EP8 - Farewell to Nomadic One, Merger-talk, and Bob and Steve's Humble Beginnings in Aviation

29:11But you're talking about culture within management and within like maintenance and in operations. And you're mixing two very different cultures. The end result is not going to instantaneously be better. Maybe over time it will smooth out to something better. But generally speaking, like I said before, it's the hairy, stinky one that ends up pulling the rest of it down. And I just – I haven't really seen a great result with regard to merger. I don't know. Well, it's – look, you sign up to be a pilot for the airlines. You sign up for the roller coaster. There's just no other way around it. It's going to be a ride.

29:56And the wheel will just keep turning and turning. And there's never going to be a time where you're like, all right, that's behind us. It's smooth sailing from here because it's never smooth sailing from here. It's a cyclical industry. I mean, it always has been. It always will be. I mean, as long as the price of oil fluctuates, there's always going to be these huge fluctuations in airlines and what happens with them. You know, and same thing with, you know, other economic conditions that affect people flying or not. We were talking earlier and you mentioned that you got some emails from guys that were complaining about us.

30:40Yeah. So, OK, I wouldn't call it complaining. I would say maybe venting or maybe looking for some direction. So this all came about from our last podcast, which was we were talking about mental health. And I did get a lot of good feedback from that podcast. People saying, thank you for talking about this. People kind of telling me their story and how they overcame this or that. And I appreciate people sharing those things with me. And I'm glad that podcast helped you if it did. We're definitely going to have Dr. Powell back again to continue the conversation. But is what kind of came out of left field were some direct messages and things to me talking about the podcast, but talking about it in a way that, like, you don't understand.

31:44You don't understand how I feel. And it was in terms of career progression. And these were mostly younger people, people that, you know, have recently got their CFI or have been out there instructing for the last couple of years saying, you know, you and Steve don't understand how it is out there. You guys have this great career and, you know, everything goes great for you. And I'm like, what are we portraying here? I mean, look, I'm almost 60 years old. I've been doing this for 44 years. I mean, the first 20 were a disaster. You know, it wasn't until I was 35, you know, plus that what was avia crew leasing that turned into nomadic actually became something and became successful and kind of, I don't know, stabilized my life is the right word.

32:48You certainly changed it in one way or another. Yeah. But, but I wasn't on that, you know, career roller coaster, you know, but I mean, look, when I was young, when I was in my twenties, I was, I was fighting for everything that I could get. I mean, I had, I had 10 different jobs. I worked for 10 different airlines, you know, by the time I was 35 years old. I mean, that was, you know, started into the airline business when I was 21. And I mean, that's a lot of jobs. You were flying the right flyer, I believe. Yes. Me and Orville. Okay, I don't go that far back. No, look, you've seen a lot more than me.

33:39I mean, you know, you started flying in the 80s. Yeah, early 80s. There were no jobs back then. Like an airline career was out of the question. It was all military, right? You couldn't even consider it. I mean, it was just like, you know, become a pilot and go find something to fly, maybe a corporate job or I don't know. I mean, it was really a career that was kind of had no real future, no stable future if you were going to get into aviation. Interestingly, let me prompt you a little bit here because you have an interesting story. Talk about hardship. Why don't you talk about your first class at your first airline?

34:28Gosh, that would have been Jetstream International. Yeah. You know where I'm going with this. Yeah. So we started class and this is my first airline. Yeah, Jetstream and the airplanes that we were getting trained on were Jetstream 3100s, the 19-seat turboprops. We start class. The class prior to us is finishing their check rides. Well, they were doing check rides at night doing it in the actual airplane. There were no Jetstream simulators back then. You're in Indoc at this point. Yeah. That airplane ends up doing a single-engine go-around, and they got too slow. Airplane rolls upside down. They crash.

35:25Kills the class. The entire new hire class of pilots, all sitting on the airplane in the back, taking their turn, going up front for their checkride. and uh it was a very uh somber time of course yeah and then we were we were next and you know obviously the the training got very very serious at that point in in all respects and it was uh yeah it was it was a hard hard time you know being there for all of that and uh you know we We still went out there and did the same thing, did single engine go-arounds and V1 cuts in the real airplane. I mean, there was no choice. That's what you had to do. You had to do it.

