EP9 - Let Spirit Burn! & Guest Segment: the Nomadic Dispatch and Planning Team (Finally)

11:11Chris Fochuk:And to shareholders and to executive management, right? I mean, and to employee groups. I mean, labor is a big part of it. And I'm not saying pilots and flight attendants and mechanics should be paid less. I'm not going to say that. I think that there are some egregious contracts out there, but good for them. You know what? Good for them. You look out for yourself in the working world.

11:36Mark Lawrence:But at some point, the numbers aren't sustainable and things have to change.

11:40Chris Fochuk:Especially when oil is the cost that it is. And there are harsh realities to this industry. I mean, we're not breaking any news here. The airline business is hard. And I posted this on X, Twitter, whatever, last night. I said, just about every airline that's ever existed has either failed or failed into a merger, right? I mean, there's few left. In the United States, there's a handful. Yeah, there's, okay, maybe there's 50 part 121 AOCs that are active. That includes one ship operations and like niche things and cargo operations and everything else. I mean, I don't even know if there's even 20.

12:20Chris Fochuk:No. I mean, when it comes down to actual major airlines, you have Delta United American. You have Southwest. You have Spirit. You have JetBlue. You have Allegiant. You have Avello. You have Breeze. You have all the little regional subsidiaries. That's Alaska, Hawaiian. Yeah. Yeah. Which is one operation now.

12:43Mark Lawrence:I don't even know if you have non-skeds out there anymore. Is there? It's a few. I mean, you know, you have your Colitas and Omni. Yeah. The cargo side of it. Yeah. Yeah.

12:54Chris Fochuk:I mean, there's a couple of non-skeds. But look, it's tough business. It's tough business because the costs are high and the variables that affect the health of a business, the financial variables, they're affected by, you know, world events that are always going, the wheel keeps on turning, right? Like things, bad things are going to happen, whether it's a pandemic or whether it's a conflict or whether it's just, you know, the economy. These cycles just naturally happen. And airlines are like restaurants, right? Restaurants don't last long most of the time?

13:32Mark Lawrence:Well, you know, not unless you're making enough margin to put cash back to have cash reserves. Exactly. You know, and that's where Delta and United are right now. They have significant cash reserves. Even JetBlue, for that matter, has somewhat of some cash reserves to get. They have quite a bit of debt as well, though. They do, but yeah.

13:56Chris Fochuk:So what I was saying is you either have to be huge or you have to be niche. Okay. And, and there's something to be said about being niche. Let's look at Allegiant, for example, right? An airline that I spent 10 years of my life employed by, um, by all passenger experience metrics, not winning any awards. However, however, their business model is niche. They do out and backs. They don't fly on Tuesdays. They barely fly on Saturdays. You know, it's one flight a day.

14:32Mark Lawrence:And they're not flying any of the routes that the majors are on either, right?

14:36Chris Fochuk:No, they're flying secondary and tertiary markets. They are flying Allentown to Fort Lauderdale. They are flying Bismarck, North Dakota to Las Vegas. They are flying, you know, McAllen, Texas to Las Vegas. Yeah. We're not talking about major markets. We're talking about flying mainline size aircraft in a no frills configuration from regional feeder airports and offering nonstop service to leisure destinations. Allegiant does not target nor do they get business travelers, maybe one or two going to Vegas for whatever reason. They target the leisure traveler that that wants a cheap flight to get to a leisure destination once a year, once every two years, once every three years.

15:25Chris Fochuk:I had so many first-time flyers every single time I flew when I was at Allegiant. People coming out of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

15:34Mark Lawrence:Don't they sell the whole package, like the hotel, and kind of put the whole sort of an all-inclusive type of a deal together? They certainly did.

15:44Chris Fochuk:They certainly did, and maybe they still do. I don't really keep up on the happenings over there. But the bottom line is that they're serving a niche, and they operated very cheap airplanes for a very long time. And even when they moved to Airbus, they moved to cheap old airframes.

16:00Mark Lawrence:Old ones, yeah.

16:01Chris Fochuk:Now, they have some newer airframes now. They've smartly taken advantage of market conditions when cheap aircraft were available, you know, hence the 737 MAX at Allegiant now, which is – I don't know if it's online or on its way. online, but they were all Airbus and now they're operating Max's. Why? Because Boeing was essentially giving them away and they took advantage of that. So it's a lousy passenger experience unless you live in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and you want to go to Vegas, right? Otherwise, you're stopping in Salt Lake.

16:36Mark Lawrence:Yeah, absolutely. They're big out of Lexington, Kentucky. Yeah. They've got like four or five destinations out of Lexington.

16:42Chris Fochuk:I used to fly Lexington, St. Pete, Lexington, Lauderdale, Lexington, Orlando, Lexington, Opel, not Opelago. What's that one? Punta Gorda. Punta Gorda. Punta Gorda. Yeah. So, you know, it's a regional city where you'd have to connect on anybody else, but you can buy a no-frills ticket. As long as your flight doesn't get canceled, you're not going to have any problems. If your flight gets canceled, you may not leave till the next day, you know, or six hours later. So wasn't Spirit kind of like that at one time? Spirit was kind of like that. And that's the first, in my opinion, that is the first mistake, is that Spirit went head-to-head with the largest carriers in America.

17:24Chris Fochuk:Let's talk about where the Spirit bases are, okay? Not just crew bases, but hubs. You got Lauderdale. You got Dallas-Fort Worth. You have Chicago-O 'Hare. You have Las Vegas. You have Detroit. You have Los Angeles. I mean, those are the ones I can think of. They have lots of like little mini hubs.

17:44Mark Lawrence:Yeah. But you just mentioned a whole lot of big Delta and American hubs.

