Reflections on Airline Failures and Empathy

Like the Lessor said , We want crews at each one of these airports of where we think our airplanes are going to end up tonight . So those airplanes hadn't even landed yet. Spirit had not officially closed , but they wanted to be proactive and spend the money to make sure that there was crews like ready to go Friday night. On top of talking to spirit pilots who are like some in the middle of trips with passengers that have not been told that their airline is closing . Try a call from some guy like me. I mean that they don't know is telling them that , you know, you're probably gonna be out of work tomorrow , but I'm ready to put you to work. I mean, that call if I was on the other side of it, I would be thinking this guy is some whack job . I mean , what and I had guys that were going okay I'm flying people in right now and I'm supposed to fly tomorrow . I guess if that doesn't happen , can I call you back ? Like I'm like, let me put it this way. You're on the payroll right now . Definitely call me back when you get the news. We had to figure out where everybody was and if they weren't there, we had to get them there. Some of the pilots, so one guy was on an overnight spirit in New Yor Ink N.ewark , another guy was in Nashville . Yeah . And one guy, one guy had only shorts and uniforms. That was a guy in Nashville was he was worried about it. Like, oh, they're like, I don't care, man, flying shorts is all good, brother. Somebody said business casual. I'm just like, I just threw that out there, man. I don't care. Just show up, please. Yeah. I'm Steve Gardano, Bob Allen and this is Cockpit Casual, the podcast, episode twelve. Oh man, twelve. I don't even know what it feels like after this week. This has been the craziest week ever. Well, I know everyone's been , you know, waiting . I mean, we actually skipped the pod last week. I've kind of lost track of time. Everybody's been kind of anticipating this and here we are. We're going to talk about how the Phillies have gone ten and three with new management over the last two years. You've had time to like actually look at sports or anything I know . I have absolutely no idea what's going on in the world. I haven't I mean, I haven't even looked at so cial media until today. I've tried to post a few things and look at a few things along the way, but I mean, I've had very little . I mean, I've just been wanting to sleep, honestly. I'm exhausted . Yeah , no, I am too. This has been probably I mean I know I've said this before, but I truly believe that this has been the busiest week. The busiest , I guess, eight days, I would call it eight days that we have ever had ever in the history of ferrying airplanes at any of the companies we've owned. Definitely . I agree I agree. I mean, there was times during COVID that it got pretty crazy just because there was like a significant amount of airplanes to move all at the same time, but yeah , nothing like this. Nothing . I mean, those things got logistically complicated because of COVID times and and they were international , but this takes the cake. I mean, even for logistics and it was it was it was tough , man . It was tough. And here's what we're going to do today. I mean, today's pod is going to be one hundred percent talking about the spirit aircraft storage project, the repo project or whatever you want to call it, because there's a lot to say. I mean, it's very interesting . We've been on the mainstream media all week, Wall Street Journal front page tomorrow today, I guess if I've released this on Tuesday , you know, CBS evening news about the local ones. NPR. I did NPR. You're doing local ones. Florida. Done Miami, Phoenix, I've got more Phoenix tomorrow, actually, a couple local stations. We've told the story a lot, but no one's and I'm going to do a couple. I'm going to do the Iv talk pedod. I know Ian reached out and I said, I always got time for you guys. So I do. Love those guys. So there'll be a lot of discussions about this. It's honestly it's a very interesting case study as to how to scale a business up to doing something that you're not even built to necessarily do at the scale that we did it . It's just really interesting. We learned a lot of lessons along the way and it's I can't even begin to like explain how dynamic the situation has been from minute one. And I'll start by saying finished today. Like at least for now. Yeah, there's there's still a handful of airplanes. Still a bunch of airplanes out there. Yeah, I've got an ID badge still on. I just walked in from from Marana, Arizona. It literally started Friday . Oh, what is today? Sun Monday I've lost track. I thought it was Sunday. So it's Monday. So it's been Friday to Friday to Monday. So it's been a week I mean it's been like yeah something ten and eleven days how many more . Yeah, the last one went today Atlantic City to Marana and like I said, I mean that's two dozen we've done and there are still some more out there and I fully expect to get some more phone calls . But right now the big push is complete and our big push is complete. It really was and the leasing companies that are always like you, know , first on site to get their airplanes or to do anything . You know, they're they're our clients and, you know, I mean, that's what we have the reputation of doing also of making things happen in a very short amount of time and taking very complicated flight operations and and getting them organized and completed . And under budget . The one that I got invoice today, ten aircraft, under budget by like fifteen grand. Yeah . So which is amazing considering what we were up against all week. Yeah, we did it, we did it fast, we did it efficient . And I think we probably made about a dollar fifty cents an hour when you go back and figure out how much we worked. Anyway, we're going to go through the whole thing. Before we start that, I want to just give a little bit of an explanation about how things are going to work this week as far as the pod and the YouTube and all that stuff. So I have been out with the cameras somewhat amid all this busyness . I had the opportunity to fly one of the airplanes earlier this week and then I actually saw off the last airplane today and Bob has been receiving every airplane down in Marana. So filmed a lot not everything, but we filmed a good bit. I got some really interesting interviews with some with a couple of spirit pilots , with a spirit flight attendant who was number one thirty six years the company started flying convey in flight footage . And rather than publish the podcast as a couple of talking heads on YouTube this week like we normally do, it's going to be a little different. So the podcast and its entirety , this is it. It's only going to be available in audio on Apple, Spotify, all the places that you guys all listen to us. And then the video, which I'm hoping to drop by Friday because I'm going on vacation this weekend . I have a lot of work ahead of me, but I want to put out kind of a little mini cockpit casual documentary that covers the entire project , which will cut to the talking heads of this podcast, but also have a bunch of flight footage intermixed and we're just going to get to kind of go over the whole project in a video as a cockpit casual and it's ambitious, but my plan is to try to get it out this week. So it's not going to be as polished as cockpit casual, but it's going to be, I think you guys are going to like it. So audio podcast, however long we run, however long it goes it goes end of the week kind of a hybrid podcast cockpit casual. I think it's going to be really good. I'm really excited to make it . Like I said though, it's a bit daunting . Yeah, you got your work cut out for you. I mean there's there's literally literally enough for like a whole documentary on the shutdown and repossession process . I mean , the logistics of it all and then just the human stories that have happened over the week . It's just man, there's there's a lot and I know we're let's just let's get in and talk about it. I thought about sending a text over to Harvey Levin