EP 1 - Ferry Pilots, China Catering, and a Deep Dive into the Business of Moving Airliners

9:49Steve Giordano:Well, I, yeah, we have to find out the stat. We'll have to call our attorney, get the statute of limitations.

9:55Bob Allen:Yeah. So we'll handle that in the background. And then, and then if it's deemed that we can't get in trouble for those things, then perhaps they will make it to the airwaves at some point. So, so anyway, why, why are we doing a pod? Well, you know, look, I used to be very, very active on like Twitter and X. I'm still somewhat active on it. Instagram, stuff like that. And, and, you know, I'm not just like a post and forget it guy. Like, I mean, I'll go right down in the mud with you, you know, and, and I do happily and it's fun and, you know, no harm, no foul.

10:32Steve Giordano:So it's entertaining to all of us when you go down into that mud.

10:36Bob Allen:Yeah, I know. It's especially, it creates some interesting conversations in the house here too. But, you know, I think the bottom line is that we have a lot to, you know, we have a great dynamic. Now, first of all, I mean, I don't have that many friends. I've got a bunch. I mean, Bob, you're probably like one of my oldest friends at this point that, you know, we talk every day. We have these conversations anyway, so we may as well film them.

11:00Steve Giordano:Yeah, exactly. This is exactly how our conversations go every day when we're talking about, well, we start talking about business and it just kind of goes off into a tangent somewhere else.

11:10Bob Allen:There have been some some serious like laughing to the point of crying on many a phone call. But but but like really at the end of the day, like, what is there a better way to interact with everybody? You know, and it's going to be two way. And I'll get into that later because we want to take questions and have guests and, you know, and stuff like that, too. But, you know, I think this is a better medium rather than tweeting something and then maybe deleting it an hour later. I've never done that. But, you know, there's a start deleting a whole podcast. Yeah. Yeah. No kidding. And then, of course, like there's a ton and ton of interest in in more cockpit casuals.

11:48Bob Allen:And I and I'm making them as fast as I can. They take a long time to make. And ultimately, you know, if you want to interact with us more often than than waiting, you know, a couple of times a year for for a drop of episodes, this is your outlet to do so. And so I want to keep it structured and formatted. And Bob and I have worked on this. And look, we're going to talk about real-time industry stuff as it happens, right? If there's news, we're going to give you our take on it. And maybe it'll be a great take or maybe it'll be asinine. But that's all in the entertainment value of it. And we do fun stuff.

12:25Bob Allen:Like we travel the world every week. It seems like it's a different city. Not so much lately, but it's to come again. And we go, you know, we see things that are interesting. We talk about it. We get it captured on video. And not everything makes it to the Internet via Cockpit Casual or Bob's TikTok. And this podcast is going to give us an opportunity every week to bring these things to light and put them in front of you. So you'll get some more interaction and not lose the interaction that you already have. So that's why we're doing it.

12:58Steve Giordano:Yeah. Yeah. You know, we want it to be interactive. So, you know, we're going to give you a way to ask us questions and that type of stuff so that we can talk about it on the podcast and may even show your comment.

13:14Bob Allen:And look, the hardest thing, we're such ramblers, like this is going to get better just like Cockpit Casual did. So I'm just going to put that disclaimer out there. It's going to get better as we get used to it. I've done a bunch of pods as a guest, but, you know, this is our first time really doing it. So one thing that I want to do is I want to keep the format on track every week. You're going to have like the same type of like, you know, things, the same segments each time. Right. Like we're going to have we're going to have an opener segment where we talk about the you know, what's going on in our world, what's going on in the world as it relates to aviation and, you know, in the industry.

13:50Bob Allen:And we're going to kind of riff on that every single time on the opening segment. This one is not really the opening segment. This is like the pre-opening segment. And then we have a segment later on that's called Side Shtick. I came up with that. I think it's pretty good, right? It's like a lightning round. Five minutes, we're going to pick one topic, funny, absurd, something. We're just going to talk about it. When the alarm goes off, then we're done talking about it. You get what you get. We'll see what happens. That's not going to be edited unless we say something really bad.

14:24Steve Giordano:which is a very good possibility. But yeah, yeah, we'll we'll see what happens there. I mean, you know, we're in real life. We're kind of it's hard for us to stay focused. Like on one thing, we're kind of, you know, ADHD. Well, I don't want to say that, you know, as it is not ADHD diagnosed.

14:47Bob Allen:We are no diagnosis, no diagnosis, no medication.

14:53Steve Giordano:Definitely. If the FAA is watching, we have not been diagnosed with ADHD. We are very focused. We are very happy people. No depression. Like, it's all good.

15:03Bob Allen:Yes, exactly. Yes. And so side shtick will be interesting. We'll see how that goes. Obviously, it's a double entendre that you'll have to figure out on your own. And if you don't know what a side stick is, you probably aren't listening to this podcast anyway. Every week, then we'll go into a main segment. Sometimes we'll deep dive on a topic. This week, we're going to deep dive into the ferry industry, our business. And we're going to put it all out there as much as we possibly can. And I imagine that's kind of somewhat going to be a recurring theme over the course of this podcast into eternity.

15:39Bob Allen:But we're going to name the, we're going to basically get the big hurdles cleared today. Also, when we don't deep dive on a subject, we're going to end up having guests. And I have so many fascinating people that I want to bring in and introduce to you guys.

15:55Steve Giordano:I can't wait for that. I mean, we got some really, really good people that we know. I mean, some great, entertaining people that have done some really cool stuff that we're going to have on here.

16:05Bob Allen:in aviation, in our world, like people that work on the technical part, the leasing part of this industry that we're on the operations side of. And then, of course, people that I've met through social media over the years, CEOs, entrepreneurs. I know a bunch of people in Hollywood, and I'm going to try to get some of them. So anyway, that's going to be the main segment. And then we're going to do a Q &A before we close things out every week. And I just, you know, we'll get into that later because we're going to start it out with just the common questions this week, but we're going to open up an email box.

16:43Bob Allen:It's going to be pod at nomadic.arrow, P-O-D at N-O-M-A-D-I-C dot A-E-R-O, pod at nomadic.arrow. And we encourage our listeners to submit either a video question or an audio question. I guess you could type it, but we're going to pick video and audio first, and then we're going to play your question, and then we're going to answer it. And we're going to do that at the late midpoint end of every episode before we close it out. So anyway, without further ado, let's jump into the main segment here. What do you think, Bob?

17:20Steve Giordano:Yeah, let's do it.

17:22Bob Allen:Okay. So the opening segment is going to talk about what's going on in our world And the reality is, you know, the last, I don't know, six months or so has been has been very strangely quiet in our world. We're working. There are trips few and far between. During busy times, we're flying, you know, as a company, five to seven trips a week. Right now, we're doing like two to three a month. And there's a lot of reasons for that. And it's it's super annoying. But like, let's talk about them a little bit.

17:57Steve Giordano:Yeah, no, it's very annoying. It's probably, you know, I mean, 26 years of doing this, it's probably, you know, 20, 2025 and now 2026 is the slowest time I've seen in this entire business.

18:11Bob Allen:Yeah. I mean, it's been this slow, but normally for six months, you know, and then there'll be something like there'll be a bunch of stuff. And I think that it's kind of been like the perfect storm this time. There's a lot of stuff that kind of happened at one time that really has led to this stagnation in the industry. And I don't necessarily know that you can feel it like in the airline industry yet or as a passenger or even that you will or won't. It's very noticeable for us and our counterparts and other parts of the behind the scenes industry, like the tech reps.

18:46Steve Giordano:I don't think I don't think I mean, most people would never see, you know, the part of aviation that we see. We are a very small niche area of it. And in the you know, in the finance, the finance side of it and the technical side of it is it's a it's an area that most people in aviation never, never see. Yeah.

19:11Bob Allen:Yeah. And like, so when we, you know, when we talk to our lead, you know, our contacts at the leasing companies or in the maintenance side of things, they all are telling the same story. They're all singing the same tune. Everyone's dead. Tech rep business is dead. And everybody expects it to pick up fourth quarter this year and into next year. And so let's, let's talk a little bit about why, because I think it's really interesting. Like the first thing, first and foremost, is our business thrives. And I said this in the last Cockpit Casual. It thrives on the ramps. It thrives when things are changing in the aviation industry.