17:49Chris Fochuk:And United. I mean, you got Delta in Detroit. You got JetBlue and United in Lauderdale. You got American in Dallas-Fort Worth. You got American United and Delta in L.A. You have Allegiant and American heavily out of Vegas, Phoenix. I mean, so you now have a low cost like product. You have a uncomfortable seat, poor customer service, nickel and dime me to death, you know, on a big yellow airplane that is that has no customer loyalty. There's no mileage program that makes sense to anybody that that has brand loyalty the way that we fly United. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

18:35Mark Lawrence:So you've got the people that are looking for the absolute lowest price. And so therefore, they're not the same people who are going to go buy a ticket on Delta either.

18:44Chris Fochuk:Right. Right. However, you can't make money when you're selling tickets for$29, especially when fuel is$100 a barrel. And here's the other thing. And you brought this up last week in a totally different context, how they all they all talk to each other. But the reality is the behemoths, the Americans, the Deltas, the Uniteds, even the Southwest can destroy you if you're small and it won't cost them a damn thing. So if, you know, if Spirit's trying to sell cheap tickets from Chicago to Orlando, United can say, you know what, we'll take the hit. We won't make any money on Chicago to Orlando. And it doesn't matter because they're making money in a million other places.

19:31Mark Lawrence:Yeah, especially with the premium tickets going overseas. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they can just stomp you out any time. But I don't even think it's so that's so much. I don't even think that the majors are going after Spirit in that way so much, maybe on some routes. But the problem is, is Spirit has the same labor costs as the majors do. Yeah. Or, you know, similar, especially with the pilots. You know, I would imagine with the mechanics, too.

20:02Chris Fochuk:Well, and their lease costs. And that's the other thing. Yeah. I mean, just, you know, cost for CASM, right? The cost per available seat mile on Spirit, I did pull up some stats. So in 2025, their chasm rose to$0.09, right, from$0.07, like$0.07 the year before. So their costs just continue to escalate. They have a very modern fleet. Like Spirit, their old junk airplanes are mostly gone. There's a few, but for the most part, they have NEOs, they have 321 NEOs, and they expanded a lot in the push, the aftermath post-COVID, but they expanded very aggressively when aircraft leases were extremely expensive.

20:53Chris Fochuk:So their cost structure is based on old leases, which they've been trying to renegotiate. But, you know, again, it's been a it's been a market where narrow body aircraft, A320 and 321 COs and even 319s for that matter, gets have been able to they've just gotten snapped up immediately. So if Spirit can't pay the bills, someone else will because those aircraft have been in demand. And then, of course, no fault of their own, Pratt & Whitney GTF, major, major, major hit.

21:24Mark Lawrence:Yeah, I think that was a big part of it. The start of the downhill slide, I think, was that Pratt & Whitney issue with the EOS.

21:35Chris Fochuk:Yeah, the ultra-low-cost carrier model, it relies on spreading those high-fix costs over a dense, frequent utilization. Period. Unless you have a niche, right? And if you're not filling up your seats, your chasm goes up. And your costs are high, and you don't have the revenue to support it. And it's just a flawed model. Their Latin America model is interesting. It actually makes them – it's one of their more successful models. But it's never an option. I mean, like, you know, unless you're going on vacation in Lima, Peru, which, I mean, it's a cool destination spot, I guess. It's not like it's kind of off the beaten path.

22:19Chris Fochuk:But like we wouldn't fly Spirit to Lima. We go to Lima all the time. Why? Because we're going to fly United or American or Delta.

22:27Mark Lawrence:Yeah. I mean, we're business flyers. We're going to. Yeah. They're never going to get the business flyers like us. I mean, there's there's not any frequent flyer program that's, you know, worth a damn. There's no international, you know, where they have South America or the Caribbean and stuff. But, yeah, they're not going to Europe. They're not going to Asia. They don't have the extensive international stuff that's going to be attractive to the business person. It's going to pay the high airfares.

22:54Chris Fochuk:Yeah.

22:54Mark Lawrence:So just to stop you right there, you know, going back, let's say, you know, five years, maybe longer than that, like pre-COVID, they seem to be doing very well. And at that time, that's when they kind of went into that mode and like built that, I don't know, billion dollar headquarters or whatever it was. They built that big headquarters with a big training facility and spent an enormous amount of money on that. And, you know, then COVID came along and, you know, that kind of screwed the entire industry for a long time. and maybe that was the peak of it all when they were doing well and then started spending money on big, beautiful buildings and all of that.

23:49Yeah.

23:49Chris Fochuk:I mean, look, if you're going to spend money, you got to make sure that you're going to be able to recoup those costs. I mean, it's just like any other business. I mean, look at our business. If we're going to make an investment in bringing on a third dispatcher, We better damn be damn sure that the revenue is going to be able to support a third dispatcher. And if you can't do it, then you don't do it. And there are times where we are crunched, you know, to segue into our guests shortly. There are times where we're all, you know, busting our asses just because like, yeah, it would be easier to hire somebody.

24:25Chris Fochuk:But right now we're dead. And, you know, we're feeding all the other mouths that we have to feed and not ourselves because the industry is so slow right now. And look, you add more mouths to feed, you get into an unsustainable business model. I mean the beauty of our business is if we had to, we could survive with a skeleton crew of like a handful of guys. But look, we bank money when we're making money. And that's what's carried us through. And you just got to be smart when you run a business. And, you know, there's that's just another reason why throwing good money at bad. You know, what what is going to be gained?

25:05Chris Fochuk:Let's talk about briefly. Yes. The federal government throws five hundred five. So so Donald Trump today said, maybe we'll just buy it. Well, he also said that they tried to merge with people express under Obama, you know, so take take it with a grain of salt.

25:23Mark Lawrence:I think people express went out of business when I was in high school. 86. Were you in high school in 86? No, I graduated in 84, so close enough.

25:33Chris Fochuk:Just about. I don't even remember People Express.

25:35Mark Lawrence:So, I mean, I used to send them applications, like, you know, as soon as I got my commercial pilot. Actually, before I got my commercial license. Nice. They never answered.

