back to the beginning and you're like, how do you give advice to someone in this career? And I always say like learning to say no is a very very big thing in your career and you need to learn how to say no, but you also need to learn how to say yes. What I mean by that is say yes to opportunities.
Speaker 1:If some company out there reaches out to you or you see a cool, you know, off the beaten path job, it's like, hey, come fly caravans in Hawaii. It's like, cool. Go do that. Like, by all means, you might be like, oh, wait, I love living in Hawaii. I wanna live here.
Speaker 1:You might be like, alright, caravans are cool. How would I fly caravans the rest of my life? Can I fly caravans on floats? Or you can keep falling that ladder up to corporate, you know, it's kinda what happened to me. As I went instead of CFI, I went aerial survey and I was like, oh, wow.
Speaker 1:This is cool. I like going FBOs. I like these crappy crew cars. I like trying to get hooked. Like, I like the life of what would be a corporate pilot.
Speaker 1:So was like, cool. I'm gonna do corporate. Like, I like being on this side, not the airline side. And then eventually, I'm like, alright. Well, I like kinda like turning left now and that's all I have to do.
Speaker 1:It is it's just funny, you know? Say yes to different opportunities, and then just see where it takes you.
Speaker 2:I think, you know, and this is not limited to pilots. I think one's career, if it's their chosen career that they worked toward for a long time and then remain in, is a direct reflection on, in a lot of ways, the personality of the person. Like, not everybody can do every job. No. Not everybody wants to do every job.
Speaker 2:No. But you know? And one of the things that Pilot seem to have there there's a lot of there's a lot of traits that Pilots have in common personality wise. I found over my twenty eight years in this business. And that, you know, some of them are good traits and some of them are are bad traits.
Speaker 2:You know, ego, like that I mean, that just exists. Right? Like, and everything. But one of the good traits is that pilots are pragmatic. Pilots that aren't pragmatic don't find success.
Speaker 2:So you have your drifters, dreamers type personalities that that are out there in the world. And they are the ones that would come up and say, ferry pilot is the job I want or banner tow or pipeline patrol is the job I want or flying to oil rigs on a helicopter. But the reality is the vast majority of us like order and organization and planning, and we like certainty, and we avoid uncertainty. So it's burned in that airline pilot is the is the tier that that that's achievable that we wanna reach from an early age, That you follow the steps and you get there and you cruise and you coast. And that as long as you follow the steps, the picture becomes clear over time.
Speaker 2:And that's idealist, and that's what we all want and strive for and believe, but that is not real. Yeah. Because, I mean, I would say, and I've met a lot of pilots that, you know, that have had that career where they get out of college and CFI for a minute, or get out of the military and then go to the airlines and then retire at 60 or 65, and they've had that picture perfect book. Is it, 10%? Like, 90 of the pilots out there have dealt with some shit, you know?
Speaker 2:I don't know if I can curse on this.
Speaker 1:You can. It's okay. It's all good. Pilot to pilot after dark. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's true though.
Speaker 2:It is. And and and those and those are character building events, not just because it's bad or uncomfortable during those times, because it can be. It can be. But more because of the people you meet, the different you know, getting outside of the cockpit of an airliner is a is a because in in a lot of the other jobs, you're not even a crew. Right?
Speaker 2:There's a lot of single pilot jobs. There's a lot of jobs where you're not just interacting with one person all the time, you know, in a confined space. And I almost think that's one of the things that that makes us into psychopaths. I
Speaker 1:mean, yeah. You're not wrong. So You are not wrong. Let's talk about fairing airplanes. Let's talk about so obviously, you know, we we mentioned Bob, you mentioned how he was fairing MD eighties around, you're getting into this business.
Speaker 1:But let's talk about, you know, what happens right now. Like, let's say we get off the phone or you get an email right now, it's like, what do they say? How do you even get an airplane to ferry? How do you market yourself? Talk about getting the business.
Speaker 1:And then once you talk about getting the business, talk about, you know, we'll talk about flying it and what happens afterwards.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, I mean, if if if I were to have started this business completely in the blind, I wouldn't honestly even know how to go about doing it. Yeah. And I and now, even after having done it for as long as I have been, I don't know what the recipe is for starting because we have such a stable base that's been established for so many years. Bob's essentially the modern day OG of of fairy flying.
Speaker 2:There there were predecessors that he learned from. He actually kinda took over a business from somebody who was very very old and ended up, you know, passing away of old age, in the early years of Bob doing that. And he he's kinda set the standard for for, I think, for today what how the industry runs. So, you know, it's really about having these long term there's a lot of trust involved. Like, you're not just gonna hand the keys to a, you know, $80,000,000 airplane to anybody just because they have a pilot's license.
Speaker 2:Like, you have to establish trust. And our reputation of of, you know, over twenty seven years, if you include Bob's early beginnings, is what has set set those relationships up. And even when there's turnover, even when the old guard is changed out with the new guard, they generally pass along their contacts and say, nomadic, these are the guys that we use because because there's trust. So as far as, you know, we don't actively have a marketing budget anymore because we're kind of a household name in this very niche business. And and remaining that way just means performing well all the time.
Speaker 2:But how does it come in on a day to day for us? My clients are 80% lessors. So when I say aircraft lessors, you're talking about SMBC Capital, AirCap, Castle Lake, AirSail, Macquarie, know, ACG, ACS. These these are are primarily financial companies. They have some of them are publicly traded, some of them are private.
Speaker 2:They have investors, public or private, and then they use leveraged debt service to acquire fleets of aircraft that they then lease on five to ten year plus terms to different airlines. And so the airplane is essentially delivered as a all white airplane. Airlines painted in their own livery, put their own interior in it, and then they operate the airplane for five, ten, fifteen years. And then they return it just like a like a car lease. Right?
Speaker 2:And there are tax advantages to leasing. There are cost huge cost advantages to leasing. And because these leasing companies are not operations companies, they they don't have an AOC, they don't have operational experience, They don't even always have technical engineering and technical resources. Some do. Many do.
Speaker 2:But kind of on a small scale, like on an oversight scale. They need the support of a specialized company to get the airplanes delivered returned and flight tested in between. So those are our clients primarily. 20% are airlines. We can go into that different because it's a whole different thing.