of TMZ. Like, you know, I have his number and like, you know, we work together on a project and like we've texted back and forth a few times. I was tempted to just be like, Hey, I got all this footage. You guys want to do you guys want to do something? Hey, who knows ? You know? I mean, it's a perfect opportunity. It's a great story. Maybe I'll reach out . You should. I mean, who knows where that go es? Yeah. And yeah, then you won't have to do all the editing. Be like yeah, that's kind of the that's kind of the goal I'll tell you what we're going Avery and I are we're going on vacation for her birthday for our seventeenth anniversary . We're going we're going down to the Caribbean and we're this weekend man, I'm gonna unplug and I'm going to sit in the sun. I'm gonna get some color on my skin . I'm gonna get some sand on my toes and some beer in my belly. Going to Thank God this didn't happen a week later than it did, huh? Well, I mean, it didn't exactly happen at the most opportune time. Let's get right into it . Exactly. Let's get right into it. So all right , let's back up first to like January, February timeframe because I think we've talked about this on the pod before . We got a call from one of our very large lessor clients, one of the largest lessors in the world saying , hey, the writings on the Walt Spirit, we have ten jets there, three hundred and twenty one Neos . Can you quote getting them back? But kind of quote it very basically because we don't know where these airplanes are going to be. And we said, Okay, you know, sounds good. Put them all in, MSNs, tail numbers, put them into our system , put together a couple quotes, like an east coast quote, a West Coast quote, a South America quote, just getting our ducks in a line so they aren't surprised when the time comes . And then they told us , I guess there were two instances where this almost happened before last week, right? Yeah, where they said, be on standby. We may be calling quick . Yeah. And so both of the times that that happened , like the night before each the can got kicked down the road , our contact reached out and said, this is where all the airplanes are going to be tomorrow. So get ready . And that happened twice , you know, and there was like one was in Atlantic City and one was in Chicago and one was in San Fran or wherever. I don't remember. So we kept getting like the list and then each time everything got bailed out . So fast forward a couple months to this past Friday not this past Friday, the Friday before the date. Is that my second It was a night before the Kentucky Derby that I was hoping to indulge myself in . So it was Friday before the Kentucky Derby, which is the first Saturday of every mate. Right, may first, it was may first . We got a call about ten AM . I was in the car on my way to Pittsburgh. I was driving to Pittsburgh because my son graduated from the University of Pittsburgh this well, last weekend . So we spent four days there, dinners, all that jazz. So the call came in to me and I I didn't recognize the number actually. I sent it to voicemail and then I guess he called Bob and then Bob called me and then I called him and then it was like, Hey, this might happen again and of course I was somewhat cautious about it. I'm like, yeah, you know, we've done this twice a year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly . But Bob and I talked on the phone while I was driving and said, all right, well like we got we got some cities now. So let's let's start seeing what we have for logistics. And all along, I mean, we have six full time pilots. Everybody else is a contractor. I would say our inner circle is about six , like people that work for nomadic and that's all they do. And then we go to about probably a dozen with like close contractors , people that we that don't collect any type of base salary, but they are our go to pilots . And then and they're scattered around the planet. They're not all in America . And then we have , you know, the ability to kind of scale to about maybe twenty five to thirty five pilots people that we know very well depending on what type depending yeah depending on type. Exactly. I mean three hundred and twenty pretty much everybody's typed on that seven three seven three twenty we always are fat with . But it doesn't matter, you know, half of them are in Ireland. Suppies in China. We got a guy in Australia, like we got we got people all America, Germany, South America. Everywhere., everywhere So it wasn't going to be one of those deals where we could just , well, certainly wouldn't have been cost effective for our clients. Yeah. And time was we were under very , very tight tim eline Yeah. under a lot of pressure to have crews there Friday night . Yep . And so we did what we expected we were going to do and that was kind of go out to our spirit pilot group contacts . One of my very close friends , a guy that was my flight instructor . He was a fifteen year spirit captain, training department, Sim instruct or, just a solid solid dude . Bob knows some guys. We all know spear guys. Yeah, I mean, we all know people from every airline. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One in particular that helped us out a lot was a guy that used I to fly seven two seven S with he used to move around seven two s for me , you know, back in the ferry days of those airplanes . And so he's always stayed in touch . Yeah. Yeah, there's just a great network that we have and it's developed, you know, we've had this network going for multiple decades It's a win win situation for everybody. These pilots are out of work. They're going to need money. I mean, you know, it's not going to get them very far, but it's still money, you know, that might cover the mortgage payment this month. Yeah, or health insurance, which is health insurance. With these guys . They were gas or everything. Everything helps. Everything helps. And rather than just run a couple people ragged, you know, we wanted to get enough pilots that we could just get as many as many in the mix as we could. So it saved us time and money and it and it was an opportunity for them. And then here's here's something that like is so important that people don't think about. So as a ferry pilot, you know, one day I'm flying with Bob, one day I'm flying with Pat, one day I'm flying with, you know, Mike Holiday who's Air Canada and like, you know, and I'm flying with an Alaska guy and I'm flying with an American guy . Everyone's got different SOPs, different callouts, different ways of doing things . And that's by design. Airlines do that so you can take, you know, you had an airline like United was I don't know, thousands of ten thousand. I don't know how many people . I mean, you might never fly with the same person twice throughout your whole career at United . And so the goal is to take two pilots from any background anywhere in the system, put them in the cockpit together, and then they do the job like they've been together for years. That's called SOP, it's Standards . And every airline has their own SOP and their own standards, and they do things a certain way . And in the ferry world, we just get used to kind of adapting to who we're flying with I you know, if I'm part of an Alaska guy, I adapt to their call out. Yeah, that's our culture. That's the, you know, that's our culture at Nomadic is this, you know, adaptability and yeah going with, you know, whatever whatever works for both guys. It just kind of why we're called nomadic. I mean, yeah , exactly . So when you take a bunch of airline pilots , let's say , you know, we mixed it with a group of American Delta United , you know, British Airways, Cathay pilots to do all this. You got people speaking different languages in the cockpit, like they're all speaking English, but they're all doing things a little bit differently. If you have to scale quickly and you have to move a bunch of jets quickly, if you're using all pilots from the same pilot group, they are already speaking the language. They already are all of the same processes and procedures , the same callouts. So right off the