25:46Chris Fochuk:But look, injecting$500 million, which sounds like half a billion dollars, sounds like a lot of money, right? A lot of taxpayer money. I mean, it sounds like a lot of money, but the reality is it will be gone in four to six months and then we're right back to square one. Yeah. I mean, how much have they been losing per month? I mean, even before fuel went up. Right now,$100 million a month is the estimate. It's hard to say. Wow. So they were losing money. You know, they filed bankruptcy when fuel was$60 a barrel or oil was$60 a barrel, right? At$100 a barrel, think about it.

26:24Mark Lawrence:Yeah. Yeah.

26:25Chris Fochuk:And is it going back to 60 anytime soon? I don't think so. Maybe. Hopefully.

26:30Mark Lawrence:I don't think so either. Yeah, I wish, but likely not.

26:34Chris Fochuk:Harsh reality. And, you know, throwing good money after bad simply means and I don't even know what the upside is because I'm seeing people across the political spectrum say no, you know, and I'm a capitalist. You know, I may be I may have voted, you know, blue for the last couple of times, but I'm not I'm not I have zero communist ideology ideology. Zero. I mean, you know, look, we created free market. Capitalism is how we've created what we've created. You know, there's no subsidy. We didn't even take like we lost our ass in the first six months of COVID. We didn't take a single penny of those dollars, unfortunately.

27:19Chris Fochuk:I wish we had.

27:20Mark Lawrence:Yeah. Yeah. We weren't bright enough to do that, I guess.

27:25Chris Fochuk:No. Well, karma retroactively repaid us by the boom that we had for two years afterwards.

27:30Mark Lawrence:Yeah. Exactly.

27:33Chris Fochuk:So, look, any type of investment into a failing carrier, they're not failing because of oil. They're not failing because of the GTF issues. They're failing because of numerous structural issues within the company. It is just a loser of a company. If they had merged with JetBlue, if it had been permitted, look, I think it should have been permitted. I don't understand this cherry picking who can merge and who can't. You see the consolidation in media is way bigger, way bigger than any of this BS that you see at the airlines. OK, you know, I don't see how I don't like controls on that. Obviously, I understand that, you know, antitrust and preventing monopolies is better for the consumer.

28:19Chris Fochuk:OK, but it's also not a monopoly. I mean, you don't need eight low cost carriers.

28:25Mark Lawrence:Well, it would have been better to do that than shell out half a billion dollars to save the thing at this point.

28:33Chris Fochuk:Well, I don't know that it would have saved the thing. JetBlue isn't exactly like in the black. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, who knows?

28:41Mark Lawrence:It would have been better off than what they have been with two bankruptcies in the last two years.

28:47Chris Fochuk:Yeah. And look, the reality is if spirit liquidates, there's going to be a lot of pilots on the street and there are not a lot of jobs. So that's going to be very, very unfortunate. You guys can call me and Bob will some of you if you're if you're cool, put you to work. No, look, it's not good. I mean, if there had been a merger, some people would be furloughed, but not the entire seniority list, most likely. And a merger of those two carriers does start getting into too big to fail territory. It really does start raising the question of whether, you know, some form of government bailout structured with like a reasonable repayment and like some legitimate plan that that that could prove it to be a good financial move.

29:41Mark Lawrence:Well, the government might be talking to American Airlines sooner than later about that exact same thing. With a too big to fail kind of scenario and a true bailout.

29:56Chris Fochuk:Too big to fail, too shitty to live. By the way, speaking of shitty, I'm going to go ahead. We're going to end this here and move to the interview portion because it's an hour long. But here's your fair warning. I don't want to hear in the comments that there's too many swear words. If you don't like cursing, don't watch the next segment. Oh, my God. Listen, it's just the nature of the beast in our company. Like, we're busy. We're, you know, we're tense. There's a lot of shit going on.

30:32Mark Lawrence:It's a tough environment.

30:33Chris Fochuk:It's a tough environment.

30:34Mark Lawrence:And we fight it out.

30:37Chris Fochuk:And we drop F-bombs and S-bombs and B-bombs and C-bombs. And, I mean, I think there might have only been a couple of F-bombs. definitely a lot of s-bombs on this this interview but anyway it gets it gets spirited

30:53Mark Lawrence:no pun intended but it's all okay it's it just goes with the territory you will see

31:01Chris Fochuk:yes you will hear shits you will hear fucks uh fair warning if you can't handle the word shit or fuck um if you have kids in the car um yeah you may not probably don't listen to it

31:13Mark Lawrence:with kids in the car.

31:14Chris Fochuk:Yeah. Listen to it on headphones later because it is entertaining. I was laughing the whole time I was editing because it was quite funny.

31:22Mark Lawrence:Oh, yeah. It's going to be a great episode. I mean, we got some great guys that work for us and it's awesome to showcase them and you guys will see what our everyday life is like.

31:34Chris Fochuk:It really came across just like one of our Monday afternoon ops calls. Didn't it?

31:40Mark Lawrence:It really was. Yeah, this is why we get nothing done on our obstacles. Or it's very difficult to push through to get anything done, I should say.

31:53Chris Fochuk:It can be. But, you know, that's why we drop F-bombs. Anyway, we'll see you next week. Enjoy the interview. Take it easy. Y 'all have fun.

32:07All right.

32:08Chris Fochuk:We've been threatening this for a very long time now. I think probably since the early days of Cockpit Casual, actually. And people see Bob and I and Wes on social media, and they think, well, it's a one-man, two-man, three-man show. The reality is at Nomadic, when we move airplanes around, it's a team effort, and we actually have a large team. And so today we actually have three of, I guess, three of like eight key members of our ops and planning team on the pod that we're going to talk a little bit about how we plan trips, just the whole dispatch and planning angle of ferry flying. And so we're going to get started with that.

32:56Chris Fochuk:Bob, what do you think?

32:57Mark Lawrence:It's a long time coming, right? So, yeah, a long time coming. And just to throw in there, these are probably the longest term team members that we have in the company besides you and I. And we'll talk about that more as we talk about the conversation.