Speaker 2:Like, the airlines use us for deliveries to some degree, a few airlines, but mostly to, you know, as a as an alternative to using their own pilots to move their airplanes to and from heavy maintenance, which can sometimes be, you know, MROs that are in The Middle East or in Singapore when the airline is in South America. So we have that expertise how to do long haul flights. We we free up their pilots for revenue operations because they're all lean. Mhmm. We're not subject to part one twenty one time and duty limitations, which means we can get it done faster and more efficiently.
Speaker 2:And we have the relationships with the handlers and and all service providers required in between point a and point b. So that's 20%, but 80% is a lessor. So they call when they have a project, you know, brewing. Do you want me to get into the process first?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Let's do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Okay. Usually it's an email. Sometimes it's a call. Depends on the client.
Speaker 2:Some of the guys I'm like, I play golf with. So so, like, they'll just shoot me a text. Hey. Call me when you get a chance. I got something brewing.
Speaker 2:Sometimes it's a formal email as an RFP that that somebody who's soliciting bids from five or six different providers similar to us. And it's usually you know, our seasoned clients know exactly what we wanna know. But if it's a new inquiry, they tell us, I got a plane in, you know, storage in Tucson, Arizona, and it needs to be delivered to Johannesburg or wherever it needs to go. And then I have to pry information out of them so that I can appropriately quote it. And so, generally, we need to know the aircraft type, engine variant, weight variant, if applicable, fuel capacity by variant.
Speaker 2:There's you know, there are different variants to to almost every aircraft type out there. So we wanna know what we're working with because we have so our our dispatch and planning team, they're headquartered in Calgary. They're in house, nomadic nomadic people. We have actually a fairly sophisticated planning system that we've been grandfathered in with Jepson for twenty years now. So the product that we have for flight planning doesn't even exist anymore.
Speaker 2:In fact, I hear my dispatchers complain about it because it's so old school. I mean, it doesn't even run right on on new computers. So, like, they have, like, old PCs running But the thing that may so because everything in the flight planning world is tail number dependent. So you send you you you want planning and performance data. You send the specific technical details of a particular MSN into the company, and then they build it out, right?
Speaker 2:But we don't have that luxury. Every single time we fly, it's a different airplane.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Different type. So what we have is like, we have like it's the same kind of things that the airlines used to use, but it it's mixed with some more modern stuff, but the the actual route planning and everything allows us to manually put in performance numbers. And then, of course, you know, seasonal winds. We use seasonal wind averages to calculate fuel. Our contracts are all structured so the price of fuel can change.
Speaker 2:The wind direction can change. The route can change, and certain variables are variables and not fixed because of the the nature of how it works. But trip comes into the pipeline, I send it to my planning team. They build, a quote which involves sometimes two or three different potential routings depending on different different variables. Like, right now, we have like, everything that's going through The Middle East gets, like, two or three different routings because we don't know what's gonna happen due to world events.
Speaker 2:So, like, we need, you know, we need to present some options. So that that happens. Our workflow is there's automation. So usually whoever takes the initial inquiry puts it into a CMS system, which alerts the planning team. As soon as they go on duty, they start planning the trip.
Speaker 2:Once they're finished planning the trip, it gets sent to a partner, and then we bias the trip to extract our profit from the costs. And then once that's done and it takes into account, you know, fifty, sixty items. I mean, there's a lot of stuff involved. And then and then one you know, myself, Bob, Wes, or one of the project managers biases the trip in our system, produces a quote, sends it back, then we negotiate, then we contract, and then then the pre operations phase starts. And that's collecting documents and data, certificates of airworthiness, being put in touch with the continuing airworthiness team, whether it's a camo or an on-site rep in an MRO, the DAR who's the FAA designated airworthiness representative who issues the temporary airworthiness status so that we can operate the aircraft from point a to point b.
Speaker 2:Like, we we start kind of gathering all of the sources of data and requesting documents, and then that starts timelines based on when the airplane is gonna move. Because depending on, you know, a million variables, usually I mean, there's commercial variables. There's technical variables. There's the work that the aircraft is in for. Stuff never happens on time.
Speaker 2:There's nonroutines that are found. You know, DARs get delayed, holidays. There's a million things that happen, but there's a there's specific timelines because some permits take seven to fourteen days. Some permits we can't apply for till we have the SFP, which is only good for ten days, you know, and then we have a narrow window of applying. We have to get RVSM approvals from the FAA.
Speaker 2:We start to arrange the customs import and export. We have a an in house team that coordinates that with a customs broker that we use. So we manage the import and export.
Speaker 1:So without the relationships of knowing these people, it would take like, the amount of work that goes into one, it's probably not even worth it for the profit you would make. You'd probably be you probably can't make a profit without having knowing how to do this, because it'd take you forever. Like, if someone came to me to figure this all out, it'd take me a year to do what they needed to be done in ten days.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And and so most of our competitors, they don't have the infrastructure that we have, so they rely on third parties. But the problem and and that's what we did in the beginning is we, you know, we use third parties from everything from flight planning and dispatch to I mean, everything. And and and so it the problem with third parties are nothing ever goes the way you plan. No.
Speaker 2:And and every time something changes, third parties incur new fees and charges. Right? So bringing everything in house to the to Nomadic Aviation Group at large was a huge step forward in our ability to be profitable and competitive at the same time.
Speaker 1:What does I mean, I don't know if you can say numbers, but like, everyone knows aviation is expensive. Yeah. I mean, we just know the amount of fuel right now that you're putting in one of these planes is ginormous. But like, what is what's the quote look like? Is it like, alright, well, is gonna be hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Speaker 1:Is it like million dollars? Like what just like a general like big number of what you usually charge for a standard operation. Right? I mean, there probably is no standard in your world. Right?
Speaker 1:But the last one you did
Speaker 2:or There's averages, you know. I I would say like domestic ferry flights in The US, something that's one leg and, you know, can be done in two or three days falls. And this is all inclusive, everything including fuel Mhmm. Lands between 35 and $40,000. Okay.
Speaker 2:I mean, obviously, like an a three twenty and a triple seven are gonna burn a far different amount of fuel. Very different. Yeah. So, you know, on the low end, maybe 25 to 28,000. On the high end, 70, you know, an a three forty six hundred.