bat, it's also a massive increase in safety and standardization using a common pilot group for a gigantic scaled project like this. Yeah, not to mention that you know, they're taking they're being taken out of their normal environment and put into this very chaotic place that they're not used to at all . And so having two people , you know, kind of watch out for each other that understand, you know, that same airline culture , it makes it a much safer operation on these short short term deals like that . So immediately we started put ting out the feelers and I don't know. It was probably mid mid afternoon on Friday of last week. You started contacting people. I started contacting people and we started a WhatsApp group . So our company communications all happen on slack, you know, we have channels for different work groups and trips and so on and so forth. But you know, you can't scale that. So WhatsApp was the key. And immediately we got our admin team to start creating trip channels for each trip on the horizon and like a master group chat with , I think it was called Spirit Pilot. Yeah, just generic. Yeah . And everybody that we brought in , we basically, you know, we started with people that we know very well that know ferrying airplanes and know who would be potentially really good at it, somebody that's not going to be complaining about sitting around or that there's no food or, you know , or that there's no performance data like, you know, or you know , sheet and you know , all of these things. Yeah, it's not coming over ACRs, what? You know, how Right? Is that legal? Yeah, there was none yeah, we had to find people that understood basically non skid aviation . Yep. So we grabbed a bunch of those and then we gave them admin privileges for each channel. And each one of these pilots started adding other pilots. And in the blink of an eye , we almost had to be like, okay, I think we're good. I think we're good. Yeah . We had like forty. Yeah. I mean, within six hours, I think we had, you know , we definitely had the initial twenty airplanes filled because as we got guy, we just started assigning them to tell numbers. All right, these two guys sign there, figure out the logistics of how to get them there if they're not there already . Yep . And one of the things that you'll hear us consistently talk about in the in the ferry business that that's kind of like a challenge is when you come upon the weekend. Like you only get five days of really getting stuff done Monday through Friday. People airlines, lessors, airports, authorities, government agencies, everything shuts down on the weekend . So we finally got the go at six PM on Friday may first . And so that's the end of the week . Yeah. Yeah. We're going to begin with. Yeah . Yeah. And so and I do just to clarify that Friday call was to have people on standby . Like the Lessor said we want crews at each one of these airports of where we think our airplanes are going to end up tonight. So those airplanes hadn't even landed yet. Spirit had not officially closed , but they wanted to be proactive and spend the money to make sure that there was crews like ready to go Friday night . And we had to do that. So on top of talking to spirit pilots who are like some in the middle of trips with passengers that have not been told that their airlines closing a call from some guy like me, I mean that they don't know is telling them that yeah, you know, you're probably going to be out of work tomorrow but I'm ready to put you to work. I mean , that call if I was on the other side of it, I would be thinking this guy is some whack job. I mean , what and I had guys that were going okay , you know, I'm flying people in right now . I'm supposed to fly tomorrow . I guess if that doesn't happen , can I call you back ? Like I'm like, let me put it this way. You're on the payroll right now . So definitely call me back when you get the news and then sure enough. So the first cities that we had in the first cadre of ten airplanes was Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Houston, Charlotte , Columbus, Ohio , and Orlando. And there were multiple aircraft in some places. There's one in Miami. I think there were three in Lauderdale, two in Houston, one in Charlotte, one in Columbus. Two in Orlando or something . Yeah, two in Orlando . So we had to figure out where everybody was , and if they weren't there, we had to get them there. Some of the pilots, so one guy was on an overnight spirit in Newark. In Newark, another guy was in Nashville . Yeah. And one guy, one guy had only shorts and uniforms. That was a guy in Nashville . He was worried about it. Like, oh, hey, like , I don't care man flying shorts. It's all good , brother. Somebody said business casual. I'm just like, I just threw that out there, man. I don't care. Just show up please . Yeah . Exactly. So we started getting guys moved. And so Bob, why don't you talk about why the push to try to move ASAP ? Like why were we trying to fly them out that weekend? There's a main there's a very important reason. Well , so you know, the the less or have's these assets. I mean, as soon as these assets are no longer under , you know, spirit control, I mean, they they have, you know, I don't know, these four that lessor probably those four hundred five hundred million dollars in assets sitting there alone not being maintained and it's very important to back in control of your assets and get them to a place where they can now be maintained again . So when they're out in no man's land like this, you know, you never know if you have angry employees, you never know kind of what may happen to your airplanes just like sitting out there by itself basically unsupervised, unmaintained . And also that that we're flying those airplanes within a certain amount of time before inspections are due again . Right. Well, and the other thing that I was getting at is our initial plan , our initial plan, which is the way that this always happens. I mean, we've repossess airplanes . If I want to get into that I think I do want to get into it. Do we not want to get into it? No, go. Yes, it was just it was a nightmare for me. You still having still having that night. I'm glad I was at the exact way you were at. Oh my God . So in order to move a heavy airplane, it's not like you getting an assessant going, right? Like an a heavy airplane has to have some sort of continuing airworthiness support on it, right? There has to be a maintenance program is the colloquial term for how these aircraft are legal to fly. You can't just have an Airbus A three hundred and twenty and sort of very specific documented inspection schedule , maintenance event schedule , every little element from checking tire pressures to checking oil and fluid levels , everything is on like this different inspection program. And every airline has their own that's signed off by their POI. POI is a primary operations inspector in the FAA. The FAA assigns a POI to each air carrier. Their entire job is the oversight of that air carrier and they sign off an inspection program that meets the recommendations and guidance of the manufacturer and also is tailored to their operation. And when an aircraft is on their air operating certificate, their AOC , on their Ops spec , the airplanes are being maintained in accordance with their maintenance program . And until the Ops spec is recalled or disbanded by the regulator , that maintenance program is guaranteeing the airworthiness of those assets. So what is the normal policy and procedure for repossessing air ? Pardon me , repossessing aircraft that are just that are just coming out of an airline that still has a legal AOC . We move the airplanes on that airworthiness program under Part ninety one with third party pilots. It's normal. We've done it a million times. We've been doing it for years. That is the standard process. We even do it with operating airlines. Yeah. Yeah, we do Mattama and all of that. We do it with Latam every week. We had four this week that went at the same time we were dealing with this . So you know, those were just going to maintenance, not