33:17Chris Fochuk:Chris and Mark actually predate me, if you really want to get technical about it.

33:21Mark Lawrence:No, absolutely. From my very beginnings. Yeah.

33:26Chris Fochuk:Actually, that's an interesting story that we can cover at some point. But anyway, let me make some introductions first. So I don't know if the names are carrying over to the screen. Maybe they are. And if they are. I fucking hope not. Right. Because otherwise, Mark, his name is really fucked. Beep. I'm going to practice bleeping on this episode.

33:50Wes Gardner:That's what my family calls me anyway.

33:54Chris Fochuk:Right. Up in the corner there is Mark Lawrence. Mark is our dispatcher. He's our dispatch lead. We actually have another dispatcher as well who works remotely on the other side of the clock. He's based in the Maldives. But Mark is based in Calgary. Mark and Chris both are based in Calgary. And Wes is up the road in Edmonton. So there's some hockey rivalry and stuff going on. But anyway, it's more than that.

34:23Wes Gardner:Whose team is in the playoffs? Who's not? Every time we flush the toilet, water goes to Edmonton for drinking.

34:30Mark Lawrence:That explains a lot. It flows south for sure. A lot of the Canadians were so nice. You look at Wes.

34:37Chris Fochuk:Canadians, nice.

34:38Mark Lawrence:Not to each other. Just the ones in the north are nice, Bob. The ones in the South hate themselves. So this is basically what our ops calls are like,

34:47Chris Fochuk:just a bunch of us all talking at the same time and getting nothing done. So we're getting a really accurate look at the insider dynamics of Nomadic. Yeah, this is how it runs. In the center is Wes Gardner. You guys probably know Wes from the socials, from Cockpit Casual. We went and flew a trip together a couple of years back, and that made it to Cockpit Casual. That was the Antarctic sea ice episode, right, Wes?

35:14Mark Lawrence:Yeah, yeah. And simultaneously, we had that Embraer 175. It got stuck in Honolulu.

35:23Chris Fochuk:Oh, that's right. That was a very high-stress trip. Like, our trip was easy, but we were dealing with a nightmare. So Wes has been around from the beginning at Nomadic. He was part of our previous team as well for a while. Wes is a pilot just like Bob and I. He's raided on a bunch of different aircraft. He's out there flying the line. you know, with us, with our crews, just the same as we do. But Wes also has another commercial role within the company. He's our vice president of commercial for Nomadic. So one of his job roles is maintaining relationships with our large, lesser clients and airline clients around the world.

36:00Chris Fochuk:He has his own portfolio of clients, kind of like I do, kind of like Bob does. So So Wes is like effectively kind of like a third partner in some ways. He does essentially the same stuff as Bob and I, but focused in Asia because although he's in Edmonton currently, and you can tell by – is that an ISIS flag behind you, Wes?

36:20Mark Lawrence:Yeah. You know, in northern Canada, we have an affiliation.

36:27Chris Fochuk:I mean, it kind of looks like a hostage video if I'm being honest.

36:32Mark Lawrence:With more notice, I would have taken it down. Nah, you're good, man. What's behind there? That was his attempt at a green screen.

36:42Wes Gardner:Failed miserably.

36:45Chris Fochuk:Actually, since it is a green screen, I may be able to put an ISIS flag behind him with some special effects, VFX tools. Anyway, so that's Wes Gardner. And then next to Wes is Chris Fochuk. Chris is our manager of planning. And he is the guy. Well, he'll talk to you about his job. He kind of does everything on the planning side. He's like not really a dispatcher, but he kind of does dispatcher stuff. He's, you know, I don't even know what Chris does. Gets our fuel.

37:16Mark Lawrence:Yeah. Tries people nuts. We just like having him around. He's the fuel guy. Piss people off as much as possible.

37:22Chris Fochuk:Yeah. So anyway. Asking for stuff. Yes. These three guys, Chris, Wes, and Mark, they're the core operations and planning team. And I wanted to introduce you guys and talk a little bit about their jobs. So first and foremost, like we said in the beginning, Chris and Mark go way back, way, way, way back to before I even knew Bob, I guess, right?

37:49Mark Lawrence:Yeah. Yeah. Back to the beginnings of what was Avia crew leasing. Yeah. Time. Yeah. Yeah. We're getting there. But yeah. No, I mean, we go back. over 25 years from where I was using you guys as a third party for flight planning. And Chris became kind of like my right-hand man, like was a full-time guy, just handled all of my stuff, but was working for a third-party company. So as things evolved through the years and there was a place to to bring Chris into into the operation, it was it was seamless, basically. I mean, we've been doing the same thing together for for over 25 years. And same thing with Mark.

38:42Mark Lawrence:Mark actually was out of his role at at those previous companies even before Chris was. and Mark came along. Mark and I had stayed in touch for years. Even when we weren't working directly together, we stayed in touch and Mark was always like, if there's any way you can find a role for me doing what you do, he was like, you know, give me a call, I'm ready to start. So it all ended up working out to where that happened.

39:13Chris Fochuk:Or not, if you ask him, it just depends on the day.

39:17Mark Lawrence:Well, he regrets it every day now. At least once a day.

39:23Chris Fochuk:So, Chris, give me the give us the two minute Chris Bochuck story. Like, how did you get into this? How did like what's just summarize? How did you get from like playing hockey in ponds to this?

39:38Mark Lawrence:From running west into the boards to this. You still have those phone books that you used to strap to your shins in your room there? Yeah. Yeah, I do. Yeah, used to use frozen cow shit for pucks. Oh, yeah, way back in those days. Yeah. No. Yeah, I kind of started off really just as a bit of a fluke for me. I got a summer job with a company called Skyplan, actually, way, way back in 1989. And was there for about 10 years and kind of, you know, I was a kid. So I just went through the whole thing started off as an assistant. And even before then, I was actually just doing sort of like data collection for the company and putting things together and then on to like more of an assistant dispatch role.