Speaker 2:So those are the short haul domestics. Then you start looking at the longest flights, the desert in Arizona to Singapore or South Africa or across Europe are going the wrong direction to Asia over Europe with a narrow body because of no HF or something like that. They kinda start around a 120,000 and they top out at three to four hundred thousand. I mean, like, you know, I just quoted an a three forty six hundred not long ago and we were uplifting 90,000 gallons of fuel. So, you know, I mean, you're looking at $500,000 at that point, and almost in fuel alone.
Speaker 2:It's crazy. So there's generally, I would say the average project goes from 50 for short to like a 150 to two fifth 200 average for long. Yeah. And our margins on the short hauls are are pretty low. I mean, you know, our margins are maybe 5 to $8 on those, and for a lot of work, but we make our money on the long hauls, and the long hauls our margins are, you know, I hesitate, They're they're they're certainly less than $30 each, like, but somewhere in the 15 to $25,000 margin.
Speaker 2:But, you know, a project could take a month or two, the key is volume. You know, we do three, four, five hundred five hundred trips sometimes in a year.
Speaker 1:That all adds up. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It adds up.
Speaker 1:Yep. It's kinda like with the magazines, like I see you sell more because you know, the the overall purchase of the magazines get cheaper and all that kind of stuff. So yeah.
Speaker 2:Well and
Speaker 1:and We pretty much did the same thing. Magazines on very big airplanes. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And and if you think about it this way, right? Like because we're not like this lean little two man show Yeah. We have fixed costs now. In the early days, we didn't have anything for fixed costs.
Speaker 2:Now, you know, I got a 120 to a $150,000 a month nut to crack even if we don't fly. Yeah. So that's big, and I can't lose these people. And I, you know, I've never missed a pay payroll. I mean, there have been slow times where Bob and I don't take pay for six months just to keep our team paid.
Speaker 2:And that's just the nature of the beast. But having that nut to crack, it's, you know, those fixed costs sound high. But if I'm doing, you know, five to 10 trips a week, I'm making money.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And if we're doing one trip a month, I'm losing money. So it's just a balance. And there are, you know, we squirrel away the nuts during the times that are real rich, and then we're really really conservative with things during the slow times. And the past year has been probably our biggest challenge ever.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Which is much different than last time I talked to you with 2020. You're like, dude, we're busier than ever. Who do you know that can fly this? Who do you know that can fly that?
Speaker 1:Like Yeah. Do you wanna fly this? Like, Yeah. Yeah. It's just I mean, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's just the the airline industry. Right? Like not even aviation in general just how, you know, when it's good, it's good. When it's bad, it's just like holy smokes. Like why did I get into this?
Speaker 1:You know, like I should have been an accountant. Yeah.
Speaker 2:We did $15,000,000 of business in 2023 and we did $7,000,000 last year. So Yeah. You know, and and and like that's barely a profit at the end of the day. So it's it's You have to be smart as a business owner with with, you know, when to spend and when to hold, you know? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which is hard. It's hard. It's a learning experience and sometimes you don't get a second chance.
Speaker 1:No. Yeah. You're like, oh, dude, we made $15,000,000. Alright. Cool.
Speaker 1:Let's let's do this. Let's buy this. Let's go there. We need this. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, I've never made a million bucks. That those are those are net gross sales.
Speaker 1:Never made it yet.
Speaker 2:Never made it yet. You know, but we've made we've made, you know, we've had million dollar profit years apiece. Like, you know, we've had those years, and then we've had years where, you know, we were coming out of savings to survive. And that's again, if you're comfortable, if you're a good saver, if you're a good budgeter, if you have the big picture in mind knowing that the slow times are coming and you're smart about it, it's fully sustainable. But we've also been lucky and unlucky.
Speaker 2:I mean, we we've had a we've had a $500,000 write off due to bankruptcies before. And you can't absorb that if you'd if you haven't been smart up to that point.
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Speaker 1:You know, one thing that's interesting is what's your relationship to fuel now that the purchase of your fuel directly impacts how much money you take home? And the when you're in the airlines, right, it's like, alright. Well, dispatch has figured out you need this. And you're like, oh, well, I know historically in this route, we usually go ahead lower. So let's let's take an extra thousand pounds.
Speaker 1:But now you're like, alright, extra thousand pounds, you know, times 6.7, it's like, that's money coming out of my paycheck. Have you Yeah. Had a struggle or of figuring out the right balance between, you know, the profit you're taking home and the fuel you're buying? Or is it still just like, I like, I just wanna go home to my kids. If we need to buy the fuel, we need to buy the fuel.
Speaker 1:It's just a cost that we have to endure.
Speaker 2:Fuel is generally a pass through expense. Okay. So so it doesn't really affect our bottom line all that much. However, where that changes is if if circumstances on a trip entail a much larger fuel load than planned, customers are generally not happy with huge cost overruns toward the end. Right?
Speaker 2:So it's more it's not a matter of are we gonna get paid? It's a matter of is our customer gonna be pleased with us, you know, when when when it's all over. We're talking about my relationship with the price of fuel. You know, I I this is an apolitical podcast, but I will say that I'm a fan of the current administration right now because they're destroying the economy and the price of oil is over $100 a barrel, which means that I'm about to get really, really, really busy. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which is good for us. It's bad for the industry at large, of course. Right. You know, that's kind of the the niche that we exist in. When things are ramping up, we're busy.
Speaker 2:When things are ramping down, we're busy. When things are status quo, we're slow. But no. Look. It it it the I just so we're working on a a large scale project for an airline client that's taking a three thirties right now, a part one twenty one airline in South America.
Speaker 2:And I just quoted 12 aircraft movements for them. And and six aircraft are in in Europe, and they're coming to South America. And the place where where the aircraft are, I can't really give away too much, but it's in a Western European city. And fuel there right now is $18 a gallon.
Speaker 1:Oh, man.
Speaker 2:You know? And so immediately, I mean I gotta quote this and I know what it's gonna look like when they get the quote. So where do I go with this? Well, I start to explain that this is the price right now. It may not be the price in July.
Speaker 2:It may be higher, it may be lower, but here's what we can do about that. So coming out of wherever this is, there's there's another airport within an hour flying time where I can tanker at $6 a gallon right now where it was $2.50 a month ago, you know. But what do you do? Well, you still have to take 4,000 gallons at $18 a gallon, but then you take 20,000 gallons at 5 or $6 a gallon and you're able to knock off a lot of money right there. And I I found that if you're open kimono with the clients and you say, these are the challenges for this route.