being repossessed or anything. So the goal was nobody knew when Spirits AOC was going to get revoked. The idea was that we move the airplanes as quickly as we can before the inspections are due while they're still on the inspection program, even though the aircraft were no longer in the custody of Spirit. They were court ordered from the U. S. bankruptcy court , leases terminated back into possession of the lessors , but they were still being maintained as they were. They were flying passengers twelve hours prior . Right . So nine AM Saturday , well, twenty pilots, ten crews on site throughout the country, all at the airport, all ready to go and we were we were very lucky to have several very proactive pilots that had connections at different airports . And they went out there and they, you know, they scoped the place out and found out a lot of information and connected us with some very key people . Every time an airplane came in, first question is where is it parked? At an airport you have the terminal area is part of the SIDA, the security identification display area. It's basically you have to be background checked, fingerprinted, badged , and that expires every year or two . Even pilots at the airlines don't necessarily have access to the at SI theirD homeA airp ort. They usually do, but certainly not at outstation airports. So if an airplane is at the terminal or on a hard stand or in the SIDA , we can't get to it. We can't get our crew to it, we can't get maintenance to it, we can't get stairs to it. We can't get a DAR to it. We can't get anything . So we have to figure out where the airplane is. If we can get to it , what handlers have access to that particular area? And if none of those things jive, then we have to figure out how to get it and how to relocate it to somewhere on the field where we can access it. Meanwhile, with handlers who have not been paid by spirit and want to have nothing to do with those airplanes et. Y another challenge that repeatedly reared its head throughout the last week. Oh , yeah, well, we'd love to help you, but Spirit owes us eight hundred fifty thousand dollars. So we're not going to be doing hey, hey, hey, this isn't spirit. We're not spirit , I'll prepay you . Sometimes that didn't even work. Yeah, exactly. They were under orders from their corporate office to not service any more spirit aircraft . And we said, well, the only thing spirit about this airplane is its paint job right now . Exactly. Luckily there's a lot of people that, you know, from ground ops and airport security, airport authorities that all follow our social media and know who we were. So when we called they were familiar like with us and it kind of, you know, it brought some credibility to the table and and we were able to get some things done, you know , just kind of with our with our reputations, you know , even for what they just see on cockpit casual, honestly . Yeah . So first three to four hours on Saturday, I was still in my hotel room. We didn't have any festivities yet for the graduation . I'm like on my phone. I'm like, I feel bad because Rob and Emily and every we were up all night. I mean, I was here all night. All night I literally did not sleep you know one minute Friday night, Saturday morning . And I did . But when I woke up in the morning , I had like serious guilt and fomo and I sent an zillion messages to go through . Yeah . So I just kind of jumped in. I started catching up on what I called Bob. He gave me a half half awake debrief . I think I had to call you like three times because you were asleep sitting in the chair in that chair yeah. I kept like, you know, slumping over and then my phone would ring and I would yeah ye,ah, yeah, what's going on? Yeah. Yes, yes, yeah. Everything's ready to go. Coach. Who are you? Yeah . What is this about? Exactly. So I jumped in, I had a couple hours . I started making phone calls, started t ackling logistics at some airports and started me opening lines of communication with the pilots that we had that, you know, and and putting out fires two to three at a time. Call to call, every call I was on. I would get the call waiting in another call, maybe it was a number that I didn't recognize At one point, I had to like memorize what area codes all these airplanes were in so that I knew whether I could answer or ignore a call . You know, how important it was going to be. So let's back up Saturday morning . That was Friday night. That was one lessor with ten aircraft that wanted crews ready to go . Well Saturday morning one of our other good clients who had ten airplanes called and said Hey Bob , what's going on? I'm gonna need you to move some airplanes and I'm like, oh , are they spirit? How did you know ? I'm like, Oh boy. I'm like , Hey, listen, we've already written the playbook for this, so give me the tail numbers, let me know where they're they're at, and I'm going to add it to the list. I'm going to add flight crews to it and so it it doubled it doubled what we already had on the plate sentence. And by the way, let me reiterate, we were on about page six of a hundred page playbook at this point. So yeah, it wasn't completely written, but I mean, we had already actually like the major Lauderdale , you know, Houston, places where Dallas, places where there were a lot of spirit airplanes , though they all also happen to be the most challenging logistically . And so we had we had ice things at those places already. Yeah, and we had the pilot port figured out . Yeah. We by Saturday morning the word was out and we had a flow of flight crews available. And we're trying to be efficient. Yeah, you know, I had another letter to request, another fire to put out, another handler to call, another fuel contract to research . I mean it was just madness at this point. Plus plus I mean, we've got all those logistics going on. Plus we have the lessors . The aircraft owners are calling us. They're I mean, I was getting a call every thirty minutes wanting an update and wanting to know why airplanes weren't already in the air . So I mean, they, you know, the people that we deal with on the technical side are under tremendous amounts of pressure from the financial side of these companies . And they're they're counting on us to to make things happen to magically , you know, make them look good , you know, so that they can go back and tell their , you know, superiors that yeah, it's all under control. These assets are going to be moving. So I mean, we're tre amendous amount of pressure just from that side of it on top of everything else going on logistics wise . Yeah . And so right around noon , the first airplane in Houston was pushed out, crew on board, flight plan filed, fuel being loaded , and one of the pilots gets a call from one of the spirit pilots gets a call from one of his spirit management pilot friends saying , You can't take this airplane. It's illegal , stop what you're doing and call. We're calling the FAA . So they call me and I'm like, everything's good, I promise . And then, but of course, we immediately started calling the client. We started making, you know, calls to the physdo and long story short , this, you know, Bob ended up on multiple conference calls with the FAA, the Spirit one hundred and nineteen team , the lessor the L,esler's legal team , everyone saying this is how it's done. used chat GPT plus my knowledge to compile compose on my phone like a three page document that almost like a white regulation it was like a white paper on it, wasn't it? Yeah. I mean, it was very thorough, explained it to a tee about how this is done. We've done it before. We've done it last week. Cited every reference, every FAR , every variable , and without a doubt, it was one hundred percent legal. It was it was a great plan , but But but we still were counting on spirit to allow us to operate the aircraft with it on their maintenance program. And ultimately, their management pilot team decided, someone in that group decided that they did not want that liability. And they told the FAA on this conference call, and the FAA said, well, we don't think that it's