40:24Mark Lawrence:Did that for a couple, three years and then got into being a dispatcher, then a supervisor, and then moved on to the corporate side of it. Because we were doing at Skyplan was doing a lot of airline stuff at that point. Mark will remember that. And then we moved to the corporate side. So I went to the corporate side and did that for a few years and then ended up moving on. You guys remember Nigel Harris? Yeah. He moved on to Colt. And then I moved on probably about maybe a year after him, maybe not even. So, Chris, let me interrupt you right there because you're missing a cool story. The Moscow days.

41:05Mark Lawrence:Oh.

41:08Chris Fochuk:Oh, that's right. You spent some time in Russia, right? Yeah.

41:12Mark Lawrence:So in that period at Skyplan, I spent, you know, we were there. I was there for three trips. Nigel was there for three or four. So on and off for, it was probably about a year and a half or two years. And yeah, we helped set up basically a flight operations office there with a company called, well, they called themselves Skyplan East. the guy that was the Russian side of that owned actually a couple of Aleutian 76s that he used to fly around freight and stuff like that. And then he ended up basically kicking skyline out of the country. So we had to come home. They just disagreed on a bunch of things, the way the business was running.

41:52Mark Lawrence:And you could tell that they were probably spending more money than we were probably making. And it's typical the way Russia worked.

41:59Chris Fochuk:But that was where the money was coming from.

42:01Mark Lawrence:But that was back in the days of what years was that? Because that was like in the days that like Russia was transitioning from the USSR. Yeah, we got there in 94. And I mean, it was it was pretty wild. We had some guys in our office that were, you know, these really old ex-Air Force guys. One guy was a general. He was actually our our head navigator. And they literally used to write their flight plans out on a tilt tape. So like, you know, like a tilt tape from a, from a type, not a typewriter, but from a, from a till. So like, it's like about three inches wide and they would write it and they would use, uh, so they roll it out in the cockpit like that.

42:40Mark Lawrence:And it would be basically a direct line with NDBs and DORs and waypoints. And they would write all the information and that they just put in their pocket. And so at the end of this flight, they'd come back. They'd have like four or five legs. They have these tilt tapes they would put on. They just, that would be their, that was their flight plan. And they, everything was writing, was all written. and those pilots, they kind of really didn't care about fuel at that point. They just filled it everywhere they went. And Mark, you'll remember when they would come to Calgary back in those days too. You know, Antonov 124s and Alicia 76s, they'd pay cash for fuel.

43:09Mark Lawrence:So they'd have like literally suitcase of cash coming into the FBOs and, you know, forking out dough. But back in those days in Russia, everything was cash. But that's what we did. We basically were trying to help them with the same thing, with their airlines and their operations to learn, you know, how we did things. And so then you came back. You came back to Calgary? Came to Calgary and then went to Toronto almost right thereafter for a year. And that was still with Skyplan? No, that was still Skyplan. We were doing all, at that point, we were doing all of the work for Sky Service in Toronto and Montreal there.

43:48Mark Lawrence:Okay. Okay. Medivac stuff. And then the A320s, they got the A320s and the A330s. So we're doing all of that flight planning as well. So then how did you end up coming back to Calgary? Or were you working back to you? So guys, this is a short-term deal there. We were there. Do you remember Ed and Shane? They came with me to Toronto, both of them. So it was only a one-year deal. We came back to Calgary, and then that's, you know, kept working with Skyplant for a bit there and then did the transition over to Colt. And then, you know, did another, what, 15 years at Colt. And then World bought Colt.

44:25Mark Lawrence:And then did three years at World. And then we stole you.

44:27Chris Fochuk:Exactly. Colt was our third-party provider of services back when we were smaller. And so Mark and Chris were both over there. And then World Fuel Services bought them. And then they started Spire, which is a competitor to us. And so essentially, you know, our vendor became our competitor and we quickly stole their best two guys and stopped using them as a vendor. It's kind of the short of it. We still use World a little bit, but we usually get better pricing from AEG or JetX. Anyway, I don't want to, you know, the intros, I don't want them to take 20 minutes here. So we cherry pick both of those guys and and here they are now, Mark, I'll get to you West last.

45:20Chris Fochuk:Mark, basically a similar story. But when did you become a dispatcher? I know you did. I mean, your story is interesting because you did air ambulance flight planning for most of your adult life, right?

45:32Wes Gardner:Not really. No, I started while I started as a dispatcher. I was working on the ramp here at Calgary for a Canadian Airlines contractor. and eventually I decided to go to school to get my Canadian equivalent certification for dispatch. So I did that. And then in 1996, I went to Skyplan too, and that's where I met dumbass there. And Wes. Yeah, right. No, the other one. And that's when I met Bob, who was at. Holy cow. You still have one of the shirts.

46:10Chris Fochuk:I still have that shirt, man. I love that shirt. It's a relic right there, man. Maybe we need to bring that back and sell it in the gift shop.

46:17Mark Lawrence:For real. Let's do that. Let's do that. I've probably got 500 of them in a bin somewhere in a storage room.

46:21Wes Gardner:Well, send me some more because I had to cut the sleeves off this one because they were toast. Your muscles were getting too big. Yeah, my muscles were getting too big. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Anyways, I was with Skyplan for two years, and then I got offered a job at WestJet Dispatch. I was, I think, dispatcher number four or number five there. I spent three years there. And then Fulchuk called me and asked me to come over to Colt, which I happily did. Spent 10, eight years there, I think. And then I went over to Sky Service Business Aviation, helping them out with their operational control system.

47:07Wes Gardner:and helping them become better at the dispatch role. Unfortunately, the company decided to shut that down after, I think, three years I was there. And the next day that that happened, I got hired by the air ambulance division at Sky Service, which is a completely separate entity and a long story one I'm not going to go into. But I was doing that. And then Bob contacted me on LinkedIn and said, hey, we need help. And I said, yeah, man. So I was doing the two jobs at the same time. So the air ambulance stuff was like Lears, right? Like mostly Lear jets? Lear 45s. Yeah, all Lear 45s. Whole world.