19:44Bob Allen:So when the airlines are strong and they're adding airplanes and they're cycling out old ones and bringing in new ones, we're gangbusters. And when the airlines are crashing, when fuel prices are high and when the airlines are struggling financially, they're parking planes, they're terminating leases early. We're slammed. We're busy. So ramping up, ramping down, we're busy. Like we're ferrying airplanes around the world. We're flight testing. We're doing all that stuff. Anytime it's stagnant, you know, that's generally when it's slower. Like COVID was crazy. Like, I mean.

20:18Steve Giordano:We're crazy busy. It was a tidal wave of business.

20:22Bob Allen:And that's a whole other story because it really kind of changed the way that we did a lot of things. But right now, the reason volume is down is multifold, right? Number one, I think probably first and foremost, is the Pratt & Whitney GTF thing, right? Like that's so huge. Why don't you talk about the GTF issue, Bob?

20:41Steve Giordano:Yeah, so Pratt & Whitney with the A320 and 321 Neos, those engines started having issues. I don't know what the issue I think was a delamination of some of the fan blades, maybe some of the internal ones. Those GTF engines are, they started using composite blades coated with like, I don't know, some kind of titanium alloy or coating or something. that started delaminating off of off of the composite and and causing you know major engine problems so a lot of those engines I don't know I can't remember what the percentage was

21:28Bob Allen:yeah it's it's a fair bit and also keep in mind there are two different engines available on the neo so there's the CFM leap and the Pratt & Whitney GTF which stands for geared turbofan right so So like the GTF uses a whole different technology. It essentially is like a transmission that goes from like the power section to translating to the to the fan. Right. So the engine burns at a speed and the fan doesn't turn the exact same speed. It produces additional thrust that way, whereas the leap, the philosophy is that they used it's a more traditional engine, but they use different types of materials so that they can burn at like higher, hotter temperatures, temperatures, faster speeds.

22:11Yeah.

22:11Bob Allen:You know, it's a different philosophy.

22:13Steve Giordano:Yeah. And the whole purpose of both of those engines is fuel efficiency. I mean, it, it made it, I, you know, I think upwards of 20 % more fuel efficient than the older, the A320, 321 CEOs, these older aircraft, with the older engines. The older engines were just, they're more reliable, but they were less fuel efficient. So, you know, these engines will get past all of that. But the problem is, and the whole problem we're discussing, the cause of that is these engines have to come off wing. and it's taking, I think it's almost a year process to take it off wing, get it to the factory, have them basically rebuild it with good components.

23:05Steve Giordano:Or inspect it.

23:06Bob Allen:I think inspecting it is a big part of it. And by the way, it's not, I just checked, I'm trying to get the number of how many, it's hundreds. I can't find an exact number offhand. I probably should have planned that in advance, but it is like a powder metal process and it's not actually the fan. it's the turbine. Yeah. What's basically happened is that this issue has grounded a bunch of airplanes and forced the airlines that are operating them to fall back and rely on their other aircraft that are not affected, which means extending leases on the older aircraft, right? So when leases are getting extended, new airplanes aren't coming in, old airplanes aren't coming out, that's our bread and butter.

23:46Bob Allen:We bring the new airplanes in and take the old airplanes out. So that's huge. And that happened at the same time that Boeing has slowed manufacturing. And I'm not going to go into the weeds with why. But if you follow aviation news, you know that there's been a lot of, you know, both manufacturing, regulatory, compliance. There's all kinds of issues at Boeing that have caused the production of 737s to stagnate over the last couple of years. And so they're not making as many airplanes. And, and, you know, so that's been big. Airbus has bottlenecked a little bit too, as they've expanded to some different final assembly lines.

24:25Bob Allen:They've got one in, you know, they've got the Germany, the Hamburg and the Toulouse, France. And, you know, now they have, they have Alabama, Mobile. Yeah, Mobile, Alabama. And they have one in China now, too. So, like, you know, they're ramping up production. Everybody's ramping up production, but it's not there yet. And then the tariff uncertainty, like, I'm not going to deep dive into that, but, like, I will just say the questions that remain with tariffs are more than the answers that exist.

24:55Steve Giordano:Yeah, there's a lot of risk. There's a lot of risk out there for these companies to invest a lot of money in used airplanes and part-outs and all of this stuff. It just has created a lot of uncertainty along with these engine problems, and it's slowed down our industry massively.

25:15Bob Allen:Yeah, and there was also – and like the final thing is we do a lot of cargo conversion operations, right? Like we bring airplanes into the facilities to go from passenger aircraft to freighter. I mean, we do a lot. Historically, we've done a ton of those. I mean, I'd almost say probably close to 50 percent of our office have had something to do with, you know, over the last 10 years. That was going gangbusters, especially during COVID and the immediate aftermath and before COVID with the narrow body freighters. So they pushed a lot of supply into the cargo market. And then the cargo airlines did not have the demand to necessarily keep up with the amount of supply coming out.

25:53Bob Allen:So cargo conversion is down. There's a lot of people waiting for the 777-300 passenger-to-friger conversion to be certified and produced at scale. And so people are kind of holding off. There's no real reason to convert a 7-6 if we know the triple's coming down the pipe. And, you know, the A330 is available, cargo conversion. We actually are still doing quite a bit of those A330 conversions. They're doing them in Turkey and China. Where else? Germany.

26:24Steve Giordano:Yeah, in Dresden, Germany. Yeah, that's kind of, you know, that's the A330 conversion program has kind of been what's kept our lights on over the last year.

26:36Bob Allen:Yeah, and the 321 conversion a little bit beforehand, although that's slowed. it does seem like there's been kind of a shift away from narrow body freighters. I don't know if this just oversupply, but they're not making as many as they were. The 321 conversion is a really cool machine, but there's just not too many out there. And so I guess the jury's out on whether they'll keep making those 737, 800 conversion freighters. Or, I mean, they're almost a thing of the past at this point. I'm not exactly sure why they weren't successful, but they're just, they haven't been as successful as they had hoped.

27:08Bob Allen:And there's just not many of them getting converted anymore. Yeah.

27:12Steve Giordano:So, you know, as you can see, I mean, that's what all of these dynamics affect us greatly. And so we, you know, we are in a unique position. We kind of have our fingers on the pulse of kind of what's going on out there between the manufacturers, between the lessors, between, you know, the whole dynamic kind of crosses, you know, where we live.

27:40Bob Allen:so so anyway that's why we're slow um everybody says things are going to come back like kind of the experts are saying uh the leases that were extended are going to start expiring uh around the fourth quarter this year maybe third into next year and 2027 supposed to be gangbusters so any of you folks out there wanting a contract for us um you know probably look towards 2027 before we start having to kind of ramp up our contract crews our our little team of in-house guys for now we have it managed. But anyway.

28:11Steve Giordano:Yeah, I get a lot of guys. I think they think I'm mad at them or something because they're wanting to fly for us. But there's just nothing going on, you know, and it's just it's not.

28:22Bob Allen:We got to stay current ourselves.

28:24Steve Giordano:Yeah. Yeah. We're pretty much flying everything that's that's flying just to put food on our on our own table right now.

28:31Bob Allen:So let's let's And so I'm recently back to flying. So I flew. So I flew my last trip of 2025 at the end of November with you. We pulled a 330 freighter out of China and we brought it to Fort Worth, Texas for paint. And then immediately after that, I had shoulder surgery, my left shoulder. I'm doing well. I'm like. like pretty mobile hello pretty mobile now uh i'm going to physical therapy twice a week and i'm getting better i hope to be golfing again by spring but i took a month and a half off after that bob flew a few trips but we were quiet and then i returned to work i guess about three two three weeks ago now again with bob uh back in china again and we took a seven third or no it It was an A320.

29:21Steve Giordano:Yeah, it was A320 this time out of there.