not we've never heard of this and which was Yeah, we're not saying it's legal or illegal. That's not, you know, that's not our place to say they say Yeah, that's not our place to say. You're the one nineteen team. You guys are the ones who have to make that decision . So anyway , at the end at the end of it all the,ir Sitp one hundred and te ninetameen said that they won't accept that risk. They won't allow us to not only us with third party pilots, but not even their own we are for. I'm like, yeah, how about if we use all spirit pilots? Nobody else outside of spirit flies the airplanes just like they were doing less than twelve hours ago . Let's do that and they wouldn't go for it. There was liabilities for , you know, not only not insurance wise, but certificate wise. Liabilities. I'm not sure if there really I'm not convinced there was a liability there. I think it was a lack of I think it was a lot it was mass confusion. I think nobody wanted to put them put themselves out . Yeah . And like why would they? Honestly, I mean, you know, from their point of view , from the FAA or the one nineteen point of view, I mean, what what was the benefit to them to go yeah, we'll go along with this right. I mean, it really wasn't. It was the, you know, it was literally to help the lessor out . So we pivoted. Yeah . So we pivoted quickly this was on Saturday, Saturday evening . We made the collective decision along with the lessor that we were working for and the other lessors that were in the pipeline , that the simplest path was going to be to abandon the direction of trying to fly these aircraft with a standard CFA and that we would now completely remove all responsibility and every element of control away from Spirit and their one hundred nineteen team . One nineteen team is like four pilots by the way Keep people to have a one hundred and twenty one certificate. Right. Director of operations, chief pilot, assistant chief pilots, director of safety on the service. Yeah, stuff that's like yeah. So that means that we had to hire, well, our clients had to hire a third party designated airworthiness representative, a DAR to come out and issue an SFP. And if you remember from previous conversations we've had on here in SFP is a special airworthiness certificate that allows like essentially the one time repositioning use of that aircraft certain limitations depending on what the airworthiness status of the aircraft is , point A to point B to get an airplane ferried. So no longer a maintenance program required because the SFP is the maintenance program and it's valid for ten days and we don't need anybody else . SFP , nomadic, airplane, it moves . Period . Period. It's just a matter of getting the DAR on site . And I would say there's probably fifty sixty DARs in the United States, but big bucks. There are like five or maybe eight that are very experienced with large commercial aircraft. Yeah. Airliners in these situations with ferry in them and we know them. I mean, we know them. We like them. We've known them for decades. We're all friends. We knew that their schedules were going to be just packed to the gills. So we're like , hey, we're working on with this company, with this company, with this company, clear your schedule for the next week. We got to start moving people around, let's maintain comms , let's let's start a dialogue because the leasing companies don't talk to each other . Not at all . No . And we had resources at different airports. So it's like not just crew resources but handling resources, technical on site, technical because the DAR can go in there and issue, but they need an onsite technical team just in case there's something that needs to be signed off and almost every one of these airplanes had to have something signed off. Yeah . So customer said all right This was Saturday night. We're going to pivot to Monday and we're going to move airplanes Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. The DAR is moving between all the cities is going to issue SFPs on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. The other client was like all throughout the week and we started , you know, and they said, Leave everybody on site . And I said, yeah, of course, we're leaving everybody on site. Yeah, keep them ready to go . And and you know , one thing about that was it's a good thing because we literally had pilots that had been up all night long. They had been up Friday , they stayed up all night Friday, caught some caught flights to different airports at six thirty, seven o'clock in the morning to be on site at, you know, another airport . They then were like waiting all this time , you know, while we were doing, you know, these conference calls with the FAA and all these people till like the late afternoon , they're all standing by literally at the airport, like yeah, like ready to get on airplanes and they hadn't, you know , they haven't been to a hotel, they haven't slept in , you know , quite a while by then and they're getting exhausted and and so, you know, is what's going through our mind is man, if things are worked out, it's five o'clock in the afternoon. We've got crews that have been up a long time and they're going to be flying at night like into an airport like Marana that's in the middle of the desert, dark . Everybody's going to be tired. They've never been to this place you know , so we start we start assessing all of these things internally . We start trying to determine how we're going to how we're going to talk to the leasing company who is under tremendous amount of pressure to move these airplanes immediately . It's this like fine line, you know, how we want to make things work , but at the same time , you know, we've got to look out for the crews. We've got to keep the operations safe . And luckily , it turned out to where we were able to tell them to go to the hotel , crash out for Sunday, be prepared to go Monday . And you know , not only the just physical being tired, but the emotional part of dealing with the loss of your airline, the job, I mean spouses , bills , like they hadn't even had twenty four hours to process it in their heads . They're out with a suit case and they'd left home maybe a day or two before on a trip expecting to have you know a full month slate of trips supply. Yeah. And now all of a sudden , you know, they're working for these two guys on a WhatsApp that they've never heard of . Yeah, who are telling them to just stand around the airport for just a couple more hours. We'll have news for you. It just goes on and on . He's a real for them . It is . But they played ball with not one person complained that entire day . They just said , you know just keep us advised what we got to do and you know, we're going to make it we'll make it work . We are tired. We'd like to go to a hotel , but we understand what you're dealing with . So So just let us know what to do. I mean, I've never seen a pilot group , you know, so ready ready to make things happen considering especially considering what they what they just were dealing with . We were able to deliver the news that they could take the day off on Sunday and just sleep, relax , you know, do some laundry, go buy some you, know, go buy some slas . It was like the first time that they had a chance to breathe. And so Sunday was the day that we were trying to start putting things in place, which is very hard to do over the weekend. Like I would say one out of every five calls we made got returned. Yeah. And we had twenty airplanes at that point by twenty by Sunday. We had twenty three I think maybe twenty two twenty two by Sunday, I think, yeah , that were on the plate that we need to figure out all these logistics for Yeah . And we started kind of processing the order that was going to go. We we had discussed with the DARs what cities they would be in. So we knew all right , we could book hotels till Tuesday for the Charlotte guys and we could book hotels through Wednesday for the Houston guys and like because we knew they were going to be on site and maybe something would change, but you know, if there there's no was