47:50Wes Gardner:The entire world on basically two hours notice. So I was working around the clock. My phone, I mean, I was based in Calgary at home, working at home. And from the time I moved Colt, I'd been working at home. So my phone would ring all hours of the day and night. And, you know, I told my boss that I was going to help, you know, the ferry operation. He said, I'm never going to stop you from making more money. He said, so go for it, do it. He said, just remember that your priority is us. And I said, yeah, that's the way it's going to be. So and then, like I said, was doing both of those. And then in 2016, I think, 2015, 2016, that air ambulance side sort of folded.

48:37Wes Gardner:And that's when I became employee number one at Nomadic. That's right. That's right. And I've been here ever since. So, yeah.

48:47Mark Lawrence:So, Mark, the question I've always had is, I mean, I know your job is very stressful because we're usually the ones putting you under. This is like massive pressure. No, really? But you've always had these like these high pressure situations where you have to make something happen out of nothing. And, you know, regardless of what the actual rules are, we're just like saying, just make it happen. Right. So so my question is, how do you look so good after all these years? I mean, with all that stress on you, you still look pretty damn good. For 90, for 27.

49:27Wes Gardner:I'm going to be 62 in two weeks. Actually, 62 in less than a week. So how do I look so good? A lot of drugs. I don't drink. I don't smoke anything. But man, do I do a lot of drugs in my... Okay. They're legal drugs, okay? So I don't do the stuff Pochak does. I don't do that because he's he's nuts. But I know I I am an exercise nut. I have been going to the gym working out since I was 14. And that's my savior and also my family, how they put up with me. I don't know. I mean, they nearly killed me a year and a half ago. I was trying to kill myself at that point. So it wouldn't have mattered. But yeah, it's, you have to, I needed an outlet.

50:24Wes Gardner:And the only thing at that time was the gym. But thank you for telling me I look good. I mean, I did my makeup for this. I think it's starting to run over there.

50:33Chris Fochuk:I was going to say, you're older than Bob and you look significantly younger there. I mean, here's the crazy thing. I mean, how long have I, I've actually never, I mean, I've met, I've been in the same room as Bochuck Plenty. I've never been in the same room as Mark. ever in person. Oh, it's a treat. He was supposed to come to Hawaii that once, but during COVID, and he had COVID.

50:57Wes Gardner:Yeah, no, yeah. Yeah, no, I think I missed that meeting. That was you and Wes had one with a potential customer, but I never got to see you because that was during the masking days and me being a hypochondriac, I was afraid to leave and leave my truck. Mark, what about... And with my... Go ahead.

51:18Mark Lawrence:I was just going to ask you, what about the trumpet? You haven't mentioned anything about the trumpet. Why don't you play us a tune? Oh, Jesus.

51:25Wes Gardner:Yeah, I was a semi-pro level. Well, I was playing at a professional level but not getting paid in high school. Our band won national awards all throughout Canada for three years straight. And I was a really good player, but I was never going to be great. So, and no, I'm not playing a tune. Sorry, I won't do that. Well, we'll have you play a tune for the next cockpit casual. There's always trumpet. Yeah, I know. You know what? It's not like playing the piano or the drums. Playing a trumpet or any brass instrument is probably the hardest thing you can do in music because there's all these things you have to think about to make the thing work.

52:07Wes Gardner:It's not just a piece of brass plumbing, even though that's what the pros I know and talk to say, oh, it's just a piece of plumbing. Just play it. like fuck you anyways um but i i it no it's it's not an easy instrument to play and it's not like a piano where you've been away for 15 years and you can still play tunes yeah that's not how i

52:28Chris Fochuk:played i played trumpet as a kid too and um i you know what happens is your tone falls to shit you know everything goes to shit yeah like the muscles in your lips the ability to really create good tone goes away.

52:42Mark Lawrence:You sound like a harmonica.

52:47Chris Fochuk:Yeah, pretty much.

52:48Wes Gardner:But I mean, you've got to think about your lips, your tongue, your breath, your throat, your lung power, everything and all at once. And that's probably why I do what I do is because I'm having to, I don't believe in multitasking. I don't I think it exists, but I can kind of put all that together for this job. It's like, you know, okay, I got to do this. I got to do that. I got to do this. I got to do that. So it's just like figure it all out. Right. But yeah, I mean, sometimes I, you know, most of the time I'm able to pull a rabbit out of my ass for our jobs. A lot of times. Yeah. Sometimes the only thing I pull out of my ass is shit.

53:27Wes Gardner:And I'm sorry about that, but that's the way it is.

53:29Chris Fochuk:You make it work, man. He does. And there's always a lot of us getting angry and him getting mad at us on trips because we push, push, push. And Mark, you know, always ends up coming through and making it work. But we expect the impossible and he does the impossible. He just puts up a fight along the way. But, you know, it's all good. It's just part of how it's how we do things. Let's move on to Wes real quick and then we'll get into the nuts and bolts. So, Wes, we're going to end up having you as a full guest someday because your flying stories from your early days of bush flying are fascinating.

54:08Chris Fochuk:I've had some great conversations with you for like that went on for five, six hours in the airplane that that need to come to light for the world. But there's no way we're going to do it in this setting today. So why don't you give me like the two minute version? How did you end up here? And what do you do for us at Nomadic?

54:29Mark Lawrence:Yeah. Well, I'm not going to be able to go back to 84 like Comrade Chris there. So it should be pretty quick. You were still in puberty back then, weren't you? I was just barely four years old back then. He was only six feet tall then.

54:51Wes Gardner:He came out of the womb six feet tall.