29:24Bob Allen:Yeah, and we took it out of China and we flew it to Arizona. Tucson. Tucson. So I bookended my medical leave with two China trips. And, you know, that was cool. I mean, we went in and out of China a lot.

29:44Steve Giordano:Yeah, we've been. Yeah. I mean, we've probably been out of China the last. more in and out of China than anywhere the last year. How do you feel about operating in and out of China, Bob? You know, it's one of those things that used to be very frustrating. It was difficult to deal with the bureaucracy of it. There's just, you know, look, I spent five years in Asia. You know, I lived in Taiwan for five years. So, you know, I kind of know how people think in Asia, not in a bad way, but in a different way. I mean, when you have rules, they're set, and there's, especially in China, there's no flexibility on that.

30:32Steve Giordano:Where here I'm used to a world where, yeah, there's rules, but, you know, everything's fluid and flexible. there you have to abide by if there's you know takes three days to have something approved you're going to wait three days there's no no getting around it that was very frustrating for me initially but over the years you know kind of accepted the way you do business there and and and everything else you know all of the customer expectations we set based on what's what's reality there, not what somebody wants to hear.

31:13Bob Allen:So it's gotten easier over the years because we've you know, we've made contacts in China and like we've got a handler that we use every time like that kind of essentially almost works for us, you know, to deal with that red tape and bureaucracy. You need a local over there.

31:27Steve Giordano:Yeah. And it's become a process. You know, it's become a defined process of exactly what we need to do when. And, you know, it was just frustrating getting to that point to actually learn, OK, what what process do we need to set up to, to make this work here? And then after that was done, it's a, it's actually a, it's actually very easy now. I don't really have any frustration with it at all. It actually works kind of like right on time. It's, it's actually very efficient now.

31:57Bob Allen:Well, what about, so what about food? Like that's where I'm trying to steer this conversation for the YouTube, for the YouTube audience you're about to get blessed with some clips. And if you're listening, then you might want to tune in and take a look because getting food, like not only eating there. I mean, first of all, Chinese food ain't Chinese food that we know, like American Chinese food. And there's some great stuff like don't be wrong. I love a Peking duck in Beijing. I mean, it's it's awesome. Right. There's some there's some good stuff out there. But there's some scary looking food, especially for us Westerners.

32:36Bob Allen:and getting catering out of China is always like a mystery. Like, I don't know. It's like roulette, I guess.

32:48Steve Giordano:I guess. I mean, you know, sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's bad. I mean, you know, it seems like we're always hitting a 7-Eleven, honestly.

32:57Bob Allen:We had an airplane. Wrong one. Wrong clip. Here's. Yeah. Talk about 7-Eleven. And there we are. Right? So I'm running a clip. In 7-Eleven, this is like the jerky aisle. And it's not like beef jerky. What's that? It's like duck tongue. That's like a claw. Like a talon.

33:21Steve Giordano:Yeah.

33:22Bob Allen:I didn't buy that.

33:23Steve Giordano:Something.

33:25Bob Allen:You got like spiny boneless duck claw snack.

33:31Steve Giordano:So I didn't even know they had claws. Yeah. But yeah, we didn't buy any of this stuff, though. I don't think we did. I mean, this is not the stuff to try right before you go on a 15-hour flight.

33:49Bob Allen:Right. They have a decent roller. Just like in the U.S., they have rollers, right? But their 7-Eleven more has flesh-colored sausages. Little balls or something. And yeah, I mean, there are balls and like tan balls and flesh colored sausages on the screen right now, like which we did, which we didn't try. No, sort of a hot dog, sort of a hot sausage.

34:16Steve Giordano:Yeah. But then there's something like dark oil. I don't know. That look on my face right there. This must not have been appetizing, whatever I'm looking at.

34:32Bob Allen:That's M &M's, man. That's you with your M &M's. It's a very small pack. It's like a chocolate.

34:37Steve Giordano:Oh, chocolate.

34:38Bob Allen:You need an M &M of some sort, don't you?

34:40Steve Giordano:I think I bought this. Yeah, I've got a big bag of M &M's in this bag. Yeah, see, I already got some.

34:47Bob Allen:You had to get your M &M's. So, yeah, I mean, it turns out, essentially, most of our catering, even if we order sandwiches and all that stuff, but but like we hardly ever turn to it like we don't usually need to on these long flights we can generally make things happen with the snacks that we get right yeah i i prefer the snacks i

35:12Steve Giordano:mean i'm not a big catering guy we're not throwing cargo or bags or something on board where we gotta you know work out and you know well you use m &ms and sugary sweets for energy yeah it keeps me awake you know it's caffeine caffeine sugar you know it's a it's a very unhealthy lifestyle i'm

35:31Bob Allen:sure yeah no doubt well this last trip that we did we started in shenzhen um so i mean i've been to a lot of different cities in china you know guanzhou shanghai jinan uh xian harbin um wuhan um shanghai you know i mean a bit like most of them and on this last one we got into shenzhen and our handlers which we're pretty good friends with they invited us out to dinner and they said um what do you want and and i of course i called bob's room and i'm like hey you know victor and sam want to take us take us to dinner where do you want to go he was like no chinese food and no sushi no sushi well i disregarded i disregarded that second part and and victor wanted to take us to this japanese place he's like it's a sushi place and bob's like well they'll have they'll have beef i'm like all right yeah they'll have you know something cooked so we went to this sushi place and like you know china's like they're big into like the ofal like the eyeballs and rib cages and like the like the stuff that like we don't like to see as westerners right and i'm like how's that going to go over with sushi he's like oh it's a traditional japanese sushi place and and you know the reality is you know it was i mean walking in it looked like a place a high-end place that we go go to and it was a nice high-end place that's for sure

37:02Steve Giordano:Yeah, it's called Sushi Man.

37:03Bob Allen:So we go in, and, you know, at first, it's got uni. You know, it's like the normal stuff. There's the uni, like the sea urchin roe.

37:14Steve Giordano:Yeah, I'd never seen that before, actually.

37:16Bob Allen:Like regular, you know, it was like an omakase, so you didn't order. Like they just gave you stuff.

37:22Steve Giordano:Yeah.

37:24Bob Allen:And, you know, at first, like the first few dishes that came out, they were good. They were normal.

37:28Steve Giordano:That's, you know, some kind of white fish that's seared. yeah um oh i don't know what is what is that under it was that rice or was that the uh

37:37Bob Allen:the uni eggs or whatever i think it was i think it was like a cod i think but like there was some bizarre stuff that came out right like that's the bottom lines but like we ended up with like one of those like you know the fish with the lamp on the top from the deep sea they had one of those the liver of one of those i didn't photograph it it was weird and then we got this thing check out Check out this.

38:05Bob Allen:It looks like a brain.

38:10Bob Allen:All right. I'm just going to pause it right there.

38:13Steve Giordano:They tried to explain. That's what they said it was. They said it was cod reproductive system.

38:20Bob Allen:Yeah, like the reproductive system of a cod. We don't know if it was male or female. I mean, it looked like a brain. Male sex organ of a cod. Yeah.

38:32Bob Allen:So like for the radio audience. Did you really eat it? Dude, I not only ate mine, I also ate yours. Because I didn't, I mean, I just didn't want to like, I felt bad. Like this is like a delicacy, man. It was like, it looked and felt like a brain. It was white and gelatinous. Well, here, let's watch Bob eat it real quick. It tastes good. It's just got a very gelatinous texture.

38:57Steve Giordano:Like I would believe Steve.

39:00Bob Allen:It has a very good flavor. But don't mix it all up because then a bunch of this white stuff comes out and I think it might be. I'm going to stop it right there.

39:11Steve Giordano:Yeah. Thanks for the play-by-play as I'm eating it.

39:16Bob Allen:So, I mean, the reality is, is that Bob took like the tiniest of fragments and put like a piece of wasabi like 10 times the size up on top of it. And yeah, so anyway. So we ended up, we ate there. It was okay. I ate, I was stuffed because I ate all of my food plus like 75 % of Bob's food.