36:14I mean, people are already, I'm sure, in the comments saying, you guys are unsafe because you did V1 cuts in the West Wind, which on that video I just made. I get that all the time. I see those in the comments constantly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My comments always back are, what do you suggest we do? Like, if there's no simulator, what do you do to train? I mean, this is how it used to happen in the old days. I mean, when I got type rated on the 737 and the DC-9, I did it in a real airplane. We did V1 cuts in DC-9s and 737s. Just the way it was. There was not simulators that were certified for it. Yeah.

37:02Yeah. And the simulators, I don't know when this – and the simulators, I don't know the history of them. I know that when they first started, the visuals were an actual camera that moved along. They have that at the American Airlines Training Center down there in Dallas. They have the old – like a big board of like farmland and like houses and streets. Fake buildings and stuff. Yeah. And like that was your visuals. Yeah. So I wasn't flying that far back. I did not. But you weren't flying for an airline that had that kind of technology either. No, definitely not. Yeah, that was high tech. So your first gig was like, holy moly, like, you know, imagine being in ground school in the class before you perishes in a crash.

37:49That's just the beginning. And you've had many, many, I mean. Yeah, and that was, you know, gosh. there, you know, there was a, there was a whole time of, you know, flying single engine airplanes. I mean, I started when I was 16 years old. So, you know, 17, get your private 18. I had a commercial license and at 18, I was out hustling every day. I literally lived at the airport. And, uh, I mean, I was, I was flying every day, flying something and somebody to fly somewhere in a single or a twin. And I just hustled, hustled, hustled. And I was willing to go anywhere. I mean, I used to send out resumes.

38:31This is when you actually had to type them. No, there was not even faxes. You would send them. So I was in the fax resume generator. I would like blast fax my resumes out. Yeah. You had to put a stamp on them. Yeah, you had to go buy a list of, you know, addresses or find them. So, you know, I mean, you couldn't get on the Internet and find an address for an airline. So there was these guys that would make lists and sell them. And and I think it was like in the back of Flying Magazine or something. They would always be able to trade a plane. Trade a plane was always a place, man. You could find anything on trade a plane.

39:07So there were job newsletters and there were address newsletters with the chief pilot's name. So, you know, you knew who to put attention to on the envelope. And then you would mail it and I would mail out hundreds of these things. I mean, I would send them to airlines, charter. I mean, you name it. Every address I could find, I would send a resume to in this cheesy cover letter. And of course, I mean, I never heard from any of them. And, you know, but what that did force me to do was network, man. I mean, I used to literally drive around to airports and just go knock on doors. I would go to hangars.

39:52I would find anybody with an open hanger. I would knock on doors and just introduce myself and say, you know, I want to go flying. I mean, it wasn't even about money. I didn't care about the money part of it. And, you know, I mean, that's what with all these all these younger people that are complaining about, you know, their their airline dreams at, you know, twelve hundred hours or fifteen hundred hours or whatever not happening. It's like it's a blessing in disguise. Honestly, it's like go out there and have fun. Go get some fun aviation jobs. It's an adventure. That's what you should be in this for.

40:31Start writing your story. You know, it's funny. You say it's a blessing in disguise. I had a blessing in disguise at 1 ,200 hours. So same – I was a flight instructor. You didn't flight instruct, right? No. So I – that's how I built all my time early on was flight instructing. I flight instructed in Arizona and I also flight instructed back east. I was a flight instructor for years. I have over 20 – I think like 2 ,300 hours of dual given. I was a CFII, MEI. I worked at 141 schools. I worked at 61 schools. I taught I mean, I at one point I thought I was going to be a professional flight instructor for the rest of my life because of how horrendous the job market was.

41:15And then, well, then 9-11 and it got even worse. But when I had twelve hundred hours, I was doing the same thing. First of all, back then there was no ATP requirement for part 121 airlines, but there were no nobody getting jobs there either at the regionals. Like they started getting competitive for the regionals around 1 ,500 to 2 ,000 hours. We're talking like late 90s. And – because 97 is when I started flying. And so 500 hours was part 135 minimums and for right seat or for single pilot in like a Piper Lance. So I wanted to go fly for like a Mariflight or one of these check – one of the check hauling.