54:56actually sort of looking the way he does right now pretty much the beard was darker it was yeah

55:03Mark Lawrence:listen here you old bed shitter uh i ever since i can remember i wanted to get into aviation i wanted to be a pilot my grandfather was uh was in world war ii flying for the canadian royal air force flying pby's doing u-boat patrol out of newfoundland and just growing up i remember all the stories and he loved talking about it and uh just got me fascinated and right from a very young age I knew I wanted to I wanted to fly airplanes so at 16 I bought a share in a flying club and just about didn't graduate high school I'd skip in school to go fly and then uh your first your

55:42Chris Fochuk:first license was a seaplane license is that correct no I got my private on wheels but I I

55:47Mark Lawrence:I built time for my commercial license on floats. That's right, yeah. And that was actually a good decision because at the time it was so hard to find a job in Canada. And most guys were working on the ramp or selling tickets or being flight attendants. And I was fortunate enough to have 100 hours on floats. And I met a lot of the insurance requirements. So I went up north to a place called Thompson, Manitoba. And I got a job flying right away, which was pretty rare at the time. And then so these are the stories that we're going to get into someday.

56:20Chris Fochuk:Like for sure you on there, man. There's some hilarious, hilarious stories.

56:24Mark Lawrence:So just where did you grow up, Wes? Were you in Edmonton when you learned to fly? Just outside of Edmonton, a place called Spruce Grove. And there was there was a small airport Villeneuve just about 10 minutes away. And that's where I started the flight training. OK, so fast forward through, you know, Northern Canada, I spent about seven years in the bush, and then a Canadian company sent me over to the Maldives, and I flew Twin Otters on floats there and moved on to flying Dash 7s and then ended up in Macau, China, for my first airline job, flying 767s. Unfortunately, that company didn't survive, and a group of us ended up back in the Maldives.

57:11Mark Lawrence:We started an AOC there, and that's when I first met Steve. That was your 30 West days where you're trying to play those 787s, those, what do they call them, the teenagers? 7-6.

57:24Chris Fochuk:7-6. Oh, that was the first thing. That's right. So I think people don't even know about that. I never, ever talk about it, but we did venture into aircraft trading and leasing at one point, Bob, myself, and our former partner. And, yeah, and we ended up purchasing three Air New Zealand 767s with some investors as well. And I think that's what really got us talking with you, right?

57:55Mark Lawrence:Yeah, well, I first met you when we were talking about the 787s, and then we just stayed in touch. And I think I managed to help you out a couple of times coming through the Maldives. You had some crewing issues, and then I ended up starting to do some trips. I did some demos for you for the 767s out of Abu Dhabi and then did some ferry flights there. And just one thing led to another. I ended up coming on full time eventually.

58:22Chris Fochuk:Yeah, I actually have footage from, I don't know, 2014 or 13 or 14. Remember that one that we picked up in Malaysia? I'm going to have to put it onto this thing, onto the pod. We did it. We flew a trip from Malaysia to somewhere. We stopped in the Maldives. We stayed at like Gili Lankafushi.

58:45Mark Lawrence:Remember that trip? Yeah, it was from Shanghai to where did you take it to the Congo? It was DRC. Oh, yeah. Did it go to Kinshasa? Was that one of the Surve Air deals? I think so. But Bob was on. You had two airplanes at the same time, right? That was a separate one.

59:05Chris Fochuk:I think it was like a project where we took a bunch of 7, 3, 400 classics or 300 classic freighters down.

59:13Mark Lawrence:Yes. I caught a ride with you from Shanghai. That's right. And you overnighted in the Maldives. Yeah. And we went out to Lankanfushi. That's right. That was wild.

59:25Chris Fochuk:That was cool, actually. I have to edit something real quick, but I'm going to put together. My first foray into video editing was that trip. Nobody ever saw it because it was kind of crap, honestly. But I made a cockpit casual back then. It was like the first of the cockpit casuals just to see if I could do it. And it was that trip. I'll put some of the footage on this episode so people can see it. But it was – don't judge. It was like I was – I barely knew what I was doing. I was just starting to figure it out. But, yeah, and then you came over and basically Mega went under. You were the DFO over there, right?

1:00:05Chris Fochuk:Yeah, at the time, yeah. And we ended up bringing you on full-time as a pilot and in a commercial role Because Wes is much more patient in dealing with customers and people. So what do you do now? Like, what is your basic, like, a month in the life of Wes look like at Nomadic? Because it's very different than ours, really.

1:00:30Mark Lawrence:Yeah, well, I think it's pretty similar in many regards. But you guys actually were sort of saviors there because COVID hit. I was stuck in Thailand and I wasn't full-time with anyone at the time. And, you know, luckily at the airline in the Maldives, I was fortunate enough to have some opportunity to deal with the lessors on the technical side, looking for airplanes, sourcing airplanes, and got to have a pretty solid network in Singapore. And once COVID hit and I realized I was stuck, you know, I talked to you guys and said, hey, if I can find you some business, You know, can we work something out?

1:01:11Mark Lawrence:And you guys were all over it. And shortly after that, I think I got the first few trips from my network in Singapore. One of them ended up being another cockpit casual, the 11 Virgins out of Australia there. That's right. It was one of my first trips.

1:01:31Chris Fochuk:Yeah, that was a good one.

1:01:34Wes Gardner:You were the only pilot who wasn't a pain in the ass on that. Well, I wasn't even on the trip. I was stuck in Thailand.

1:01:39Chris Fochuk:He was stuck in Thailand. That's what I mean. Yeah. He couldn't leave. He missed the Falcon 7X.

1:01:45Mark Lawrence:Yeah. So one thing to add there, Wes, like you've lived a number of years in Bangkok, right? Yeah. My wife is Thai. So once my kids started getting a little bit older, we were in the Maldives. I moved my wife and the kids to Thailand thinking that I'd just be behind them maybe a short few months and find something else to do. But, yeah, so we got a house in Bangkok, and we were there for about nine years. And then just past August, I moved them to Edmonton. Yeah, so you're in Canada because you've got some ties to some hockey playing, right? Yeah, I grew up playing. It was, well, every Canadian mostly grows up playing.