39:39Steve Giordano:I claimed to be allergic to most of it. So I felt bad. I mean, it was a very expensive place. And they took us to a nice place. I mean, I was just for the record, I was not feeling well that evening either. I had, you know, some kind of, I don't know, the air was getting to my throat. I was just kind of. Oh, yeah, you were a mess.

40:04Bob Allen:You talked like you talked.

40:06Steve Giordano:I couldn't talk.

40:08Bob Allen:Yeah. Actually, I'm going to show one more clip and then we're going to move on to the next topic. But like I have a clip of the catering that they brought us. So we we we ended up getting catered with like, you know, your standard like cold cut sandwiches and stuff like that. Plus, we had our our 7-Eleven, you know, like kimchi Pringles and all that stuff. But like we ended up sitting for a while before we departed and Bob was saying he was hungry. So I brought him some catering. The reason I'm bringing it up now is you can hear how sick you were. Like your voice was like horrific. Anyway, here's here's the clip.

40:49Bob Allen:I'm here to present you, Bob, with your Chinese cake. What do you got here? Is that an egg? Oh, is that bread? I thought it was bread. It's bread. It looks like bread, right? It looks the same color as the bread.

41:04Steve Giordano:Oh, wait. That is meat. No, that's meat. That's meat? Yeah. That's roast beef with an egg. That ain't fucking roast beef, dude. Yeah, I don't know if it was really roast beef, but it was something. There it is.

41:16Bob Allen:It's like a grayish, you'll see it if you tune in, right?

41:22Steve Giordano:It's like a grayish brown. I mean, that's a picture on the package.

41:30Bob Allen:If spam was brown, that's what it looks like. Like brown spam between two pieces of brown bread.

41:38Steve Giordano:Say yeah. Say yeah.

41:40Bob Allen:That's what it says on the packaging. I don't know. It's got an animal on it.

41:44Steve Giordano:Oh, yeah. My voice was terrible. God, I was losing it that whole fight.

41:48Bob Allen:I know. Maybe. You should eat it.

41:51Steve Giordano:I don't know, man. Nowhere to even keep it cold. That's why you should eat it now. I'm not eating it now.

41:58Bob Allen:So did you end up eating that thing or what?

42:00Steve Giordano:No. No. No. I didn't eat any of the – anything that contained any meat or anything. I stuck with the kimchi potato chips, which are actually pretty darn good. I can recommend kimchi potato chips.

42:18Bob Allen:Yeah, kimchi potato chips are really, really, really good. All right. So anyway, long story short, we survived the trip by eating like Pringles and stuff like that. I might have heated up the beef entree, but I do not believe I ate more than one forkful of it.

42:34Steve Giordano:But I knew Guam was coming in about four or five hours. Yeah. Oh, that's right.

42:41Bob Allen:That's right.

42:42Steve Giordano:I knew what was coming, and I was like going, I can't wait. I mean, I was already – I was in China for a week. Yeah. So I was getting kind of sick of the same. What did we get? Tell them. The Golden Arches, baby. Mickey D's, man. And they brought us a lot of it. We did. And it was – the fries were still warm. I mean, everything – it was good.

43:06Bob Allen:There's nothing like McDonald's when you're fresh out of a week in China. Like, there's nothing like it. Seriously. Like I don't eat McDonald's at home ever. I, you know, I don't think I've, I don't even remember the last time I ate McDonald's, probably when I was in a Sim somewhere or something.

43:19Steve Giordano:Yeah. Yeah. I rarely do either. I'm usually with you if I ever eat McDonald's. I mean, it's usually us trying to like get something quick or it's the only place open or something weird. Yeah. But oh my God, it's, it's, it's like a delicacy when you're, you're on a trip like this though. And you get into Guam and you're hungry and it's like, then you gotta, you know, you got another you know seven hours of flying to go it's like oh yes the garden marches yes it was good

43:47Bob Allen:man and that that that did us for the whole for the whole thing so anyway um let's let's move on to um to side stick yeah yeah yeah all right i think there's gonna be like a theme music to side shtick cue the theme music to shot side shtick all right i'm gonna set i'm gonna set my uh i'm gonna set my timer we have five minutes let's see how this goes we have five minutes to discuss one second how do you timers here we go i can't wait i can't wait to hear what you've came up with Okay. Side shtick for this week is going to be... starting. Okay. It's going to be aviation conspiracy theories. Okay.

44:35Bob Allen:There are three widely circulated aviation conspiracy theories. I mean, they're all pretty asinine. And I'm going to lay them out here. And you and I are going to discuss the merits of each one and determine we're each going to give our take as which is the most likely to potentially be true. OK, number one, the jet fuel hoax. The conspiracy theory is that jet fuel does not exist or at least no longer exists because airplane wings are too thin to store all the jet fuel that is in them. And so it's all the fuel hoses, fuel trucks. That's all just for show. And airplanes operate on very sophisticated alien technology propulsion systems.

45:25Bob Allen:But there's a conspiracy kept alive that we still use fuel. So that's that's number one, the jet fuel hoax to chemtrails. You know, people look up and they see contrails like the wingtip vortices, condensing engine exhaust and creating lines in the sky. The conspiracy theory is that chemtrails are chemicals being purposely sprayed over the population to control them. And then finally, we have the flat earth theory, you know, that the, you know, pre Christopher Columbus era myth that the world was flat. People still believe that somehow and that it's not spherical. So let's let's break it down.

46:10Bob Allen:Let's let's just eliminate flat earth right now. Because like we already know it's not true because we would have fallen off the edge.

46:18Steve Giordano:Right. You're opening up a can of worms here. Have you seen some of my social media posts where I've talked about this? It I mean, there are thousands I get bombarded with the flat earthers who come to defend the flat earth theory.

46:36Bob Allen:So so, you know, we don't have time to get into it in detail, Bob. I'm going to cut you short here. Yeah, it's it's it's absurd. OK, there's a million ways to like it's just not flat. OK, and if you believe that the Earth is flat, you seek help. Seriously, like all the evidence is right there in front of you up to and including you can watch a cockpit casual video called Full Circle, not full plane, but full circle where we fly around the Earth starting in New Mexico, ending in New Mexico. I think it was Albuquerque. Yeah. Or whatever the hell it was. So Roswell, Roswell. So anyway, that one's done.

47:16Bob Allen:I don't believe it.

47:17Steve Giordano:Yeah. The earth is a sphere. I mean. Talk about jet. Yeah. Let's talk about jet fuel hoax. And another one. I don't even know where anybody even came up with this one. I mean, look, I wish that it was not a hoax. Me too.

47:37Bob Allen:We'd have so much more money. If we could charge our customers for fuel and then use alien technology to fly. Oh, my God. Dude, we'd be rich as hell. We have a jet that we fly, and it costs a fortune to fly it because we put, like, real gas in it, real jet fuel.

47:54Steve Giordano:There's no technology. I mean, there wouldn't be engine manufacturer problems if there was.

48:02Bob Allen:Yes. I mean, it's asinine. And the whole thing, the wings are too thin. You know what? Go stand in a 747 wing route because you can unless you're, like, seven feet tall or something. I don't know how big it is. You can climb into the wing.

48:14Steve Giordano:They have people climb into the wing to fix fuel pumps and various other components that are inside of there.

48:20Bob Allen:It's spread out over surface area. There's also a massive center tank. The massive center tanks hold way more than the wings. Anyway, we're down to a minute here, OK? So in 30 seconds, let's talk about chemtrails. Here's the deal. The government, I mean, maybe they are poisoning us. OK, I'm just going to go ahead and say it. If there's one that's plausible, it's not plausible. But the only one of the three that could possibly exist is chemtrails.

48:45Steve Giordano:I mean, it's not blatant. It's not a chemtrail. I mean, it's not a chemtrail. There is cloud seeding. There are cloud seeding operations. But what you see up there in those contrails is not cloud seeding. Those are airliners. And that contrail. Now, here's the issue that I wonder about in terms of this. I don't believe that there's chemicals coming out of it, but are all of those contrails spreading out and causing other environmental issues? Like, it's filtering sunlight from coming in. Is that the government calling?