42:03Yeah, they used to have check hauling companies. Check hauling, right? Like the younger people aren't even going to know what that means. Right. When you write a check, like when you write a personal check, I do have them. I don't know if people know what those are. They don't. I still write checks. Look, I got checks. I got a checkbook in my desk. I do occasionally. When you write a check at a store, they stick it – they would stick it under the register and there was no electronic anything. And they would – every night they would send it – bring it to the bank and then the banks would like pass it to these check clearinghouses that would – literally their job was they would take all the checks and they would – I don't know.

42:44Somebody calls the bank and verifies the funds and then they deduct the funds and then they send it to the check clearinghouse. But the physical paper checks had to be flown like a couple hundred miles. To wherever the clearinghouse was. Wherever the clearinghouse was. Say maybe it's an Altoona, PA. And like you have Piper Lances and Navajos and Cherokees. I mean any and every type of – in fact, the Aerostar was like the – Was the big one. It was the check hauler of choice, the 600, because it was fast. You take out the seats in the back and they don't weigh a ton. I mean they're not that heavy.

43:22So you just put in these giant plastic cases or boxes of checks and you fly them to the clearinghouse. Somebody picks it up. So anyway. It was a whole industry. It was a massive industry. Massive. Massive. It just went away overnight. Literally. Like the internet came along and poof, it was gone. Who was the company that – was it Ameriflight that was StarCheck? I think it is, right? I think so. I think it's still their call sign. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. That's what they started doing. And that's why they were flying checks. And I remember, man, I was like, oh, dude, as soon as I get 500 hours, I'm going to go get a job flying a Lance, flying checks.

44:03Fly the checks. And this was like in like the end days of check flying. That must have stopped like in the late 90s. There was still a little bit of it happening. Probably early 2000s. It just completely went away. Yeah. But anyway, so I'm blast mailing my resume. I can't even get a call to haul checks in a piston at single, right? There was nothing. There was nothing. Well, out of the blue one day, I get this call from a company up in Bennington, Vermont called AirNow. I don't know if they're still around or not. They were starting to get caravans, but they were running Embraer 110 Bondurantes, single pilot in Vermont, in the mountains, in the snow.

44:45The worst possible weather. And they called me up for an interview. So I'm like, wow, like this is a turban job. And I'm like, OK, maybe I'll be a copilot or something like that up there. So I bought a cheap suit, got in my car and I drove to Bennington, Vermont from the Philadelphia area. It took a very long time. and I go up there and I stay at this hotel and I'm like nervous and I show up the next day and I go for my interview and they do a semi-val uh it was on like a frasca like 810 or something you know it's like one of those old-fashioned no visuals just like a remember those simulators like they sit on like a desk yeah they're like they have like a six pack of instruments and then there was like it looked like a polygraph in the back like you know you could see it would like Like draw – like the real sophisticated ones would like draw your flight path on paper.

45:44So it was one of those things. And like we go up and I'm like I enter a hold and then I shoot an ILS and then I do a go-around. Then I shoot a VOR approach and an NDB approach and it went really well. And then – I mean I had been teaching. I was a double I at the time. I had a lot of instrument – very recent like six-pack instrument experience. and I get finished with the semi-vowel and I go down and sit with the chief pilot. And he says, before I even – before he even says a word, he looks at my resume and he looks at me. He goes, your sim looked great, honestly. He goes, I'm really impressed for a guy with 1 ,200 hours.

46:24You have really good instrument skills. He goes, but I'm going to stop you right there. He goes, we're hiring for single pilot in the Embraer Bonderante, in the Embraer 110. He goes, let's go out into the hangar and take a look at it. I'm like, all right. I'm like all excited and everything. So we go out in the hangar. We walk into the airplane and it's like – I mean it's big to me. I've been flying Grumman AA-1Cs. And it's round dials and old and everything. And I'm like, oh, this is going to be a challenge. But he goes, look, does this scare you? I'm like, no, I'll be all right. He goes, son, you're going to kill yourself in the first week.