Speaker 2:This is what we can do about it. And sometimes even enlist them, look, I know this quote looks really high. This is really high compared to where I even thought it was gonna be just based on the factors right now. But here's what we can do about that and maybe you can help. Like, maybe you're an airline, so
Speaker 1:Yeah. Maybe
Speaker 2:you guys can handle us when we land instead of us using a third party, you know? So you gotta get creative with stuff like that to
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then also manage expectations at the same time.
Speaker 1:Is there any scenario where you say no? Is it like, I'm not going to that region of the world anymore? No. Last time you I fared a plane for you, tried to kill me with a bad plane. But is there like, is there any scenario where like you're just like, no.
Speaker 1:You know, I'm not gonna do that? Or is that just mission by mission?
Speaker 2:Yes and no. There are definitely scenarios where we always say no. And I mean there are times where we just simply can't do it, right? There are times when we're approached by a sanctioned client, a client in a sanctioned country, or a client dealing with a sanctioned country. So those are obviously immediate no's.
Speaker 2:There are times that I'll get an inquiry and it's fishy. And look, I run a reputable business. I am not about to screw us by being stupid in the name of money. And so I have relationships at the FBI and the ATF because having done this a long time, you know, we've been involved in projects with major lessors that were getting duped into aircraft that might end up in Iran. And so I've formed these relationships with agents in the field.
Speaker 2:So I have resources that if something doesn't sit right with me, I'll go to them. And just because look, do I engage? Like, I'm not, you know, I'm not like an asset. I'm not a US government asset, but I wanna make sure that my business is clean, and I'm not gonna, you know, I want the benefit of the doubt later if there's any weird because stuff happens, man. Mean, some of these are sneaky regimes, and I want everyone that is an authority in this regard to know that we're the good guys, and that we're always proactive in a KYC standpoint.
Speaker 2:So yes, we say no in those cases. As far as convenience and like no. There's I mean, I'll go anywhere. We'll do anything as long as we're legally able to, and and we have a process for our safety. However, when we're busy, we actually do have to pick and choose.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The one thing that I've never been willing to do is grow this company to the point where we can handle everything that's thrown at us all the time. Because there's a there's a balance between what can we do. I've got 12 employees. I mean, we're a small business.
Speaker 2:Right? I got a lot of contractors, but I have 12 employees. With 25 employees, I can handle everything that's thrown at us ever. With, you know, with 12 employ or with with five employees, I I can handle very little. So there's a balance there.
Speaker 2:We're the size that we need to be to do everything that we normally are able to do. But in very very very busy busy times, I'll pass on jobs. And I love those times because I'll pass on low margin. I mean, the airlines are notoriously cheap. Right?
Speaker 2:Like, they're like, I'll take the lowest bidder. Some of the start up smaller lessors, same thing, lowest bidder. We're not the lowest bidder in most cases. I've got infrastructure but we can guarantee that the job is gonna get done. It's gonna get done safely, and correctly.
Speaker 2:And there's a you know, you get what you pay for and that directly translates. We're not always gonna be the cheapest, but in the long run we generally are. And sometimes I just let the universe handle that, and you know, I'm not gonna negotiate. If we're real real busy and a client doesn't accept the offer and they wanna negotiate, I'll just say, yeah, sorry. We're not gonna and go with the lowest bidder and see what happens.
Speaker 2:And I would say three out of five times, they end up back with us. What
Speaker 1:do you look for in Pilot when you're hiring pilots? Like, I mean, last time we talked, you know, it kinda blew my mind. It's like, alright, well, you fly a 73, a 777, a 787, a 380, a 340, a 3 like, you have all these type ratings and you have to to be somewhat proficient and feel comfortable in these. And I'm sure sometimes you're flying 777 after triple seven after triple seven, you get back in an Airbus, you're like, woah, okay. Let me think about this for a second.
Speaker 1:Right? But what are you looking for in the Pilot? Like, I mean, are you looking for airline people because they already have that type rating? Or are you looking for more of a mindset of, hey, I can you can handle adversity being thrown at you because it's not the airline world. Right?
Speaker 1:This is like, hey, things change. We need to figure out how to get this done and we really have to be a problem solver.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Very much so. And when you say hire, I mean, I don't really I do have a few full timers. Those are people that have been with us forever. Or you know, have one guy who was an intern who's just evolved into a full timer.
Speaker 2:Most, you know, it's not so much hiring as it is like contracting, because we contract pilots. There's Unicorns, there's acceptable, and
Speaker 1:then
Speaker 2:there's like, you know, oh god, we need this guy for this but we have to pair him with somebody that I mean, if if I have a crew that I'm unsure about, I'll even I'll put an unqualified member of my team in the jump seat, like unqualified on the airplane. Like, know, if I get an ATR, none of us fly ATRs, but if I can't find a crew that that I have confidence in, I'm gonna send one of my seven three guys to ride along in the jump seat and run the trip outside of flying the airplane. As far as what it takes to be successful, I think the biggest part of it is personality, honestly. Anybody who's type rated on an aircraft can do the job. Right?
Speaker 2:And even though our the job that we do is different than the airlines, everybody that is a professional pilot has gone through training. They they understand how to adapt and learn, and and most people can can learn and grow into becoming a good ferry pilot, I would say. But where where where the most important distinction lies is what is your mindset? What is your attitude? We don't have room for ego.
Speaker 2:This is not an ego job. We don't have room for like know it alls. I mean, I learn things from my contract pilots.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know? I'm out of the airline world and I've been out of the airline world for twelve years. And things have changed. And yeah, I get briefed on changes operationally every time I go for a sim check, which is many times a year. But not being on the line every day, I'm also not privy to those cockpit discussions anymore.
Speaker 2:And so I think, you know, best practices change over time. I mean, when I got out of the airlines, we were still doing dive and drive non precision approaches, man. Now every
Speaker 1:How many more?
Speaker 2:Calculating Stable. Stable descent rates. And so like, I pick up stuff from the guys that we bring in. But every pilot knows in ground school that there's the know it all guy at my last airline, or at the airlines, or in the seven three we do this, in the Airbus we do that. That is a trait that is not conducive to being a good ferry pilot because the reality is 10% of the job is flying the airplane.
Speaker 2:90% of the job what we do is managing the project. Like managing the project on-site as it as it happens. And I don't care how experienced you are, you've never done it. And if you have done it, you've never done it for Nomadic. So I need my pilots to be open minded and I will listen to suggestions, but like we do it a certain way and we've been successful because we've done it that way for a long time.
