EP 11 - Inside the Massive Spirit Airlines Repo Operation

29:33Meanwhile, with handlers who have not been paid by Spirit and want to have nothing to do with those airplanes. Yet another challenge that repeatedly reared its head throughout the last week. Oh, yeah, well, we'd love to help you, but Spirit owes us$850 ,000, so we're not going to be doing it. 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.

30:09Luckily, 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 we were able to get some things done, you know, just kind of 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. And I'm like, I feel bad because Bob and Emily and every.

30:51We were up all night. I mean, I was. All night. You guys were up all night. I literally did not sleep, you know, one minute Friday night, Saturday morning. And I did.

31:07But when I woke up in the morning, I had like serious guilt and FOMO. And a bazillion messages to go through. Yeah. Yeah. So I just kind of jumped in. I started catching up on what I called Bob. He gave me a half awake debrief. I think I had to call you like three times because you were asleep sitting in that chair. Yeah. I kept like slumping over and then my phone would ring and I would go, yeah, yeah. What's going on? Yes, yes, yes. Everything's ready to go. Oh, shit. Who are you? Yeah. What is this about? Exactly. So I jumped in. I had a couple hours. I started making phone calls, started tackling logistics at some airports and started opening lines of communication with the pilots that we had and putting out fires two to three at a time, call to call.

32:00Every call I was on, I would get the call waiting and another call. Maybe it was a number that I didn't recognize. At one point, I had to memorize what area codes all these airplanes were in so that I knew whether I could answer or ignore a call, how important it was going to be. So let's back up into Saturday morning. That was Friday night. That was one lessor with 10 aircraft that wanted crews ready to go. Well, Saturday morning, one of our other good clients who had 10 airplanes called and said, hey, Bob, what's going on? I'm going to need you to move some airplanes. And I'm like, oh, are they spirit?

32:45How 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 at. and I'm going to add you to the list. I'm going to add flight crews to it. And so it doubled what we already had on the plate Saturday morning. And by the way, let me reiterate, we were on about page six of a hundred page playbook at this point. It wasn't completely written, but. I mean, we had already actually like the major, the Lauderdale, you know, Houston, places where Dallas, places where there were a lot of Spirit airplanes, they all also happen to be the most challenging logistically.

33:31And so we had ice things at those places already. And we had the pilot part figured out. Yes. 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 got 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, I mean, we've got all those logistics going on. Plus, we have the lessors. The aircraft owners are calling us there. I mean, I was getting a call every 30 minutes wanting an update and wanting to know why airplanes weren't already in the air.

34:17So, I mean, they, you know, the people that we deal with on the technical side are under tremendous amounts of pressure from, from the financial side of these companies. And, and they're, they're counting on us to, to make things happen, to, to, 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, it's tremendous amount of pressure just just from that side of it on top of everything else going on logistics wise. Yeah. And so right around noon, um, the first airplane in Houston was pushed out, crew on board, flight plan filed, fuel being loaded.

35:10And one of the pilots gets a call from, um, 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 FISDO and long story short this you know bob ended up on multiple conference calls with the faa the spirit 119 team um the lessor the lessor's legal team everyone saying this is how it's done i i used chat gpt plus my knowledge to compose compose on my phone like a three-page document that almost like a white regulation.

36:09It was like a white paper on it, wasn't it? Yeah. I mean, it was very thorough, explained it to a T about how this is done. We've done it before. We've done it last week. It cited every reference, every FAR, every variable. And without a doubt, it was 100 % legal. It was a great plan. 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.

36:53And, which was shocking. Yeah. We're not saying it's legal or illegal. That's not, you know. It's not our place to say, I think they said. Yeah, it's not our place to say you're the 119 team. You guys are the ones who have to make that decision. So anyway, at the end of it all, the Spirit 119 team said that they won't accept that risk. They won't allow us to operate. Not only us with third-party pilots, but not even their own. Pilots. 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 12 hours ago. Let's do that.

37:30and they wouldn't go for it. There was liabilities for, you know, not insurance-wise, but certificate-wise, liabilities to the RAC. I'm not sure if they're 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 themselves out. Yeah. Like, why would they? Right. Honestly, I mean, you know, from their point of view, From the FAA or the 119 point of view, I mean, what was the benefit to them to go, yeah, we'll go along with this? Right. I mean, it really wasn't. It was literally to help the lessor out.

38:17So we pivoted. Yeah. So we pivoted. Quickly. This was on 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 the standard C of A. And that we would now completely remove all responsibility and every element of control away from Spirit and their 119 team. A 119 team is like four pilots, by the way. It's the key people to have a 121 certificate. Right. Director of operations, chief pilot, assistant chief pilot, director of safety officer.