no way that someone in Houston was going to go out on Monday because the DAR was going to Florida airports on Monday. Yeah . So yeah, weren't weren't some of these lessor legal teams in Ireland , like all of them were . So there's this time zone , you know, gap . We were working at two AM. Like the lawyers were working through the night . This is the thing. Everybody was working twenty four hours a day on this Yeah, from the lessers to us everybody involved, the technical teams . It was wild . Yeah . So that's how we spent Sunday. Monday, I spent five hours driving home from Pitts burgh . Actually, my wife drove four out of five hours while I could be on my phone, which was super helpful. At that point, me and Bob were both working full speed on the phone every five minutes on different calls together, on conference calls, on emails, on, you know, a laptop out, like WiFi hotspot in the car , all that stuff ar,rang aringranging, , arranging. And I think we got the first airplane out by about one PM on Monday. Yeah , yeah. And just yeah, it was constant putting out fires and pivoting to different scenarios. And just to say, you know, one thing about our team. I mean, our team was working twenty four hours. And it wasn't just Steve and I that were , you know, making all these crew decisions and dealing with airplanes. We have project managers that we assign to different tail numbers who are also, you know, involved in this, you know, pass . Yeah. Your daughter, Emily is like our adm in. I mean and she was doing stuff that normally we would do. She was she was doing cruise scheduling, all the travel. I mean, she was assigning crews to airplanes, you know, I'm like getting crews under contract, you like to get documents? Yeah . And their travel , like , oh my god. Yeah , you know, and then our dispatchers dealing with all the all the fuel , all the flight plans , all you know , you know, we're dealing with airports in the and the legal logistics and and setting up processes for for expenses as they came in because the because the expected because on a project like this, I mean I want to say in the last ten days we've had ninety vendors, a hundred vendors So invoices coming in from everything from like travel to handling to fueling to technical services parties to technical services to escorting people ramps . Sometimes we have had like to two or three different handlers at an airport because only one person had the right tow bar, only one person had a fuel contract that could get to that part of the airport. Only one person had sida access. So like we were we were having to like mix match . So then over the course of the week, like we just we started developing a rhythm . Yeah is the best way that I could play books started to develop, you know, of what we needed to do when and specific specific things that were common amongst airports that started started developing a pattern . Yeah . Yeah. And Spirits one hundred ninet andeen team moved a couple airplanes out from under our nose as well. Like they moved some of the airplanes themselves without an SFP, not many. I think they moved two maybe three . But I mean, we were still moving . I mean, the OMDs were going crazy and socials were blowing up. I'm like, man, I remember I called Bob at one point. I'm like, We're missing an opportunity here, Bob. I know we're busy, but like we got to post something on LinkedIn and I'm like, man I don't have to that's a that's that's on the bottom of my list at the moment. I'm like I got to get I got to call this crew let me call you in five minutes . I ended up flying one trip I f.lew out of Philly for the first time in my career, which was kind of cool. Bob and I are way better off as quarterbacks like making decisions, kind of assigning tasks. I love way better doing that than flying. Yes. Oh, yeah, for sure. Got to have us having that high level view of the entire playing field , you know , it but you were also an Uber driver. So yeah, we had two airports all and but one aircraft went to either Goodyear or Meranda. Yeah, I mean, so as soon as these things started stacking up I saw the, you know, logistics problem of getting crews from these airports to Phoenix or Tucson or wherever, how do we how do we get them to a hotel? How do we get them, you know, to an airport to fly home ? So there's car services available , but there's a lot of coordination that comes with that. We have the time that the airplanes are going to fly into these airports is very fluid. It's not like a set schedule. It's like whenever they can get it going, jump in, take off and we'll have everything figured out by the time you get here. Yeah, nothing was known until they were wheels off every single trip, you know, was potentially going to delay an hour, fifteen minutes, two hours, six hours . Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, which is which is common for us. We we're, you know, we're used to that , you know, that kind of stuff, but there's always something. But I was like, okay, there's going to be potentially six to eight crews landing within like an hour of each other in some of these cases . So initially, like the first day, I think Monday it was going to be like I was going to end up with four people at a time. So I had my son run out to enterprise and I just said, just rent the biggest SUV that you can. They didn't have any buses at the time, like or big vans . And yeah, I was like get the biggest thing that they rent . So had a big SUV I started going out there initially picking picking the crews up because I like to meet, you know, who's flying our airplanes. I want to introduce ourselves as like real people. This is a real company and you know we're we're pilots too and not everybody listens to the podcast Yeah shockingly yeah. So a lot of these people you know don't know us from Adam. Some people do know do know us from social media and stuff . So anyway, I like going out and meeting people in person. You know, I want to I want to see these people. I want to thank them. I want, you know, I know what they 've been through. So you know, I've been through I think five airline failures where I've been on the property like they have when the airline has failed and I wake up the next day and I don't have a job. You're the common denominator seriously . I am the death of airlines . I mean, I've probably had eleven or twelve under my belt to have gone under at some point they need a job. God . So you know, I wanted to I wanted to be there you know for them as well. I mean it's a very tough emotional experience what they've gone through. I just wanted to thank them for what they did for us and see who they are as a person. I mean, you know, get to know them, maybe they can do work for us in the future . And so that was part of it. That's part of why I wanted to drive. And then I was we got busier and I rented another vehicle, which is like a passenger van and I started having my son running down at the same time I was running down because we had these crews coming in at different times. So it was a logistical nightmare. I didn't want crews to get off and have to like sit around and wait for four or five hours , you know, waiting for the van to come back kind of thing . And again, it was just a nightmare trying to get a car service into Miranda and dealing with all that. So so again, I just I just kept driving. I think I drove back and forth of Marina at least once a day for the last . I mean, I did it today . Yeah, I think I've done it. I think I've done it every day since , you know , since I was in there . There's not been one day that we haven't moved an airplane. Yeah . So , you know, in doing that , you know, the drive back, I got to know some some guys and their story and got to know them a little bit and it was man that that was , you know, if there's any good out of this . And it's, you know, it's a tragic story and is tragic what they're all going through . But you know, meeting some of them and , you know , I hope they stay in touch with us . They're met some super, super good people that , you know, I wish the best for. I mean, we've, you