Speaker 2:So attitude is everything, all the way up to look, I gotta spend time with this person for four days, not, you know, in a tight confined space, sleep deprived, grumpy, hungry, you know, what's this person gonna be like? Am I gonna am I gonna wanna kill myself? Yeah. I
Speaker 1:think airline interviews are the same way. I think they're they're mostly figuring out like, hey, if we have a long day flying four legs, like am I gonna wanna kill you when I get out of this airplane? Yeah. Yes or no?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So our our contract pilots fall into really two different categories. We have your multi typed ferry pilots. These are pilots that have either started off contracting for a lot of ferry companies, have experienced working with us and others over the years, and they come to us with a lot of type ratings and experience. And that includes retired pilots who, like, are 65 and they'll wanna fly for five you know, Mike Holiday was a guy, flew for us for a few years before he decided he wanted to completely hang it up.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. He came out of Air Canada. He was a GA. You know, he flew, like, charters and some he did have an interesting career. But he retired as a seven eighty seven captain.
Speaker 2:And he came to us only you know, his only fly you know, big jet experience was all at part one twenty one crew environment, but he was a he was a willing subject when it came to learning. And he was like, yeah, I'll go get current on four five types, and he did. You know, a 65 year old guy who hadn't flown an a three twenty in ten years went back to training and got his three twenty type current, and you know, was flying seven sixes and triples and three twenties for us. And he did it for four years before he said, wanna enjoy the rest of my life with my wife. We're moving and retiring to Tucson.
Speaker 2:You know, I think I'm hanging it up, which I respected, but I was sad about. But, you know, so there's that category. And then there's the one off category of people that we need for a particular project due to geography or a different type of registration or just I've got a database of people can go on our website and submit their credentials. And and if we need somebody in a pinch, we go to that list. And we don't always know what it's gonna how it's gonna turn out.
Speaker 2:So we pair one of those people with somebody that we do know, and we take it from there. I have tried to avoid current airline pilots. Look. Number one, they're not allowed to do it in most case. Right?
Speaker 2:But the biggest thing is nothing ever goes as planned. And so if you have five days off and the trip's got a four day footprint, you might be somewhere and I'm gonna have to replace you and that's gonna kill my profit. I can't go to the client and say, oh, my captain had to go back to work.
Speaker 1:He's gonna fly to San Francisco and come to AI.
Speaker 2:You know? Yeah. No. So so it's current airline pilots are tough just from their availability standpoint. There are exceptions.
Speaker 2:I've got a buddy who flies for an airline who's allowed to do it. And, like, he has an agreement with the airline that says you're you can do this on your days off as long as you report your times and, you know, and all that. Actually, I have a couple guys like that. And these guys bid their schedule to give themselves large blocks. In most cases they're single, you know?
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And like, my good friend Mike, he's just like, you know, I I took all of March off. I was able to do it with my schedule. So anything that you have in March, you know, he gets preference because he's available, and I can use him, and I like him. So there's guys like that.
Speaker 2:But yeah, ultimately it comes down to personality, aptitude, flexibility. I mean the job, the flying of the airplane is I mean, we can all do it. It's all been demonstrated. That's why we have licenses.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What talk about kind of maybe a favorite fare you have and necessarily why. Is it just the places you got to go? You know, is it the first time you got to fly? Whatever country or just talk about one that stands out in your memory.
Speaker 2:So first, before I go into a specific one, I like to get into a specific category. I I love Asia and The Pacific flying. Yeah. For a lot of reasons. So whenever there's a trip, I'm always gonna try to get on a long haul over the Pacific.
Speaker 2:It just works better for my like, time zones, like dealing with being tired. I there's always a either a long rest flight to start or a long rest flight on the way back, which I like. You're talking about such a huge time change. I'm able to it's it's easier for me if you're talking about a twelve hour time difference than a four hour time difference. It's just a different approach to to being able to manage that.
Speaker 2:So I go for the longest haul. I love Australia. I just it's just an awesome place. Very cool. I I just love it there, man.
Speaker 2:It's just got a vibe, and and and I dig it. So anytime there's anything operating there, I try to get on it. Yeah. I do a lot into Asia, China, Southeast Asia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines. Just I love I just love that part of the world.
Speaker 2:So I enjoy it. It's different. It's very different from where I live in the East Coast. Try to avoid the Europe stuff when possible because I really, really struggle with the West to East time change. So if there's something in Europe where we're flying it back to The States, I mean, I'll do it.
Speaker 2:I struggle. I can't sleep when I get there. Yeah. And it's really hard for me to prep. And so sometimes I'll even build in rest where it's not needed just because I just struggle with that, with with The US to Europe time change.
Speaker 2:But talking specifics, man, during COVID, we were doing these multi ship movements out of Alice Springs, Australia. And there were so many airplanes in storage there from a lot of the Asian carriers, and a lot of them went off lease and had to come back to The US. And during COVID, travel was so crazy. And in the moment, I don't think I I I I recognized it as I like this. I think I recognized it as, oh my god, when is this gonna end?
Speaker 2:It's killing me. I think I went fully gray during that period. Yeah. That's a lot of work. But it was a puzzle, and it was cool because like we would At one point, they were running a lottery to get into Australia because they weren't, you know.
Speaker 2:So you had to like get on a list, and for like four days, they would draw, alright, you can buy a ticket today. Alright.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:You're not gonna be able to leave until Wednesday. So we would fly over to The UAE and hang out in Dubai until our ticket from Dubai to Brisbane, you know, we were awarded the seat. And then we'd fly in and then we'd have to charter, you know, a King Air or a Learjet or a Conquest in one case to fly into the outback in Alice Springs and then fly the planes back. We overnighted in Haniara in the Solomon Islands there, which is, I mean, World War two buff. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's, you know, it's a it's a really Guadalcanal, man. It's like it's just a it's a place that's so storied and, you know, the massive Pacific battles. But I've watched the Pacific series a 100 times, and just being there, it's just you just feel it, you know?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then you overnight in Hawaii, which was fun, and then back to The States. So I that was a trip that I loved. We did it on repeat throughout 2020 and 2021, and we haven't done it since. I miss it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Dude, Australia sounds awesome. I when I graduated in high school or graduated college, I told everyone, was like, I'm moving to Australia. And I found out that it's to get a work visa without a job, and it's hard to get a job without a work visa. So I ran into that issue.