47:06listen, he goes, I appreciate your ambition, but come back when you have 2 ,500 hours. I said, all right. Drove all the way back to South Jersey and started flight instructing again. So anyway, the guy probably saved my life because I would have accepted the job. Yeah. You would have died in a bandit. Right into the side of a mountain, most likely. God, man. I didn't even know those things were single pilot. Well, I mean, they must have made them single pilot for the purposes of flying checks or whatever they were flying up there, right? Yeah, exactly. So I didn't get that job. And then it was a while, I ended up getting a caravan job, um, like a two, maybe two years later, a year or two later.

47:47Um, and then nine 11 happened and I was at Cape air and I was at shuttle America on the sob three 40. And then I quit that. And then I went to Mesa and flew the dash and then Allegiant. Look, I have not had a storied career. You take like the crappiest airlines that have ever existed and odds are like I've flown for them. Yeah, exactly. Well, you know, that's what everybody's asking me. Well, you know, what are low time jobs and all of that? And I go back to my first job was flying skydivers. And which was a story in itself. So there used to be this guy out at Lexington Bluegrass that I met. But I was working line out there, and I was just an airport bum kid that was out there all the time.

48:33I mean, 24-7, I was out there talking to people. And there was a guy that would come and go, and he's like, hey, you got your private pilot's license yet? Yeah, well, I said, I'm getting it in a few weeks. Or let me know when you get it. I said, hey. Saw him out there. He drove a white Jaguar XJS. see him hey got my got my license he goes okay i want to introduce you to somebody so takes me down to this grass field south of lexington and it's skydiving club um kind of trying to think what it was a thunderbird sport parachute club and they had these old like 1950 something 182s. The ones that used to have those straight tails and these things, I'm not sure.

49:27You know, I think they had an annual maybe 30 years ago or something. They were skydiving out of 152s? No, 182s. Oh, 182s. Yeah. 1950. it's late. Yeah. 1950s era. Okay. 182s. All right. Which were great airplanes, honestly. With the door removed? Yeah. Well, it had a door modified to where the door would come out and kind of attach to the wing. And it had a little latch on the bottom. You'd slip the airplane. It would slam the door shut after the jumpers jumped out. But anyway, this guy introduces me to the owner of the Jump Club. And he's a regular down there. And he's like, come down here and I'll teach you some real flying.

50:15And... So I did. So the first thing they did was say, hey, have you ever flown in and out of a grass strip before? Nope, never have. All right, we'll jump in. We're going to go for a ride. Now, there's only one pilot seat in these airplanes. And I'm in it. And I'm thinking, what happens if I do this wrong? And I didn't say that. jump in it, go trucking down this grass strip, rotate, take off, come back. And they're like, all right, come in, you know, hold 70 knots. There's some power lines here, you know, you know, watch out for those trees, blah, blah, blah. Are these guys sitting on the floor?

50:58Yeah. On the floor. They're on the floor. Talking me through this stuff. Come down, I land. And well, not not too long after that, I'm down there every weekend flying these jumpers. And then through the week, they're like, hey, can you come down? We're going to do this. We're going to do that. So they started having me fly at night. And so I'm going in and out of this grass strip at night. And and this guy is teaching me how to land with no life. Jesus. Yeah. And I'm like, how did you do it? This is. Well, initially, you put a car at the end of each end of the grass strip. No. Yeah. A car? Cars with the lights on so it lights up the runway.

51:47Then you take away one of the cars and you only light up one end. And then you do it with the airplane lights off. No landing light, no nothing. Come in, land. and try to land on top of the car that's at the end of the runway. Try to just land right on top of it, and you're not going to land on it. You land right past it. Just set up a rated descent until you touch down. So you're going to touch down in the light print. Yeah. The extent that the headlights extend onto the grass is all you could actually see. That's it. Damn. So we do this for a while. Until you have, you know, kind of a not not a completely dark night, but a night with, you know, a moon and, you know, a little bit of light out there and then no cars.

52:43Because we knew the airfield. I knew the airfield, you know, well enough at that point where I could come down. I could I could land that thing at night. Hold on a second. Take off and land. Were they just fucking with you, Bob? Because who skydives at night? Well, there was some other missions that they were practicing. Oh, I see where we're going here. And, well, turns out that the guy I knew at the airport with that white Jaguar XJS was the guy that you saw at the beginning of the cocaine bear. No way. The guy that jumped out with all that cocaine strapped to him. That was the guy that got me my first job.