know, we've talked to some of them and going, hey, you know, we want to help you out. We're we'll make introductions to the network that we have. And we have a deep network with many management pilots through a lot of different airlines , one hundred and thirty five's corporate operations and and , you know , I mean, we've got a lot of poll with those places and and you know, we want to we want to really help these guys . Yeah, I mean, of course, all of them are like, I love this. I want to just do this. Yeah, they joined after they had that experience of being in the circus or the carnival one time it's addicting, man. You want to you just want to keep doing this . There's a lot of airplanes still scattered around the country, that's for sure . Yeah . And yeah, I, you know, there's been some other companies that have been moving moving a few of these . It does it has , you know , made me wonder why these companies don't talk to each other or come talk to us and say, hey, you know, who are you guys dealing with? You know, what DARs do you have, where ? What , you know , you've got ground equipment already set up . Let's just all work. Let's all just work together to put this , you know , to make it all more efficient for everybody involved . But yeah, you know, some companies just want to do things on their own and and rewrite rewrite the playbook. If we would have had the opportunity to get a strategic plan that crossed the boundaries of different owners . We could have been so much faster and more efficient because and I will say all of our customers, all of the five lessors that we worked with so far on this project , they all had the benefit of shared resources. I had one airplane Atlantic City is the perfect the perfect example . We had two clients with each with an airplane in Atlantic City that we're not talking to each other and we're both dealing with the same thing. And I said, look , I got resources already set up for one. I got a DIR coming, do both the same time. We'll get both airplanes move at the same time. That is the only way that efficiencies were capitaliz ed on was when we were working with both clients because we were able to like really kind of consolidate the efficiencies to cities as opposed to just tail numbers . Well, that's why I 've been working on an AI platform to hopefully solve all this stuff in the future because it's just insane . It's just insane what we've had to do logistically could have that easily been done if everybody was kind of connected in some way . But what day did I fly? Was that Thursday? Thursday? Yeah . We had one airplane in Philly, and I'd been saying, you know, I knew there were two in AC and one in Philly in our docket, and I said, I'm gonna do at least one of these. I got to fly the last spirit airplane out of the Philadelphia International Airport . My home airport . Yep, that was pretty cool. That one was kind of a cluster , honestly, because we didn't get ground handling worked out until I was already on site. Like, I mean, we could still when I we were done fueling and didn't still didn't have a pushback Yeah set up. Oh man Yeah and that was a problem for the previous twenty four hours with that we thought we had one a couple tim es and they all bailed. I never even heard how you did get that result actually . So it was an interesting story. So first, there was a woman by the name of Renee . She was awesome. She worked in Philly for Spirit. I don't know what her, I don't know if she was a station manager, she might have been . She was some sort of management from Spirit Airlines at the airport at the Philadelphia Airport station. And then she had been working at that airport for many, many years , local . And she had some contacts . And so she was just volunteering to help. She's just like, I want to help, you know, I'm helping you guys out of the goodness. Am I getting paid? We're going to . Yeah, so she was introduced to me by the client. Somehow the client found her . She was quite helpful. She got a lot of she got us to the airplane. She got a stairs. She got a lot of stuff. She made a lot of stuff happen . But ultimately, we had a solution where we were sitting on the airplane at eleven and we had a pushback lined up for two PM and another airplane was getting pushed back next to us and I walked over to an airport ops car. There was a guy sitting in there. I said, Can you go over to that tug and just see if they'll just push us back . Couldn't we couldn't turn out we were up against some ground equipment. I mean, we had to be pushed out. Yeah . So he said, Let me make some calls. So this guy drives over to the tug. Tug says, No, I can't do it and he makes some calls. One thing leads to another . His buddy in American Airlines screws over your toe bar. I love it. That's how he got out. Awesome . Yeah, yeah . That's what, you know, with these things, that's what you have to do sometimes. You just got to be on site like dealing with people instead of these phone calls to companies and all that stuff. Man, you can always get stuff done who you know. Yeah . Yeah, yeah . And sometimes you just got to have boots on the ground, man, making stuff happen . Yep . So we got that out. I landed. I got some video footage of a couple of other airplanes landing. We all had dinner at a Mexican restaurant. None of these pilots know what they're going to do next. In fact , he called me today and he's like, I'm on some message board and a bunch of the other spirit pilots are calling us scabs for moving the airplanes. Does that mean? No, because they were moving the airplanes. Yeah, they need to be reminded they weren't on strike, right? I mean, what? Some of these guys makes absolutely no sense. They're such fucking assholes, pardon my French. I mean, like I think they were just jealous that those guys were, you know, able to go out there and fly the some last flights and, you know, make some money just such a great group of people, man. Great group. And and just along those lines , Steve, you know, I'm always reiterating to pilots. Develop a network, develop it, you got to, it's all about networking, networking, networking, networking. And the pilots that were good at that and have been networking , you know, with me and you were those pilots that were the initial pilots that flew these airplanes . And you know the ones that really haven't developed that are the ones that are calling us today asking, you know, hey, can you put me on a flight? And it's like, man, we already we already did everything . But but , you know, is what I'm I'm telling, you know, anybody that comes along and wants to be involved in this type of stuff or even just look for a job in general is go to my kiddiehawk kittyhawk. Global and you know build a profile there and there's a spirit community there that, you know , you can go on there and invent tell stories or , you know, connect to other people and find out what jobs are going on. But it's a great way to to, you know, start connecting and hopefully find some jobs there . I do have to say there was one guy that there was a three hundred and five area code sometime, I don't know, last week and I thought it was like one of our other pilots. And it was a guy that said, Oh, hey, I heard you're hiring spirit pilots . And man, I didn't want to like blow him off. I mean, I answered the phone. I was like, yeah, you know, we're we're looking at it. I think everything's filled . And and you know, he started kind of just like telling me, you know, about , you know, spirit and, you know, how much he lo ved it there. And he was just kind of just it was an emotional conversation . And I really felt for him . And I said, listen, man , I'm going to give you an email address, send me your stuff. And I'm going to put you on the list and I'll try to get you something . And so I did . And within two hours, we had him on a trip because another airplane deal came up and we needed a crew like immediately . I think we ended up using him on a couple trips. He just he was just like just keep me on the road. I just keep me going. I love doing about Yeah, he and he bounced