Speaker 1:Not the lottery issue that you ran into, but who knows? One day, maybe I'll convince a Australian company to hire me. If you're listening, you know, I can, I can do your podcast?
Speaker 2:It's a very closed community. Yeah. They don't have like non Australians flying in Australia for the most part. I mean, I guess maybe there's some, but Australians, there's a lot of Australian pilots and you see them, they expat all to Southeast Asia. You see them flying for the Chinese airlines and, you know, all the Southeast Asian airlines.
Speaker 2:I have some good friends over there. They're they're the Australian pilots are the closest thing to FAA pilots when it comes to like the way we view things. It's EASA is so strict. Australia is a lot closer to us Okay. Than that.
Speaker 2:What?
Speaker 1:You've been in all over the world. Right? What would you say is the worst weather conditions? Is it like Florida in the summertime with pop up thunderstorms? Is it, you know, Southeast Asia with not tsunamis, but with the tropical cyclones they get or the weather system out there?
Speaker 1:Is it the convergence zone with, South America? What would you say is just consistently, you're just like, oh my gosh, here we go again.
Speaker 2:So worst as far as operationally for us, it's the northern latitudes which are the most challenging. Nome, Anchorage, Keflavik are the big three most biggest thorn in my side due to weather places, and that's mainly because for one, freezing fog and any type of situation that's gonna create a de icing necessity is is bad in the ferry business because it's very expensive, and it's one of those gotchas on the contract. Like, we try to avoid it. We try to avoid deicing. We'll even delay a trip to avoid it.
Speaker 2:We'll certainly just short stop somewhere to to avoid it because ice is it's expensive and it's and it just kinda alters the trip. So I would say and Keflavik from October to April is windy, rainy, low visibility. And when I say windy, mean wind like you've never seen, man. Like seventy, eighty not sustained winds.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You're like, I'm good.
Speaker 2:That with that. Then the other thing on a different you know, just just in the annoyance category is Central Africa. You talk thunder intense thunderstorms. Like, yes. Florida has some nasty thunderstorms in the summertime.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you even have no choice, especially flying into Miami or something like that. Sometimes you just you're just gonna go through them, so strap in. But in those thunderstorms are like a joke compared to what you see over in the Western Sahara, Oh. Or The Congo. Like, Equatorial Africa has the worst thunderstorms I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 2:I mean, stuff that'll kill you, like rip the wings off the airplane, hailstones the size of softballs. That's some scary stuff. So you don't wanna go anywhere near those.
Speaker 1:Did you learn from experience or did you learn from passed down information?
Speaker 2:Both, but a lot of experience. And I mean, I've never like damaged an airplane in hail, but I have scared myself in heavy in severe turbulence there. Yeah. And the other thing is that a lot of the countries down there either don't have radar or they don't have good radar. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:So when you're talking to ATC, they're not looking at the weather, so it's on you for your weather avoidance. And you're also not necessarily gonna get a deviation. And and if you do, it may be after five minutes of trying to convince them. So there in a lot of ways, that region of the world sometimes is closer to the open Pacific, non radar controlled Yeah. Ocean because you're over land, but there's there's nobody really guiding you.
Speaker 2:So you better have good radar. Sometimes you just gotta Even if they say no, you gotta do it because I mean
Speaker 1:You're not gonna die. Yeah. I'm not flying through that red cell right there. So yeah, gotta do what you gotta do. Yep.
Speaker 1:Yep. So talk about your favorite. What's been one that sticks out as your least favorite? It And could be because of weather, it could just because the trip just was just annoying, or it could have been, you know, we probably needed more fuel, or this maintenance thing happened, or this emergency happened.
Speaker 2:Like, we're talking about one flight. I can say like one of the oh, man. This is probably the biggest operational failure we've ever had. Oh, love it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:This was, mean, you know, it happens. And over all these years, there's not many I can think of one, really. There's there's really no others one where we were truly culpable. This was this was during COVID. China had a policy where it was twenty one day quarantine, mandatory quarantine.
Speaker 2:So I couldn't get crews to stay in China. I certainly wasn't gonna do it for twenty one They were locking you in your room. So we'd have to charter a flight in and then charter a flight out, and we have to do wing to wing transfers whenever we were doing stuff in China. So a company one of our customers still, you know, they gave us a second chance and it's been great. But one of our clients hired us to move two seven thirty seven eight hundreds out of China to Seoul, Korea, South Korea, and then back to China.
Speaker 2:So the job was Jinan, China to Seoul, one day on the ground in Seoul, and then both aircraft went back to China. The reason was those aircraft were being exported, and the registration was being changed, but the DAR couldn't go into China because of the twenty one day quarantine. He could only get to to Korea. So they hired us to go to China to move the airplanes to and from Korea so that they can get deregistered, reregistered, and then flown back to China. So we hot we flew over.
Speaker 2:Team of four pilots. It was two jets. We flew over. This was twenty twenty, like, the thick of COVID. We flew into Kuala Lumpur.
Speaker 2:We jumped on a Lear 45 charter, stopped in in Hanoi, Vietnam, and then up to Jinan. We all four of us got out of the Learjet, walked onto the two seven thirty sevens, all crossed the ramp. We got on preflighted, pushed back. We flew the two seven thirty sevens to Korea. We get in.
Speaker 2:They immediately drive us to COVID testing, like nose swabs. I have video of this. It never became an episode for obvious reasons you'll know in a moment. And then we all go back to the hotel. And, you know, it was a nice hotel, the Intercontinental over there.
Speaker 2:And one night of rest, the next day we were flying back. Have dinner, get back to the hotel room. Actually, had dinner in the hotel room. Got a call from from one of my other pilots who spoke Korean because he was in the air force, white guy from Florida that speaks Korean.
Speaker 1:I
Speaker 2:just talked to I just talked to the operations team. One of the pilots is positive for COVID. And I said, oh, shit. What what does that mean? Well, we're all locked in our rooms now, and we're all likely gonna have to go into quarantine for three weeks here in Korea.
Speaker 2:So we can't fly the planes out tomorrow, and we may be stuck here. And I'm like, oh, no. Oh, no. No. No.
Speaker 2:No. No. No. No. No.