39:03Yeah, stuff like that. 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, an SFP is a special airworthiness certificate that allows essentially the one-time repositioning use of that aircraft under 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 maintenance program required because the SFP is the maintenance program and it's valid for 10 days and we don't need anybody else.

39:43SFP, nomadic, airplane, it moves. Period. Period. It's just a matter of getting the DAR on site. And I would say there's probably 50, 60 DARs in the United States, but there are like five or maybe eight that are very experienced with large commercial aircraft, airliners. In these situations with Ferry and 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 with this company, with this company, with this company. Clear your schedule for the next week.

40:29We got to start moving people around. Let's maintain comms. 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, onsite 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 then 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 it to Monday and we're going to move airplanes Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

41:07The 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. Yeah. 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'd been up Friday. They stayed up all night Friday, caught some caught flights to different airports at six 30, seven o 'clock in the morning to be on site at, you know, another airport.

41:49They then were like waiting all this time when, you know, while we were, you know, doing these conference calls with the FAA and, and all these people till, till like the late afternoon, they're all standing by literally at the airport, like, 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, oh man, if, if, uh, 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 into an airport like Marana that's in the middle of the desert, dark.

42:40Everybody's going to be tired. They've never been to this place. So we start assessing all of these things internally. we start trying to determine 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, 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 operation safe. and luckily um it turned out to where we were able to tell them go to the hotel crash out for sunday be prepared to go monday and you know not 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 24 hours to process it in their heads.

43:47They're out with a suitcase and they left home maybe a day or two before on a trip expecting to have, you know, a full month slate of trips to fly. Yeah. And now all of a sudden, you know, they're working for these two guys on a WhatsApp channel that they've never heard of. Yeah, who are telling them to just like stand around the airport for just a couple more hours. We'll have news for you. And it just goes on and on. Surreal for them. It is. But they played ball with us. Not one person complained that entire day. They just said, you know, just keep us advised of what we got to do. And, you know, we're going to make it.

44:32We'll make it work. We are tired. we'd like to go to a hotel but we understand what you're dealing with so just just let us know what to do i mean i've never seen a pilot group uh you know so ready ready to 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 slacks. 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.

45:17I would say one out of every five calls we made got returned. Yeah. And we had 20 airplanes at that point. 20. By Sunday. No, we had 23, I think. Maybe 22. 22 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 it was going to go. 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. Because we knew they were going to be on site and maybe something would change.

45:55But, you know, there was no there 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 some of these lesser legal teams in Ireland? Like all of them. So there's this this time zone gap. But they were working at 2 a.m. Like the lawyers were working through the night. This is the thing. Everybody was working 24 hours a day on this. Yeah. From the lessors 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 Pittsburgh.

46:38Actually, my wife drove four out of five hours while I could be on my phone, which, you know, 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 Wi-Fi hotspot in the car, all that stuff, arranging, arranging, arranging. And I think we got the first airplane out by about 1 p.m. on Monday. Yeah. Yeah. And and just, yeah, it was it was constant putting out fires and pivoting to to different scenarios. And just to say one thing about our team, I mean, our team was working 24 hours, and it wasn't just Steve and I that were making all these crew decisions and dealing with airplanes.

47:29We have project managers that we assigned to different tail numbers who were also involved in this. Pat. Yeah. Your daughter Emily is like our admin. I mean, and she was doing stuff that normally we would do. 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? Collecting their documents? Yeah. Booking their travel. Like, oh my God. Yeah. You know, and then our dispatchers dealing with all the fuel, all the flight plans. Yeah. You know, dealing with airports and the legal logistics. And setting up processes for expenses as they came in because on a project like this, I mean, I want to say in the last 10 days, we've had 90 vendors, 100 vendors.

48:28Yeah, easily. So invoices coming in from everything from like travel to handling to fueling to - Technical services. Third parties, technical services to escorting people across ramps. Sometimes we had to have like 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 side of access. So we were having to mix match. So then over the course of the week, we started developing a rhythm. Yeah. Is the best way that I could say it. Well, the playbook started to develop of what we needed to do when and what specific things that were common amongst airports that started developing a pattern.

49:21Yeah. Yeah. And Spirit's 119 team moved a couple airplanes out from under our nose as well. Like they, they moved some of the airplanes themselves without an SFP, not many. I think they moved two, maybe three. Um, 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 on. 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 call this crew.