around and he did a bunch of Yeah, he was like, I don't I don't have anywhere I got to go. I'm single and you know just use and abuse me. I lo doingved this and he was a real go getter, just a really super nice guy . And so I do want to say sometimes cold calling actually does work , but please, I can't handle anymore. Like are we , you know, we don't have any more airplanes at this point to move. I'm even getting our numbers. I don't even know how that I need to like go on delete my phone from the internet. Really? You go to Kiddiehawk, put your stuff there . You can contact me on Kitty Hawk. I mean, I will I will answer answer the text that come through there so I have so much respect for like these spirit guys and empathy for what they're going through right now and a lot of them are going to end up on their face. I mean, you know, anybody who has a good head on their shoulders going to end up on their feet. Yeah. This is a super great group of pilots . You know, I've said this over and over that this is the best pilot group I've ever ran across of these years 'cause they worked for Shitty Airline, Bob. Yeah. That's why we're good. We work for shitty airlines. I mean, it's so true. I mean, when you're kicked around and stuff, I mean, you just you end up just kind of scrappy and, you know, able to you learn to hustle, man and make things happen . And And they, you know, there I didn't run across one arrogant jerk at all. Nobody complained, not one, you know, jerk in the whole bit, man. You know, I'm sure that they're out there But yeah, not any that I ran across. I mean, if you're an employer out there, these are these are super great group of employees that I mean, you can't go wrong by hiring them. The other night I was laying in bed once I finally, you know, turned off my computer and went upstairs and started to clear my head a little bit . I took to Twitter and I started I started posting a little bit and I posted like a , I think I did it on Threads and Twitter. I posted like a five tweet or six tweet, just a thing. Like and it kind of wasn't, I guess it wasn't super clear that I wasn't talking about myself, but I figure most people know who I am. And I'm like, you know, fifty years old, you know, fifteen year captain, like all this , you know, been in the left seat, making good money, living close to home, two kids in college, whatever, but that's the story of like half of the people that I'm talking to . Like anybody who was my age was on the same trajectory as me. They worked for the same crappy regionals or flew, the same crappy old Bizjets and then got hired and then maybe wanted to go to a United or a Delta or something like that , but you know, when you're at when you're a captain five, eight, ten, fifteen plus years in , it gets hard to say I want to start over. Well, how do you do that if you're if you're like if you're forty years old , I mean even if you're I mean thirty five to forty especially after you're over forty five does I mean are you really going to go to like try to get a job at United to start over again . I mean, it's just not realistic and it's it's , you know, I saw that post that you had and see me get flamed . Yeah, totally. And I just couldn't believe it, honestly. I was just like, what? Really ? Like people are going Oh, well, you know, Spirit's a starter airline. Oh like, you know, who would stay there? And I'm just like , what kind of arrogant jerk like is saying this kind of stuff? Like I do you fly in an airline? You know , or would you just get hired at Delta at twenty three years old and you'd never had any real life experience? Yeah, you can see I get angry about these kind of things. Look, you all know me. I'm a Twitter feud guy. Bring it. And I don't mind getting into Twitter feuds, you know? I mean, insult me, you know, I'll give it right back. It is what it is. It's totally fine. Flame me all you want, but I will honestly say it bugged me a little bit first of all, I wasn't talking about myself. And if I was, so be it, I relate to that because I was at a spirit type airline and yeah, I wanted to go somewhere else and I ended up just walking away from the airlines completely to do this, but had I not, I could have very well been in their shoes and trying to think about starting over now. I mean, I, you know, I got one kid left in high school. I don't want to start over . Like it sucks. And even if and yes, we all know that it's an unstable business. You're not safe at American. You're not safe at United. You're not safe at Delta, but that doesn't mean that these people can't have these feelings. People were bugged and I was like, oh, you know, start over fifty year olds, start over with a thirty year old snot nose captain in the left seat. You know what? Look , nothing against a thirty year old captain. They're in the right place the right place. And listen, I was a twenty five year old captain. I mean , you know, I was one of those young punks too. I get it and you know, and I will say stuff, but I get it. I was one of you . So, you know, I might dog on you a little bit, but yeah, just it's coming, it's coming from place that I was I was in the same nobody's getting out of this unscathed. Yeah . It could get very, very ugly. And hey, look, there's whether you like it or not, there's going to be single single pilot ops coming up, you know, for all you twenty year olds, you know , there's going to be some major changes in your career coming. So have some sympathy at least for what for what's going on with Spirit and those pilots , you know you're next. Yeah, I mean, it can very well happen to you . Just be, you know, cautious of that and just you know, have some, you know , sympathy or, you know, some empathy if you can't have some empathy at least have some sympathy towards the situation and, you know, don't don't talk about, you know, what they should have done , could have done man up I've seen that multiple times man up, man up and get another job . Yeah, well yeah, they will . They will. But in the meantime, you know, it's it's the equivalent of having a death in your family of what they're going through. You know, there's a morning period for when something like this happens . So let them mourn and you don't have to kick them while they're down and it man it just really pisses me off to see that, you know. that same . But most people have been awesome so yeah . I agree. There's there's been some really super people that are, you know, trying to be helpful that I'm sure that are going to try to help, you know, these people move on find something better than even what they had. And that's what I think, you know, look , I keep saying that every airline failure I've been through and I've been through a lot , my next opportunity was a much better opportunity than the one I had before . Yeah. It sucks getting to that point of when that happens . There's a lot, you know , there's a lot of work involved and a lot of tough times, but man when it gets good again, it just gets better , you know , until the next time, but that's life, right? I mean, this is this is how life goes, but just keep a positive attitude out there is what, you know, what I hope everybody can do. And you know, I've said it, look, you know, if you get if you get down I'm I'm available , you know, I've been through all this stuff. I am truly available to listen to anybody that is going through some tough times . No doubt . I'm not, so call Bob . I just won't answer my phone , but alright, look, we ranted for an hour and twenty two minutes. Are we really? Oh my god, that was like are we really gonna have enough to talk about for whole podcast? Yeah, we had enough . And I'm sure it'll come up again . In the meantime , keep your keep your eyes out on the YouTube channel. There's gonna be something cool coming up with all this. All your spirit pilots out there. If we get any more spirit birds to move . We'll call you. We'll do what we can to give you guys a little bit of income and something to do in the meantime . But yeah, take care of yourselves out there and we'll see you next week. See y 'all next week