Speaker 2:No. We're all negative. Yeah. Now the thing that saved me and that other guy is we flew together. We were now, here's the thing.
Speaker 2:We never told them that we were all in the same Learjet together, but we were on separate airplanes, and the other crew where the one guy tested positive. So ultimately, there was there was about eight hours of uncertainty where I was, like, very very very scared of what would happen. But ultimately, what happened is they cut us loose. I actually I have two passports. I actually went to the hotel.
Speaker 2:I probably shouldn't be admitting this. I actually went to the hotel. I went to the airport with my second valid, and I bought a ticket on-site, and I left before I was even allowed to leave because I didn't wanna get stuck.
Speaker 1:No way.
Speaker 2:I did. And I was like, maybe I'm gonna be allowed back into Korea.
Speaker 1:Is not coming back.
Speaker 2:Dang. Yeah. I don't know. Were you
Speaker 1:able to finish were you able to finish the the trip?
Speaker 2:No. So while I was while I was on while I was on the flight home that I escaped on, Yeah. I I was on WiFi and the other guy stayed because he has a relationship in with Korea. He speaks Korean. His kids grew up there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:He said, oh, we were released. He goes, I'm going home tomorrow. So at the end of the day, no harm, no foul, turned out okay. We got cut loose. But the other two guys got hung there for weeks, like not like hanged, like I got hung up there.
Speaker 1:They were stuck in their hotel room for three weeks.
Speaker 2:Not in their hotel room. They got sent to a to a government quarantine facility.
Speaker 1:No way. Yeah. Oh, shoot.
Speaker 2:So we had to subcontract another ferry company to finish the job. Jeez. Embarrassing, man. We didn't, you know, obviously, we refunded half of their money. We lost a ton of money on the deal.
Speaker 2:We worked with them, we got it done. I mean, the trip happened. We used like Chinese crews for that other I mean, was a whole lot of but that was it. That was the worst, man.
Speaker 1:Dang. I had a question but I forgot what I was gonna ask. When you kinda look back on this, you know, you talked about how like in the moment it took you a while to make this decision. Are you do you ever like sit back especially in that moment where you're like, man, could've just like I could be like a senior captain at Allegiant right now. It could be a Delta, flying three fifties, you know.
Speaker 1:Especially with how how well that those pilots are like, they make a lot of money now, you know. It's a lot different than 2004, 2014. That industry has changed. Have you ever just like sat and looked back and thought like, you know, what would my life be like if I would have stayed?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Sometimes. So I was already a senior captain at Allegiant, so I was number two in base captain. And on the bus, I had up I'd gone to the bus, I had already been flying the MD 80 for years. And I had my second choice at the schedule, so I had a pretty good schedule.
Speaker 2:If I were still there, I would be at twenty three, twenty two years now? Yeah. Right, not too long before I left, I actually did start sending out my resume. And I had So I don't have a college degree. Like, never graduated from college.
Speaker 2:So that was a limiter back then. I sent out my resume. I had 12,000 out fourteen, fifteen, I don't know. I had a lot. I had a lot of hours.
Speaker 2:A lot of hours. I I have 24,000 now, I think, roughly. So I, you know, I had a lot of experience. I an a three twenty captain. I had a 73 type.
Speaker 2:I had a 75 type. I had a triple seven type. I had a you know, I've flown everything, you know, ten years PIC part one twenty one in jets, four, you know, four years in turboprops. I mean, I had all the experience and I could not get a call from any airline, like nowhere. I mean, I was under 40.
Speaker 2:Like, I I was like the dream candidate, man. Couldn't get a call. In retrospect, if I had stayed and waited it out a few years, I mean, were hiring anybody that can fog a mirror, like, in the last few years. Right? So could I have ended up at, you know, at American or Delta or United or something like that?
Speaker 2:They dropped their four year degree requirement. Yeah. I could've. Yeah. They're making good money.
Speaker 2:I make about now, if you average everything out, I make the same or more than top tier captains at any of the majors.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Maybe more.
Speaker 1:Probably more. Yeah.
Speaker 2:With some upside.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But not from a financial standpoint. There are times where I'm like, God, I wish I could just I wish I could just be off when I'm off. Yeah. But no. I have no regrets.
Speaker 2:Ultimately, no. I've I've I've pondered it. Where would I be? I'd be one of those guys bidding long haul reserve probably in Philly for American on the seven eight or something. Maybe.
Speaker 1:Heard that's a pretty good life. I heard there's you can be home a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. You could be.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Grow the But beard
Speaker 2:I know me and every you know, everyone who knows me knows me and that that would I'd be bored, man. It's always like He's gotta work. Just like you, dude. I mean, look at you. You could have that life, but but you do this.
Speaker 1:Grind out, baby. Let's go. For better or for worse. Yeah. My last question, I don't know if this is something that you even necessarily have thought about, but you did mention it where it's like, you know, when when times are good, you guys aren't doing as well business wise.
Speaker 1:When times are bad, you are doing really well. Do you ever find it like mentally odd? I don't know. You're not necessarily cheering for for stuff to go wrong, but like you do better financially, you reward you are more rewarded off bad times and good times. Do you ever like see yourself like, man, I kinda wish there was a little bit of a a slowdown here.
Speaker 1:I kinda wish oil prices would go up a little like, dude. Just like a weird mental thing for you to like root, Not necessarily root, you know, I'm trying to get at, but like Yes. I know nothing happened make the money. Does that like a weird mental thing that you have to go through? Because someone else is gonna be it's at someone else's expense almost.
Speaker 1:Not directly, but you know what I'm getting at.
Speaker 2:So the industry itself without catastrophe is cyclical by nature. Right? Yeah. So so not only will there be high times and low times based on the price of oil and all that stuff, there's there's leasing cycles too.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:A lot of it kind of revolves around new types coming out, like so when the neos came out, it's like the next generation of aircraft generally starts the next cycle.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And then there's a big replacement cycle. So all the NGs going away, all the MAXs coming in, you know, all the COs going out, all the NEOs coming in. So that naturally, those ups and downs exist anyway. So I'm not always rooting for catastrophe.
Speaker 1:That's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And there have been some other weird things that have happened like the Pratt and Whitney GTF issue with the Neos. Yeah. When that happened a couple years back, the effect at the airlines is that the airlines all extended leases on their COs and NGs. Those were aircraft that we would have moved out.