53:25Wow. And taught me how to fly those old 182s at night with no lights. That explains some things, Bob. So my career started out very exciting. And from there, I decided I was going to live a very exciting life. um it's it's honestly you know looking back um I was probably being groomed for that you know some shady business until they died and then like literally like when I was I guess I was like 18 um 18 or 19 he ends up getting killed just like you saw in cocaine bear jumped out of an airplane cocaine strapped and ends up dying in a, you know, in Knoxville, Tennessee, in a driveway in Knoxville, Tennessee.

54:22A partner of his ends up dying a week later in a parachuting crash, a caravan parachuting crash in a caravan that I was supposed to get checked out in. And they were going to start like a 135 cargo company and all kinds of stuff that I was, You know, that's what I was going to go do. And literally all of these people like got killed or disappeared in that whole in that whole scenario. And and I went on to, you know, doing doing some corporate flying and charter and into the airlines eventually. Yeah. And then out and then out and then back to the wildlife of of a ferry flying. You know, 9-11 was the big obstacle for me.

55:13I did the single pilot freight thing in the caravan. Cape Air was like – that's one of those experiences that I would never trade. I made some great friends, guys that I'm still in touch with now that are all flying for different airlines. Some of them are retiring. I mean this was a long time ago. But, you know, that was like the – it was single pilot, Cessna 402s, passengers. It was a safety conscious operation but operating in a dangerous environment. I mean operating complicated piston twin aircraft loaded to the gills in terrible weather in the northeast in ice and snow and all that stuff.

55:54And again, it's the same thing that I tell anybody who's looking for advice in this industry. I sound like a broken record and I'm sure people that have listened to me speak on podcasts and different things in the past. They all hear me say the same thing and that is don't map out your career and expect to follow that trajectory because it's not going to happen. And quite frankly, you'll be lucky if it doesn't happen because the things that you do along the way are going to be the things that kind of define you not just as a pilot but as a person. And it's, you know, get kicked in the nuts early and often.

56:34And you won't feel it by the time you get kicked in the nuts for like the 15th time. I mean, that's just the nature of this. Sadly, and look, my boys are going into this field. Two of my youngest two boys. Exactly. My son's in it. I mean, my son's, what is he, 30 years old now. He's been doing it for 10, you know, 10 plus years. I mean he's been in and out of the jobs and kind of climbing the ladder as well. Yeah, your boys are going to be well into it soon. Yeah, Ryan is going to do his – well, he was supposed to do his first solo cross country on Saturday. But the weather is going to be bad, so it's going to end up happening probably early next week.

57:16But he just got signed off for it today. He just did a dual cross country. It's his second dual cross country. So he's going to turn 17 in June and then get his private within the first couple weeks after he turned 17. So he's kind of on the Bob Allen plan. Yeah, don't let him go fly skydivers. No. Well, we know better, man. My parents didn't know anything. I didn't tell them anything. I mean I was just trying to figure it out on my own and without the internet. Exactly. I didn't have anybody in my family that was in aviation. I mean, the farthest thing from aviation, they were in agriculture.

57:55They were in the cattle business. I don't know. Mine were psychologists and musicians. Yeah, exactly. I mean, we both had like polar opposite, you know, situations of aviation. And, you know, the only mentors I had were, you know, people at the airport that I hung out with that were drug smugglers. Yeah. Yeah. This whole – the last few years of like the gangbusters, anybody who can fog a mirror gets hired at a major upgrades real quick. I mean I've never seen anything like it and obviously it's not going to last and a lot of the younger pilots that are kind of – that kind of just barely missed that window.

58:39I understand the frustration because a couple of years ago, you could go to fly an RJ for a year and then within a year be in the right seat of a 777 at United or something. And then a year after that in the left seat of a 7-3 at United. And look, when I was at Allegiant for 10 years, towards the end of that, I was jump seating on American, I guess, US Airways where there were FOs that were getting ready to retire and they just never upgraded because their number never came up. You know, so there's always someone that's had it worse in this business. And just stick around in it and you'll get to do all the things, all the things.