49:58Let me call you in five minutes. I ended up flying one trip. I flew 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. We're way better doing that than flying. Yeah. Oh, yeah. For sure. Got to have us having that high level view of the entire playing field. You know. So it. But you were also an Uber driver. So. Yeah. We had two airports. All but one aircraft went to either Goodyear or Morana. Yeah. I mean, so as soon as these things started stacking up, I saw the logistics problem of getting crews from these airports to Phoenix or Tucson or wherever.

50:43How do we how do we get them to a hotel? How do we get them to an airport to fly home? so there's car services available um but there's a lot of coordination that comes with that we have uh the 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 up Because every single trip, you know, was potentially going to delay an hour, 15 minutes, two hours, six hours. Yeah. Yeah. Which is common for us.

51:26We're, you know, we're used to that, you know, that kind of stuff. 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 uh initially like the first day i think monday it was there i was going to be like i was going to end up with four people at a time so um had my son run out to enterprise and i just said just 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 ready just i was just like get the biggest thing that they you know rent so had a big SUV.

52:11And 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.

52:51So, you know, I've been through, I think, five airline failures where I've been on the property like 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.

53:08Seriously. I am the death of airlines. I've probably had the 11 or 12 under my belt that have gone under at some point or another. Good thing you don't need a job. God. So I said, you know, 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, and, you know, and see who, who they are as a person. I mean, you know, get to know them, maybe they can do work for us in the future. Um, and so that, that was part of it. That's part of why I wanted to drive. And then I was, uh, we got busier and I rented another vehicle, which is like a passenger van.

53:55And 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 there trying to get a car service into Marana and dealing with all that. So, so again, I just, I just kept driving. I think I drove back and forth to Marana at least once a day for the last, I mean, I did it today. I think I've done it. I think I've done it every day since, you know, since last Monday.

54:36There'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, and got to know them a little bit. And it was, uh, um, man, that, that, that was, you know, if there's any good out of this and it's, you know, it's a tragic story. It is tragic what they're all going through, but, uh, you know, meeting, meeting some of them and, you know, I, 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.

55:23We'll make introductions to, you know, the network that we have. And we have a deep network with many management pilots through a lot of different airlines, 135s, corporate operations. And, you know, I mean, we've got a lot of pull with those places. And, you know, I want to really help these guys. Yeah. I mean, of course, all of them were like, I love this. I want to just do this. Yeah. After they had that experience of being in the circus or the carnival one time, it's addicting, man. You just want to keep doing this. There's a lot of airplanes still scattered around the country. That's for sure.

56:07And yeah, you know, there's been some other companies that have been moving, moving a few of these. It, uh, it, it does, it has, you know, made me wonder why these companies don't talk to each other or, 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, uh, you know, you, 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, you know, some companies just want to do things on their own and rewrite the playbook.

56:51If 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. Yeah. 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 example. Yeah. We had two clients, each with an airplane in Atlantic City, that were 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.

57:28Do both at the same time. We'll get both airplanes moved at the same time. That is the only way that efficiencies were capitalized 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. Yeah. 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. I mean, it's just insane what we've had to do logistically that could have easily been done if everybody was kind of connected in some way. What day did I fly? Was that Thursday?

58:08Thursday. Yeah. We had one airplane in Philly, and I had been saying, you know, I knew there were two in AC and one in Philly in our docket. And I said, I'm going to 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 still, we were done fueling and still didn't have a pushback set up. Oh, man. Yeah. And that was a problem for the previous 24 hours with that.

58:49Yeah. We thought we had one a couple of times and they all bailed. I never even heard how you did get that resolved, 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 and she had some contacts. And so she was just volunteering to help. She's just like, I want to help.

59:31You know, I'm helping you guys out of the goodness of my getting paid. Wow, no kidding. 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 us 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 11, and we had a pushback lined up for 2 p.m., 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?

1:00:08We couldn't turn out. We were up against some ground equipment. I mean, we had to be pushed out. 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 at American Airlines comes over to the tow bar and pushes us back. I love it. That's how he got out. Awesome. Yeah. 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, you know, to companies and all that stuff, man.

1:00:43You can always get stuff done. So you know. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes you just got to have boots on the ground, man, making stuff happen. Yeah. So we got that out. I landed. I got some video footage of a couple 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. Because of me? No, because they were moving the airplanes. Yeah, but they need to be reminded they weren't on strike, right?

1:01:18I mean, what? Some of these guys. That makes absolutely no sense. Some pilots are such fucking assholes. Pardon my French. I think they were just jealous that those guys were able to go out there and fly some last flights and make some money. Just such a great group of people, man. Great group. And just along those lines, Steve, I'm always reiterating to pilots. Develop a network. 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.