49:33Bob Allen:Nope, that is your five minutes are up. Okay, so we got to end it here. We got to end it here today. They're all fake and you're an idiot if you believe any of them. But if one could potentially have a kernel of truth, if somebody wanted to add something to jet fuel that does combust, that does create contrails, I guess in theory they could do that and rain it down over the public. But I will say that we have nothing to do with it. And it happens at the refining level, but it doesn't happen. And it's insane to believe that it does. So anyway, that's side shtick for this week. Whew.

50:12Steve Giordano:Wait till the flat earthers come. I'm just, I'm waiting.

50:17Bob Allen:It's going to take practice, dude. Like five minutes ain't very long. No, that's not at all. I mean, gosh, I could go, I could. We're not going to. We're going to keep it under control. And that's it. We can talk about it another time. Maybe it'll be the next side shtick if you really want to get into it.

50:33Steve Giordano:We can bring a flat earther on. No, I don't even want to. All right.

50:38Bob Allen:No, we should bring a flat earther on. That would be hilarious. Let's find a flat earther so we can make ourselves feel really smart. All right.

50:49Steve Giordano:I don't want to bring somebody on and just make fun of them.

50:52Bob Allen:All right. Main segment today, okay? The main segment today is, and we're running a little long. You know what? So be it. It's going to be a little longer than than than the normal episodes, I guess. Or maybe they'll all be long. The main segment today, once we're going to deep dive into the ferry business. So after a second here, we're just going to deep dive into what it is that we do. So the main segment today that we're going to we're going to do a deep dive on the on the aircraft ferry industry. People have a lot of questions as to what we do and we hear them all the time. And so let's let's do our best to concisely answer what what we do.

51:33Bob Allen:Like, what do we like? What is our business? What is the ferry business? So first of all, the one that I get most often is why do airlines not move their own airplanes? Right. Do you want to do you want to do you want to tackle that first?

51:48Steve Giordano:Well, our main customers are not the airlines, for one thing. You know, most of the airplanes in the world are leased. So they're actually owned by large leasing companies, great big finance companies, banks own most of the airplanes and lease them to airlines. So those leases are for a defined period, just like when you would lease a car at the end of that lease, somebody has to get that that asset for the leasing company and move it from point A to point B or, you know, do whatever they need need done contractual wise. with that. Right.

52:28Bob Allen:And that's so the lessors, I mean, the fastest, most concise and accurate answer is our clients are generally not the airlines. They are the lessor, the people that own the airplane and lease them out to the airlines. I think it's like 70 to 80 percent of the world fleet is leased now. So so we're dealing with these airplanes when they're in transition. So even if the client is our customer, they may not have that airplane on their op spec yet. So it's still kind of in transit. It's not, you know, an airline has to operate under very, very restrictive rules in all cases. Right. And so before that airplane is officially onboarded with their maintenance program, with, you know, their manuals, with their crews, like before that, their, you know, civil aviation authority oversight person signs off on the airplane being at that airline, it still exists in this, in this limbo.

53:25Bob Allen:And so that's when we have the airplanes most of the time, like we're moving the airplanes when they're in, when they're in limbo. And sometimes, you know, sometimes it is the airline that's our client, but, but most of the time it's not.

53:37Steve Giordano:Yeah. Yeah. It's a, what, maybe, maybe 10 % of the time it's the airline. I mean, it's a, it's a very, it's a very low number.

53:44Bob Allen:Yeah, we work for like, like FlySafir is an airline. LATAM is an airline. We've done some Avianca work. Yeah. I mean, there's a handful of airlines out there that we work for.

53:55Steve Giordano:Yeah, we're more of a, we're more of a technical company than a, than a flight operations of sorts. I mean, we, we deal on the technical side of aviation more so than the flight operations. So people see us, you know, as, as like, like the equivalent of airline pilots. but we're we're more associated i think on the technical side of of aviation yeah i feel like

54:20Bob Allen:we relate better like on a personal level to like maintenance reps like mechanics like i don't know that's who we deal with i mean our pilots are our guys and then most of the people that are we don't interface with the suits per se at the lessors and at the airlines the people that contract us the people that we deal with minute by minute, day by day, you know, in our course of business are the technical managers. So people that started out their careers as mechanics, worked their way up into maintenance management, and then they kind of oversee fleet transitions. So like we're like the blue collar side of things.

55:00Steve Giordano:We rarely even deal with the pilots at an airline. I mean, no, I can't think of the last time I talked to a director of operations or chief pilot or anybody.

55:09Bob Allen:Yeah.

55:09Steve Giordano:You know, on that side of things.

55:11Bob Allen:It's happened and we've helped we've helped stand up a couple of startups. Like so then we've we've interfaced with them a little bit more. But yeah, like the pilots that we interface with are our contractors, you know, mainly that's that's like we're like kind of part of this technical team that that that takes care of the continuing airworthiness. than ultimately the movement, like the actual ferry flight or the test flight itself is like tip of the spear. It's just like one little part of a symphony of different tasks that are taking place when an airplane is being onboarded to an airline or taken off the property of an airline.

55:49Bob Allen:So we come in and when the rubber meets the road, it's me and you or us with contractors flying, you know, flying a trip. It's like it's like the culmination of a long process, a long process with hundreds and

56:02Steve Giordano:hundreds of items that have to be accomplished before that that part ever happens.

56:07Bob Allen:Now, we do we do have some airline clients, LATAM being a big one. And we've had others over the years and they still come and go. And most of the time when we're doing something for an airline, it's because or JetSmart down and down in Chile as well. like we're doing new airbus deliveries for them and well why they don't they their own pilots can do it um but in a lot of cases like long haul especially when you're dealing with narrow body aircraft right like long call long haul over oceanic multi-country operations it's a different game and so while any pilot can do it with a little bit of training and a little bit of guidance this is all we do, right?

56:52Bob Allen:And it's like, it's just a very different discipline. So we're very efficient. You know, we have great relationships with handlers and, you know, getting permits done and all that stuff. I mean. And there's so much that goes into each trip on the planning side, on, you know, on with vendors, with invoicing. Airlines always have very specific vendors they use. They have on-booting processes for their vendors.

57:16Steve Giordano:Or scheduled airlines, right? They're scheduled and they have, they have defined things at, you know, at certain destinations and routes. This route, we're going to do this, this, and this. They got that process. But when it becomes like an unscheduled type operation, that's kind of where they fall apart. I mean, that's not what they're designed to do. So they kind of go like, well, we don't know. You know, we've been flying in South America. We've never flown in Europe or across the Atlantic Ocean. We don't know what we're, you know, this is kind of out of our lane.

57:53Bob Allen:How do you get an overflight slot, a departure slot?

57:55Steve Giordano:And then the pilots, you know, the pilots are thinking about how they're trained. It's like, okay, well, they've got ETOPS rules and all of these things that you have to worry about at an airline that don't apply to this, the ferry operation. And so it's kind of hard to get sometimes that airline mentality out of the crews that are flying. And so we make it we we we have the processes in, you know, all over the world in, you know, in this unscheduled environment that we we have it, you know, down to a science. It's very easy for us. And it's it's very easy for an airline to just hire us to just go do it.

58:35Steve Giordano:It's all seamless and not, you know, there's no delays and everything. Everything goes good.

58:40Bob Allen:Yeah, people people see us on social and they think that it's just us doing everything. And I mean, look, we own the company. We do a lot like we are sometimes the janitors and the accountants and like, you know, we're everything to some degree. But we have a team. We have we have a really proficient, skilled team that has been doing this with us for decades. And we have two dispatchers, one in Calgary, one in Malay in the Maldives, covering 24-hour shifts total, day in and day out, seven days a week, 365 days a year, dispatching our flights, planning our flights. We have an ops manager that's contacting the handlers and setting up the fuel agreements.

59:22Bob Allen:And, you know, we have a travel agent that sets up all of our crew travel. And we have an accountant that handles all the, I mean, each trip might have between 50 and 150 invoices for services that we procure throughout the process of ferrying an airplane.

59:38Steve Giordano:Yeah. And then project managers, admin people. It's, I don't know, what do we got? Like 12?