Speaker 2:So it backlogged a whole lot of stuff, which is just starting to Like those leases are just expiring kinda mid end of this year, '26. Yeah. And so we're gonna see a natural push just based on on those lease extensions. Yeah. But yeah.
Speaker 2:Especially because I live in the media space too, because we have a lot of fans and followers on the various socials through our podcast, through Cockpit Casual. A huge a huge percentage of those are professional pilots.
Speaker 1:So,
Speaker 2:you know, I I don't wanna upset them by by rooting on I mean, I'm not rooting on
Speaker 1:I Yeah. I don't think anyone thinks you're actually rooting on. It's just like a it's an odd way to look at it. Like, you know, when things are bad, it's like, hey, we're gonna be busy. I'm gonna make a lot of money.
Speaker 1:Hey, babe. You can buy that that purse now because we're busy. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like if I could have it, if I can make another COVID happen like
Speaker 1:With without the people dying. Right? Without the people dying.
Speaker 2:Without people dying. Yeah. Like just some sort of everybody stays home and stops traveling. There you I I I Yeah. It's weird.
Speaker 2:But I mean there's lots of businesses like that, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Like there
Speaker 2:there are businesses that are profitable based on, you know, unfortunate situations and we're just I one of I think, you know, the human in me for sure can empathize what it's what it's like to to have your industry crumble around you and face that scary uncertainty of, you know, some of these pilots hired in their early twenties over the last few years that got on it at majors and they're enjoying life and thinking they've never seen the downside, and they're all now thinking, oh god, like I just had two kids, like what's gonna happen? I empathize that situation because I've been there. But at the same time, the old salty guy in me knows that those situations in my life created opportunities that drove me to where I am. Yeah. And I wouldn't sacrifice them for anything.
Speaker 2:And so my advice to those people is hedge, you know, and hedge by having other things. Not necessarily other, like, things that you're that you can do for a career, but hedge by being willing to do other things inside of aviation. And by the way, let me just put out there that during these down cycles, and I we can't employ everybody, but when airline pilots are getting furloughed and airplanes are going into storage, which is I feel probably inevitable by this summer in The US at least. When we get busy, that means I need pilots. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so that is the chance for for pilots out there to start work. When when it comes down to us running five, six, seven, eight trips, 10 trips a week, which is coming, There may be pilots that are out of work, and those pilots that are willing to get their hands dirty and try this, this is the time to do it. So there is upside in the down cycle for everyone.
Speaker 1:Right. Well, if anyone needs a whatever comes to that, you know, I'm I'm calling first dibs on wherever it goes for the seven Yeah. 30
Speaker 2:We have history.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Didn't do this podcast for no reason. Alright? No. I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2:You were by the way, Pilot to Pilot, I think was the first podcast I ever did, maybe the second.
Speaker 1:Let's go. Yeah. And I told you to start a podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, dude.
Speaker 1:Look, I'm just always getting back.
Speaker 2:Possible for all this.
Speaker 1:I am. I will wanna I do wanna say, when I when you found out I was going to the airlines, I remember I was on a run and I got a text from you and I was like, dude, are you sure? You're like, are you sure you know what you're doing? I was like, damn, dude, don't know. I think I'm sure.
Speaker 2:Any regrets?
Speaker 1:No. Not the first let's see, the first five months, was when kind of the hiring slowdown started. There's a hiring freeze. So it extended me on short call reserve in New York for longer. And then I was just like, man, this sucks for longer than I wanted it to suck.
Speaker 1:Like I knew the first couple of months was gonna suck. Yeah. But no, it's been great. I I enjoy turning left. I enjoy one to two flights a day.
Speaker 1:I enjoy more flexibility with my schedule, I would say. And I'm just now year three, I'm just now probably gonna start making more than I would have as a year 10 captain in NetJets. So I think it's alright.
Speaker 2:And and you found and here's the key, because I think that you and I are very very similar is how our brains work. You're keeping yourself busy with things, other things, your media your media stuff. That, you know, I didn't have that for until I started ferrying planes. So I think if you have something, if you have something else, airline thing is sustainable. But for guys like you and I, I don't think it's enough.
Speaker 2:You know? Yeah. I don't think it's enough. Yeah. You got it.
Speaker 2:Agree.
Speaker 1:We got it. Yeah. Mean, for me it's like, it's family, then kinda like my own media brand and person, what I'm doing all my other side hustles and then like, alright, now I need to go fly. Now I need to to get out and and go do this job. So yeah, it's, that we would which will end on this, but it's it's one of the only industries where you can really kind of have two things, right, or multiple things.
Speaker 1:You know, you can fly, you can make a ton of money. This is the one job where you can make a ton of money and probably have the most time off at anywhere else. It's like if you're grinding, if you are true, like, what you do with thematic twenty four seven. Aviation, you can make $304,100,000 dollars and only work fourteen days a month. Like, there's nothing else that you can do that.
Speaker 2:It's it's true. Yeah. It's true, man.
Speaker 1:So yeah. But Steve, I appreciate it, man. Thank you so much for coming on. It's it's always fun. I feel like we need a recurring podcast, you know.
Speaker 1:I mentioned I will say the first time I said that you should do the podcast under my media brand, but that's okay. We'll we'll get like a weekly or a monthly big fairy pilot podcast
Speaker 2:Let's do something, man. Let's let's talk offline because I think there are things that we could do and look, I'm not I'm not even we're early in the pod. I wasn't sure. My biggest thing with not wanting to, not being ready to commit when you had the idea was that I didn't know how it was gonna go, but I think that we've kind of proved it out now. So let's talk offline because I think that I think that there may be some stuff that we can still do together, man.
Speaker 2:Let's do it. This is we're just at the beginning now.
Speaker 1:Let's let's take over, man. Let's do it.
Speaker 2:Let's do it.
Speaker 1:Alright, Steve. I appreciate your time, man. Have a good one.
Speaker 2:Yep. Take care.
Speaker 1:Alright. See you, dude. That's a wrap on today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. As I said earlier, check out the magazine, pilotthepilothq.com/mag.
Speaker 1:Volume four is coming out soon. There's volume one, two, and three that is available for back purchase. So thank you all so much. I hope you're having a great day, and happy flying. Pilot to Pilot podcast is brought to you by ground school from the finer points, the indispensable training app for new and experienced pilots.
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