1:01:59And, 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 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 or even just look for a job in general is is go to my kitty hawk kittyhawk dot global and you know build a profile there and there's there's a spirit community there that you know you can go on there and invent tell stories or 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, and hopefully find some jobs there.

1:02:45Um, I do have to say there was one guy that there was a 305 area code sometime, I don't know, last week. And I, I thought it was like one of our other pilots and it was a guy that said, Oh, Hey, um, I heard you're hiring spirit pilots. And, and I, man, And I didn't want to like blow him off. I mean, I answered the phone. I was like, yeah, you know, we're looking at it. I think everything's filled. And, you know, he started kind of just like telling me, you know, about, you know, spirit and, you know, how much he loved it there. And he was just kind of just, it was an emotional conversation. And I really felt for him.

1:03:29And I said, listen, man, I'm going to give you an email address. Send me your stuff and I'm going to, I'm going to put you on the list and I'll try to get you something. And, and so I did. And within probably 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, just keep me on the road. I just, just keep me going? I love doing this. Yeah. He, he, 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, just use and abuse me.

1:04:10I love doing this. And he was a real go-getter or just a really super nice guy. And so I, I, I do want to say sometimes cold calling actually does work, but, but please, please, I can't handle anymore. Like, we don't have any more airplanes at this point to move. I don't even get in our numbers. I don't even know how that, I need to like go on and delete my phone number from the internet. Really, go to Kitty Hawk, put your stuff there. You can contact me on Kitty Hawk. I mean, I will answer the texts 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 yeah and a lot of them are going to end up on their feet I mean you know anybody who has a good head on their shoulder is 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 in all of these years because they worked for shitty airline Bob yeah That's why we're good.

1:05:17We work for shitty airlines. I mean, it's so true. I mean, when you're kicked around and stuff, I mean, you just you'd end up just kind of scrappy and, you know, able to learn to hustle, man, and make things happen. And they, you know, 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 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.

1:06:02I got I took to Twitter and I started I started posting a little bit. And I posted like a five, 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 was, it 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, 50 years old, you know, 15 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's my age, it was on the same trajectory as me.

1:06:39They worked for the same crappy regionals or flew the same crappy old biz jets 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, 10, 15 plus years in, it gets hard to say, I want to start over. Well, how do you do that if you're 40 years old? I mean, even if you're 35 to 40, especially after you're over 45, I mean, are you really going to go to try to get a job at United to start over again? I mean, it's just not realistic. And it's, you know, I saw that post that you had. Did you see me get flamed?

1:07:26Yeah, 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, do you do you fly at an airline? You know, or what? Would you just get hired at Delta, you know, 23 years old and you've 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.

1:08:05You know, I mean, insult me and 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, you know, I got one kid left in high school. I don't want to start over. Like, it sucks.

1:08:37And 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 that I was like, oh, you know, start over 50 year old, start over with a 30 year old snot nose captain in the left seat. You know what? Look, nothing against a 30 year old captain. They were in the right place at the right time. Listen, I was I was a 25 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.

1:09:12I was one of you. So, you know, I might dog on you a little bit. But, yeah, just it's coming from a place that I was in the same. Nobody's getting out of this unscathed. Yeah. It could get very, very ugly. And, hey, look, whether you like it or not, there's going to be single pilot ops coming up, you know, for all you 20-year-olds. You know, there's going to be some major changes in your career coming. So, you know, have some sympathy, at least, for what's going on, you know, with Spirit and those pilots, you know. Because 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 sympathy or, you know, some empathy.

1:10:00If you can't have some empathy, at least have some sympathy towards the situation. And, you know, 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 the equivalent of having a death in your family of what they're going through. You know, there's a mourning period for when something like this happens. So let them mourn and you don't have to kick them while they're down. And man, it just really pisses me off to see that, you know.

1:10:37Yeah, same. But most people have been awesome. Yeah, I agree. There's been some really super people that are trying to be helpful that I'm sure are going to try to help these people move on and 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, 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 in a lot of tough times. But man, when it gets good again, it just gets better.

1:11:25you 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, uh, you know, I've said it, look, you know, if you get, if you get down, I'm, I'm, I'm available, you know, I've been through all this stuff. I am truly available to listen to anybody that, that is going through some tough times. No doubt. I'm not. So call Bob. I just won't answer my phone, but... All right, look, we ranted for an hour and 22 minutes. We really? Oh my God. I was like, are we really going to have enough to talk about for a whole podcast?

1:12:07We had enough and I'm sure it'll come up again. In the meantime, keep your eyes out on the YouTube channel. There's going to 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.