59:45Bob Allen:Right now we have 12. There are times we ramp it up a little bigger and then, you know, we have what? One, two, three, four, five, six full time pilots. I would say probably about another six or seven part time pilots. And then, you know, 40, 50 contract pilots that that are not just guys that we call because they have a type rating. They're people that we've worked with before or people that we bring in as a third at first, kind of see how our operation goes, assess their personality. Not anybody can do this. So there's like you got to. There's a formula.

1:00:26Steve Giordano:Yeah, definitely. I mean, look, I mean, to be a PIC on one of our flights, you know, number one, you need to have a lot of experience. You know, we're moving stuff that that has problems sometimes. sometimes in MEL items, you know, these are technically not airworthy airplanes we're moving. They're flying under special flight permits. And you have to be, you have to have a lot of common sense as a pilot flying these. You have to understand, like, based on the weather conditions, your route, all of these things, you know, what kind of, what kind of like maintenance issues you might be carrying and how that's going to affect something down the road.

1:01:08Steve Giordano:I mean, we want guys that can make things happen, but have enough common sense to like stop the operation before they're going to bend metal or, you know, hurt themselves or somebody.

1:01:19Bob Allen:Yeah, there are, you know, ferry flying is very unique. OK, and there's a lot of things that make it unique. One of those things is, yes, we have a support system. We have ground based dispatch. We maintain contact via SATCOM text message and voice calls sometimes, you know. But we don't almost never have CPDLC working in the airplanes. We don't always have HF. We can't always fly RBSM. We very rarely have a database. So we have to use the MMEL deferral for that and carry NAVPUBs through JEPFD. We maintain this extremely expensive subscription for worldwide coverage of all the navigation charts, approach charts, departures, arrivals, so on and so forth.

1:02:05Bob Allen:And every time we fly an airplane with no database, which is most of the time, or at least an expired database, which is most of the time, we have to cross-reference every fix with current data to make sure everyone is in there. If there's a change, we have to build the new fix manually, as long as we have to build the whole route manually. So that's very different. It takes a long time to get comfortable doing that every leg the days are long the hours are long you know you deal with meters in china and you know we used to deal with it in russia you know it's it's and the catering sucks and the catering sucks and the days are long and like you gotta kind of be a self-starter honestly non-sched pilots are the best ones like coming out of kalita trade winds atlas hands down it's it's difficult

1:02:55Steve Giordano:for a guy that's been flying his whole career at a scheduled airline to come in, jump into this. I heard there's some people that do great. I mean, there's definitely exceptions to that, but I'd say a majority have kind of a difficult time, but many adapt to it.

1:03:11Bob Allen:So one of the biggest unique features of being a ferry pilot, and that, you know, obviously some of our contractors only have one or two types, but like being like a ferry pilot as a career, us, right you have to maintain multiple type ratings and you have to be current and qualified and proficient on a variety of different type ratings and you know people are always like well how do you how do you go from boeing to airbus how do you go from 737 to triple seven to a340 to you know dash eight and there's not really an answer to that other than it just takes time to kind of understand how to do it like there's a process like a review process before i do it any flight If I haven't flown a plane for a long time, I'll try to pair myself with somebody that's more current in the airplane whenever possible, including like retired guys.

1:04:01Bob Allen:Like you and I fly the 787. Yeah. But like we have under 500 hours in the 787. Right. So, you know, what do we do? Well, we go out and hire an Air Canada retired pilot to go fly with us or, you know, a United retired pilot to go fly with us to get us back into the mentality where we're. The Dreamliner is different than anything else. It really is.

1:04:25Steve Giordano:Yeah, that one's one of the more difficult ones to not have flown for a while and then just go jump in. But yeah, it's great flying. I love flying with the older retired guys anyway. I mean, I'm getting up there. But, you know, I mean, it's one thing I always did enjoy about, you know, airline flying. And, you know, when I was young, I loved flying with these old guys that had these great stories and just this unbelievable experience that you learn from. And, you know, I still love that dynamic to this day. Unless they question your procedures, in which case, just put a bag over their head. You know, there's some guys that, you know, you come across and you just you're cut from the same cloth, man.

1:05:14Steve Giordano:It's like, OK, we're brothers in arms, man. And we both get it and you're just, you just click.

1:05:20Bob Allen:And then there's.

1:05:23Steve Giordano:Well, yeah.

1:05:28Bob Allen:You can imagine. You can imagine. You can imagine. We could have a whole segment on just that. Let's talk about the competitive landscape of this business. There's a handful of companies out there that do what we do. We're nomadic, right? So people, you know, Nomadic Aviation Group is the name of our company. We fly under the call sign Nomadic. We're probably one of the more well-known. I think we're the busiest. At least we have been some years.

1:05:55Steve Giordano:We're definitely one of the longest. I mean, we've been out there 20, I think, 26 years now.

1:06:00Bob Allen:Yeah. And it's a lot of that's based on the reputation that we have and like, you know, the relationships that Bob and I have individually with, you know, with the clients, with the technical guys at the airlines and so forth. there are entrants all the time. There's a couple in Europe. There's one in China. I mean, there's a few people out there doing it and there's a lot of retired guys that try to go at it. But the big barrier to entry is what are you going to do when something goes wrong? Because it inevitably does. You have to have deep, a deep bench. Like you've got to have technical people on standby.

1:06:36Bob Allen:You got to have MROs. You got to have ways to order parts. You got to be able to get yourself out of a pickle without like we can't break down in hawaii and say i'm gonna go to the golf course you figure it out like our clients know yeah our clients know that we're gonna solve that problem and it may cost them more right but it's not gonna cost them as much as us walking away and letting them deal with it themselves yeah so so that's huge and then just i mean just finances. I mean, we're small, you know, we're small business. We got 12 employees and, you know, we have$120 ,000 a month in a, in a hard fixed cost to nut to crack every single month.

1:07:19Bob Allen:That's a lot. And, you know, we have customers on 15 day terms. We have customers on prepay. We have customers on 30 day terms. We have LATAM on 90 day terms.

1:07:29Steve Giordano:So yeah, we're, we're Fronting a lot of money. Yeah.

1:07:33Bob Allen:You fill up a 767, that could be a$180 ,000 fuel bill.

1:07:38Steve Giordano:Yeah. So not to mention the part where when the economy goes south, anything happens, people start declaring bankruptcy. And whatever you're owed, you're not going to get. I've never recovered any money in any bankruptcy. And I've been through two or three of them that have that have hit me for hundreds, hundreds of thousands of dollars. I hit nomadic for I mean, we've gone through half a million in bankruptcy losses.

1:08:09Bob Allen:Yeah, you learn you learn who to give terms to and who not to, you know, at the end of the day. I mean, I think that's one thing that I'd like to touch on in this podcast in the future is like the business angle of it. I mean, without giving away like the secrets and the keys to the castle, there's some interesting stuff. Like I think, you know, the one thing I never I didn't start off thinking, oh, I'm going to be an entrepreneur and figure out how to run a business like I wanted to be a pilot. And then I found out about this business. And that's another story for another day. But ultimately, we've had to kind of build it as we go, like take external processes and bring them in in-house to save money or to, you know, to get a better product that isn't offered out there on the market.

1:08:55Bob Allen:Yeah, for sure. Software to hardware to people. Yeah.

1:08:58Steve Giordano:And it's constantly changing. I mean, the world's changing fast, you know, in terms of technology and, you know, and for us to keep up, you know, to be competitive in the world, we have to keep up with that technology and be on the forefront of it all. Yeah.

1:09:15Bob Allen:And, you know, real quick, before we finish up this segment, you know, people want to ask, they ask all the time. I mean, I'm not going to get into the economics of it other than to say long haul ferries on narrow bodies cost about$120 ,000. Long haul wide bodies are about$200 ,000. You know, domestics,$30 ,000 to$60 ,000. Like, those are ballpark figures if you want to talk about the economics of each trip. That's what we're charging our clients. Of course, a vast majority of that is stuff that we have to pay for from other vendors, fuel and so forth. We have, you know, we have fuel contracts, travel, you know, we're always flying business class.