59:30And you want to do all the things. Exactly. You should want to go do all the things. I mean, look, if you got into this whole industry, if you became a pilot because you saw the airline salaries and you thought that, you know, The only reason that you got into aviation was to get your pilot's license and then three in three years. Get all the girls. Yeah. Well, that's why you should get into it. What aviation business are you in? Yeah. Never mind. Are you recruiting right now, Bob? Right. Oh, man. Now you made me lose my train of thought. The girls, girls, girls. That's the way this goes. We're just rambling.

1:00:14I mean, this is the rambling episode. Maybe it's what the episode's title will be. Just rambling. Yeah, exactly. It's good, though, because I like talking about the career thing. I get questions about it constantly from younger pilots that are either frustrated or looking for advice. And, you know, that's what I always say. Hey, enjoy the ride. I mean, you'll get to where you want to be eventually. I promise. If you stick with it long enough, you're going to go be the airline pilot or the goal stream pilot, whatever you want. I mean it's just like set your goals. Yeah, you will. That may be what you think you want to be.

1:00:50Exactly. I mean my whole life I wanted to be an airline pilot until I was one for a while and then I didn't know there was anything else. And then I found something else and I liked it better. Yeah. I got to the airlines and honestly I hated it. I was bored out of my mind. I got into this for the adventures. I wanted to go on adventures and have fun. And the best thing that ever happened to me was like having a terrible airline career and getting it, not pursuing it long term. Look, you know, I was the guy that, you know, would interview at major airlines, get turned down. And, you know, I just kept plugging along.

1:01:39I just kept getting the jobs that I could get and enjoying what I was doing. And, you know, if I made it into, you know, one of those major airlines, so be it. You know, I'm honestly looking back now, I'm glad that I was never hired because I would be completely miserable at 60 years old and being with the same airline doing the same kind of flying for 30 years. Yeah. I mean, some people, some people look, it suits some people and there's different strokes for different folks. I mean like if you have a robust family life and social life and like it's a job and you can just kind of go do the job and realize there's going to be ups and downs and you collect a nice salary and your marriage is strong enough to deal with the not being there and missing important things like we talked about last week.

1:02:37Like maybe you're cut out for it and maybe you'll get there and you'll decide you want to get into management or you want to get into training or you want to shift to the corporate side or you want to go just start your own thing. I mean look, we started our own thing. What we do didn't exist and we started our own thing and we got lucky I think. For sure. No doubt. No doubt. It's all timing, luck, all kinds of variables that just happened. And we just – we got good at it and here we are. And now we're trying to be podcasters. Yeah, exactly. Life takes you to different places. Yeah. I don't know what's around the corner.

1:03:21Five years from now, who knows? Who knows what I'll be doing? I don't know. I'm excited about some of the stuff that we're talking about doing and I can't wait to – and the thing is we're going to get to share it with everybody once it starts happening. So this is just the beginning. Guys, we – we're getting through every week here and putting stuff out, but this is just the beginning. We have much bigger plans for this whole thing, not just talking heads. We want to get out there and do so. In the real world. Out in the world with some cameras and stay tuned. Bob, we did it. We managed to BS for an hour and I think it was – I think it was OK.

1:04:09Yeah. Well, we could probably go on for another hour if – I don't know if anybody would listen to us but – Yeah. Let's get a guest next week. Let's get someone – let's get a – maybe a DAR or maybe our ops. Maybe we can get our ops on next week. Yeah. I would be cool to have some of our ops people if not all of them. Everyone wants to meet them. Everyone wants to meet like the people that really run the show. I mean we're just – And they should. They got much better personalities than us. Yeah. They're more enjoyable to listen to. We've been wanting to get Wes on. I mean Wes is supposed to be the third host.

1:04:53I mean we got to get Wes on here these days. He's got an interesting story, man. Bush pilot flew, started a Maldivian airline and, oh, man. Yeah, seaplanes. Seaplanes. I mean, yeah. Yeah, he's the perfect guy to talk to about career stuff and enjoying those cool jobs and talk about some really cool jobs. I mean, he's been a Canadian expat all over the world, man. I mean, he barely lived in Canada as an adult. Right. Right. So, all right. Well, look, let's wrap it up here and we'll have some good stuff for you next week. Hope you enjoyed the pod and fly safe out there and don't do anything that we wouldn't do.

1:05:43See y 'all.

1:05:56Thank you.