1:09:53Bob Allen:Well, we fly business class because you can't get off of a 18 hour flight in coach and then perform at a high level. And you can't finish up 24 hours of flying and sit in a coach seat on your way home. You just physically would not be able to, your body would give out, right?

1:10:10Steve Giordano:So like you'll end up looking, looking, looking like me at 60. Yeah.

1:10:14Bob Allen:Not like you ever flown coach. Come on. You are almost 60, man.

1:10:20Steve Giordano:I know this year I'll be 60. God, you're coming up, man.

1:10:24Bob Allen:It means I'm turning 50 soon, but 49 will be this year. So anyway, let's, let's close out the let's close out the main segment today. Just know that we will return, especially if you have questions, you know, So we're going to the next segment we're going to do is is is the listener questions. And and we'll do that in a second. But, you know, we're going to cover the ferry industry. Feel free to ask away if I can answer it. I will. And same with Bob. Yeah. So. All right. We'll take a break. Good. And we're back. All right. So for listener questions this week, you know, again, if you have a question for Bob and I, whether it's about cockpit casual, the ferry industry, the airline industry, aircraft, anything.

1:11:12Bob Allen:You name it. You ask it. If we like it, we're going to tackle two questions each every week, four total. And we would love it if you would submit your questions to pod, P-O-D, at nomadic.aero. So P-O-D at N-O-M-A-D-I-C dot A-E-R-O. Submit it in audio, note, or video form. and we will play it on the pod, and then we will answer your question. And I really hope that you guys do it that way, because I don't want to just read it. I want to see you. We want to interact with you guys. So what we did for this week, since nobody even knows that we have a podcast coming out as of this moment, and maybe we won't.

1:11:54Bob Allen:Maybe this just will suck so bad we won't even do it.

1:11:59Bob Allen:But anyway, what we've done is I've compiled two questions for Bob, and he's compiled two questions for me. And we're just going to ask, these are the most common questions that we get. For me, it's in the comments of the cockpit casual videos for Bob. It's on social media. So I'll go first. Bob, what's with you and the M &Ms? Oh, gosh.

1:12:24Steve Giordano:Well, as most of you know, I won't leave home without him or I won't go airborne without him. That all started out, oh my gosh, probably 15 plus years ago. So I had an old ex-TWA captain that I used to fly with, Captain Al. And Captain Al became a great friend of mine. I mean, we went all over the world together and we became best buddies. So anyway, I'd always stop at a convenience store and get my snacks. Well, there was one particular flight. We were taking a 737 to Afghanistan, to Kabul. And I was in a rush. I was like, oh, man, we're running late. We got to get going. And we're driving down the road, and he said, Bob, he goes, you got to stop.

1:13:13Steve Giordano:You got to stop at the convenience store here. I was like, ah, we don't have time. He goes, I'm telling you, you got to stop. I'm like, why, what's up? He goes, you got to go get those M &Ms. I go, what are you talking about? He said, every time you buy those M &Ms, we have a great flight. There's no problem. He goes, but I notice every time you don't have them, we have mechanical problems, weather problems. It's a disaster. He goes, we're going to Afghanistan. You go buy those M &Ms right now.

1:13:45Bob Allen:So it's superstition. That's the answer. Total superstition. All right. M &Ms make the airplanes fly smoother. Perfect. Second one that I have for you, and we'll kind of keep it as quick as you can, but concise. What is Kitty Hawk? I keep seeing it. People are asking me about it. I truly, this is a question I have because I am on it. I know essentially what it is. What is it? What's your involvement? And what's the master plan for it?

1:14:11Steve Giordano:Yeah, so it's a social networking app that I created that is kind of a combination of Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I'm trying to create a place with no hate, no politics, a place for just aviation to come together and network. Network and have fun. There's a lot of things coming down the pipe in terms of there will be a calendar that will have everything aviation-wise available on a master calendar. A lot of different things that are going to be beyond just social media.

1:14:53Bob Allen:What about like job hunting, networking? Is that incorporated?

1:14:57Steve Giordano:Yeah, absolutely. So there's a place for companies to create a profile. There's a place for companies to advertise for jobs. We're building the links for the search so that it actually finds people through an AI layer. So we're getting into the AI side of things. It's getting very complicated and taking a lot of people to build out what we're trying to do.

1:15:27Bob Allen:So I guess we will be able to recruit from there too.

1:15:30Steve Giordano:Absolutely. So I'm trying to build it out. So if somebody, you know, once, you know, you know how we get just like a deluge of people that want to come fly here. I want to just be able to tell them, hey, go to our Kitty Hawk page and there's a database there. You can put all of your information there. We could find you through that database. So we would be able to do that. Any other company would be able to do that. So just, hey, download the app. It's going to be available as a website as well here very soon. But download Kitty Hawk. You can find it on the app stores and create a profile. It's a great way for you to, you know, network.

1:16:07Steve Giordano:If you're looking for a job, if you're a company that's got, you know, services or products, it's a great way to, you know, advertise your stuff there to a very defined aviation ecosystem.

1:16:22Bob Allen:Awesome. Awesome. Very cool, man. Well, I'm looking forward to learning more about it. Not everything that Bob and I do is the same. See, Bob does some of his own stuff. I do some of my own stuff. But for the most part, we're married. Yeah, very true. The most heterosexual kind of way. I don't know if there's anything wrong with the other wives. Our wives might have an issue. They probably wouldn't care. All right. Probably not. Can you – you got questions for me?

1:16:52Steve Giordano:Yeah, absolutely. So one of the common questions is about your music. You're very musically inclined. I mean, you have the jazz and all of this stuff incorporated into cockpit casual. and people hear you talking about copyrights and things like that. Can you go into?

1:17:10Bob Allen:Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, I mean, if you haven't noticed, Cockpit Casual is music forward. I am a fan of music and I love music. It's been a huge part of my life. I used to play music when I was younger. I'm a drummer by trade. I play a little guitar, play a little piano. I've taken years of music theory. I love all styles, pretty much all styles of music. I mean, I like jazz. I like country. I like rock. I like rap. I mean, you name it. There's there is almost I'm not a huge fan of opera, but I love classical. I mean, I just love music. And so one of the things, you know, when I set out to start making Cockpit Casual, there were two hurdles to clear.

1:17:54Bob Allen:One, I wanted there to be atmospheric music behind it. And two, I didn't know how to deal with music licensing. So my father, my biological father, is a jazz musician. He's turning 79 this year, but he still plays Philly jazz scene. Like he's kind of a local legend, guitar player. I have access to just libraries of his music over the years from the 70s all the way through like stuff we recorded last week. So he's into like this really like avant-garde, like out there, spacey jazz. And he's got a group with some rotating players called Symbiosis. And Symbiosis forms about, I would say, between 30 and 70 percent of the soundtrack to most of the most of the videos.

1:18:41Bob Allen:We record it at a studio called Elm Street Studios in Conchahokan, PA. It's about an hour from me. Get the guys out there. We make a day of it. Actually, you came out. Yeah, I was going to say, you know, I was able to go out there and watch it happen one time.

1:18:57Steve Giordano:That was awesome.

1:18:58Bob Allen:Yeah, I absolutely loved it. We're going to have my dad on the pod at some point. Yeah, he would love to do it.

1:19:04Steve Giordano:He's such a cool dude, man. I mean, when you think jazz musician, this this dude has lived the life of exactly that. He's the real deal, man.

1:19:14Bob Allen:And he's a purist. I mean, he's just like jazz, jazz, jazz all day long. But so, yeah, so a lot of that stuff, the rest of the music that I use, you'll find there's different styles that I that I use kind of depending. I try to go location specific or just mood specific. I download those off of like licensing sites. I I spend hours just listening to music at night and saying, I like this track. I'm going to use it. And I and I buy the license and I save the track and I use it. Not all of them have the artist name and info. Sometimes if they do, I'll put it up in the credits. If not, I'll just put where I licensed it through.

1:19:56Bob Allen:Something new that I've started doing in the last series is I started creating my own stems and my own lead-ins. So there are a couple of examples of that. I actually write, this is my workstation here. I mean, I have a MIDI keyboard here. I have Logic Pro. I have a Roland V drum kit in my basement, which is I've got wires through the floor so I can play drums over it. So like I I've actually been doing like generally one minute to like minute and a half segments. Oh, so you you've really been playing.

1:20:28Steve Giordano:I didn't know if you were in the music. I knew you were making these stems, but I didn't know if you were using A.I. or something to just do it. Like, no, I'm doing it. Awesome. I like it. I didn't know that.

1:20:38Bob Allen:So like I can't do it in a take, right? Like I'll record like a piano track 10 times and then on the and then I'll go in and I'll clean it up on logic. Like I can like remove notes and put notes back in or replay a bar like but I have enough chops. I have enough music theory where I can. Yeah, I can listen to something and I can replay it on the keyboard. And with the drums, I can actually go down and play the drums, which I which I do do on occasion. uh like here's one example like here i'm just gonna play it real quick um the last cockpit casual there's a scene where i use a beautiful symbiosis track um as we fly over the saudi desert after we took off out of out of muscat oh yeah and and it's it's there was a there was a track that i wanted to use on this scene um but i didn't know how to transition to it and i looked and i looked and i couldn't find any way to transition to it so i'm like all right i'm gonna have to make my own transition so this the first i'm not going to play the whole thing but like the beginning segment here is me liver so like we're not talking about like masterful playing right like this this is this is just like are you watching the thing as your plan uh no no i watch it a bunch and then i get an idea in my head and then i just try to do it okay but i had to listen to what key the transition is going to occur in and i had to end on that key right so it transitions i'll show you the transition in a sec and by the way if you have youtube you'll be able to see this scene so we're taking off we're rolling down the runway in uh in muscat and we're going to depart to the south so we'll make a left turn out to the south You can see Pat and I in the cockpit.

1:22:27Bob Allen:We're rotating. Come out. It's very simplistic music, right? But it's just, it's an atmosphere. It's a feel. It's a little hi-hat in the background, like conveying a sense of continuity and movement. This is all still me here. Come out over the city. We start to make a turn.

1:22:51Bob Allen:and then after this radio transmission it starts to transition into symbiosis and like i'll start fading i'll start fading the background out let me just move it ahead a little bit i'll start fading the background out and as soon as you hear the trumpets we're almost 100 symbiosis yeah and now this is Symbiosis.

1:23:27Bob Allen:So that's the answer to your question.

1:23:29Steve Giordano:Okay, well, that's cool. I didn't know that because, you know, I mean, when I was in the studio and watching Symbiosis, you know, do it, you know, you had a monitor there. Yeah. And you were showing them scenes and they were playing that, you know, they were improvising as they're watching this scene. It was like a really cool process of what they were doing as all together. They were weaving, you know, this music together as they were watching this scene. And it's just like all coming together. So I was wondering, yeah, I assume that that's how like your last cockpit casual went. You know, I didn't realize that you were putting it, you know, adding stuff in there.

1:24:10Steve Giordano:That's very cool.

1:24:12Bob Allen:So I'll play a clip for them to set the mood. and sometimes I'll just play it on loop in front of them so that they can glance up. Look, I'm not a musician on that level. I'm on a very, very basic level musician. And for me, I can kind of feel what I want to do, but I can't execute in real time. But these guys, man, they are geniuses musically. Yeah. And they can look at a scene and they can translate the mood from that scene with their instruments. Like John Swanna plays the EV. It's like an electronic valve instrument. the dude is a master he had one in the 80s like he was on the first midi wind instruments my dad plays keyboards and he plays guitars percussionist has got a whole room of percussion stuff uh bob michey plays you know the actual trumpet uh muted a flugelhorn uh you know swan also has a valve trombone so like i mean they do some awesome stuff it was cool watching them i mean they they were

1:25:08Steve Giordano:even arguing about you know different different things or you didn't you know you need to pull at this and they're like going back and forth it's like a whole the whole big process man it's

1:25:18Bob Allen:awesome and they're in separate rooms because it's a studio where like you get a couple guys in one room but the drummer's like locked in a corner so it doesn't get picked up on the mics elsewhere and swana's in there because evie is silent right yeah so like he's in a room with this silent evie looks like he's like in a silent room where you hear his breath but if you walk into the mixing studio like you hear what he's doing as everybody can see steve and i will talk

1:25:42Steve Giordano:about music for hours so if you can imagine us being in the cockpit we will talk about this stuff and go on and on i mean i i love music too i mean i've got an amp sitting back here i mean i'm you know i i love guitars and i've played for a long time so we have this in common you know so we will we can talk for hours you know gosh the cockpit casual music is polarizing most people love it

1:26:07Bob Allen:at this point, but the only negative comments I ever get are just people can't, they just can't get behind my music, but you know what? To each his own. And, and, and it is what it is. I feel like it adds atmosphere. I love doing it. I'm not going to stop doing it. I'll try to, I do try to bring in some new stuff. Like there was a vocalist on the last, the last one, a rock track that I just loved. Yeah. I just, you know, I mean, look, if, if any listeners or musicians and you want to contribute, reach out. pod at nomadic.arrow. And let me know, because you know what? If I like your stuff and it's usable, I'll use it.

1:26:44Bob Allen:If I like your stuff and it's not usable, we'll play it on the pod. We'll close it out with it. One more question, Bob.

1:26:51Steve Giordano:So you're showing that last Cockpit Casual. Those last few episodes have brought up some questions about, where's Bob?

1:27:02Bob Allen:Always, where's Bob? Some guy was like, where's the other guy?

1:27:06Steve Giordano:The other guy.

1:27:07Bob Allen:And then another person was like, great editing, Bob. It was all me this time. Look, I shoot cockpit casual from my perspective, so I'm not always on screen, more so in the last episode. But like, it's not about me. It's about my experience, right? And my experience is generally it's shot from my eyes. And so it looks at Bob more than it looks at me. And that's just my experience on these trips. um but bob and i don't fly together all the time uh we fly together a lot i mean i would say at least half a dozen times a year sometimes more yeah um but like look our company is like a matrix it's like a complex jigsaw puzzle that we're always trying to plug in the right pieces you know where's a trip starting where's a trip ending you know who's cheaper to fly somewhere who can we pair together like it just doesn't always work out where we fly together so um as as bob flies with grant or pat or i fly with pat lewis or pat rower or west or mike holiday or like you know we we split up so bob wasn't on that trip um i think you were on an a330 at a

1:28:18Steve Giordano:dresden yeah i was on the a330 when you were doing that one yeah so that's where bob was he wasn't

1:28:23Bob Allen:there he will be on the next one i don't know what the next episode is going to be i've got a few to choose from yeah we went to tashkent uzbekistan recently i got a lot of great footage there that

1:28:32Steve Giordano:was a that was a cool one you know part of the other problem is we do have some clients that don't want their airplanes like filmed yeah yeah or at least at least there's a statute of

1:28:42Bob Allen:limitations like they're like you can use it but after a year has passed um all of our contracts have a provision for them to either accept social media or decline it and 50 50 you know like we're not just going to go put you know if you're a prospective client i'm not going to put your airplane on there if you know if you don't want me to but um right you know so we have like different we have different rules for each trip um all right so that's that's it listen this was fun i think we went a little long we went a little long um but it's the first one so it's just going

1:29:15Steve Giordano:to be long well cool i'm interested to see what kind of feedback we get um and uh as you said before it's only going to get better i mean you know this this feels a little bit awkward kind of initially. But, you know, I love doing it. I could sit here and talk about, you know, what we do in airplanes and aviation. I mean, literally all day. Music and I go on and on.

1:29:42Bob Allen:Yeah. Bob, this was fun. Listen, send your questions. Don't delay. Pod at nomadic.aero. Send it via video or audio. Tune in next week. I'd love to tease who the next episode is going to be about, but I haven't gotten that far yet. So wait and see. It'll be a good one.

1:30:02Steve Giordano:Yep. Look forward to seeing y 'all next week. All right. Bye-bye.