1:02:32Mark Lawrence:It's in your blood somehow. And my kids now play. That's one of the reasons why we moved back here. So, yeah, hockey, it's a big part of my life for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So a day here, I wake up early and try and stay in touch with our existing customers in Asia, try and find new ones, do a lot of cold calling and emails and trying to find new trips to keep these two clowns busy, planning and dispatching. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But yeah, it's a relationship thing, right? And I think, Bob, you told me that early on that, you know, you're only as good as the relationships you have with the customers.

1:03:19Mark Lawrence:And so I take that pretty personally and really enjoy meeting these guys. Just got back from Miami or Orlando this morning at 2 in the morning. It was MRO Americas and had some really good conversations with existing clients and potentially new clients. So I enjoy that part of it as well as flying. Yeah, and you do a great job with it too.

1:03:46Chris Fochuk:Yeah, one of the things that Wes coming on board did for us was it really freed us up. So we still go to the trade shows, some of them. Like Bob and I try to get to like one, maybe two a year. But Wes goes to all of them. So if you're out there at MRO, at ISTAT, Air Finance, you know, all these aviation trade shows that happen seasonally all over the world, Wes is almost always at all of them representing Nomadic. Meeting new clients, shaking hands with existing clients, checking in on the relationships. And Wes has always got his ear to the track listening to what might be coming down the road.

1:04:26Chris Fochuk:Speaking of which, what's coming down the road, Wes? Are we going to get busy again or what?

1:04:31Mark Lawrence:I think so. I have faith that this year is going to be a bit of a turning the corner moment. It sounds like there's lots happening. A lot of the extensions that happened from the last two, three years, they're starting to come through towards the end of the year. It looks like it could be very, very busy, certainly with our existing customers. And then hopefully with some new customers, we'll be very busy going into next year.

1:04:58Chris Fochuk:So I know that Chris has got a time limit here. I want to kind of get right into the nitty gritty here. So when a trip comes in from Nomadic, and we've fielded this before, like we basically have two different paths that operations get requested through. 90 % of our business is repeat business. It's clients that we've worked with for many, many years, some more than others, some for 20 years, some for two or three. And normally, you know, our goal is when a client comes in, we keep them. We want to keep them, keep them happy, keep their airplanes moving. And so the primary way that our business comes in is just through a phone call or an email from our existing contacts at our clients.

1:05:43Chris Fochuk:And then 10 % of the time, you know, it's like a breakthrough, like a new cold call that comes in just from our reputation, whether it's via the socials or our presence at iStat or word of mouth a lot of times. you know, an airline might, you know, be buying some airplanes from a lessor off lease. And they'll say, who do you guys use to move your airplanes? And then they generally recommend us. So something comes in. First thing that happens is it goes to like an on duty, like triage kind of email. And then Wes, myself, and Bob are the three guys that really handle everything as they come in. Chris, too, actually, Bochuck sometimes fields that, especially if we're out on trips, Chris is kind of like the guy that that mans the phones, mans the email desk there with like, you know, the first first first queries.

1:06:36Chris Fochuk:One of us puts it into a proprietary system that we developed, and that triggers a series of flight planning tasks. So right off the bat, I mean, obviously, we don't want to give away the keys to the castle. But when we get a request, it's important that we know the aircraft type, the origin, the destination, the details surrounding why the aircraft is moving. Those are the very, very, very basics. We plug that information into a system. It triggers a chain of electronic events where emails get sent, prompts go to everybody in our planning team. The first person that anything goes to is Mark. What do you do when you see a trip come in, Mark?

1:07:15Chris Fochuk:Actually, it goes to Chris first.

1:07:17Wes Gardner:Oh, does it? Yeah. I mean, I see it. I see the email. And then Chris will usually contact me and say, okay, here's a little bit more detail. And then I will start the route planning process, which is basically determining how we're going to get from point A to point B. generally the least painful way possible because doing it off doing it the the most economical way just doesn't work because of the things we have to go through so right and then i'll do up the test plans once um they're finished i send them back to chris and then he'll start doing the quoting process.

1:08:05Chris Fochuk:So let's talk about test plans and let's talk about how the routings work. So for one, I mean, we've talked about routings a lot, right? We have our places that we like to go because we have relationships with the handlers. We know that permit acquisition is painless or painful in some cases. Sometimes it's unavoidable. I assume you have like just files and files of gouge for dealing with different locations. But more importantly, the biggest issue that we always have to overcome is timing because the permit application process could take time, validations, overflights, so on and so forth. So even more than route efficiency, we need to look at our ability to execute on short notice once all the documents come in.

1:08:52Chris Fochuk:Yeah, that's right.

1:08:54Wes Gardner:So, again, it's looking at a flight planning engine and determining how are we going to do this because we're probably going to have to get minimal notice to go. So I will, from, you know, past experience and history of doing this is just, okay, we're going to go this great big huge dog leg and do that instead of, you know, having to spend three, six, five, seven days sometimes to get other permits. So a lot of what we do is not cost effective. And I'm sure my airline cohorts in dispatch, which I'm not really a dispatcher anymore. I don't consider myself that, but they would go, what the hell are you doing?

1:09:43Wes Gardner:You're more of a chaos manager. Yeah, exactly. And that's exactly what it is. It's like, it's like, just make it work. And I had a discussion with a fellow at Eurocontrol a while back and he's like, you really fly those routes? I'm like, yeah, we really do. And he's like, wow. So yeah, it's chaos. And it's, but yeah, I do have a pretty good memory. Not everything is in writing, but I keep emails. And last time I checked, I have two gigabytes of emails going back to 2016 when I started here. And also some from my previous days, which I've managed to remember and write notes about. But yeah, it's, I don't have a lot of stuff written down.

1:10:26Wes Gardner:Actually, probably nothing. It's all in emails and I just go, yeah, okay, I remember how to do that.

1:10:30Chris Fochuk:So one of these days we have to pump all those into AI and have them just have it just create. And then you kick me out to pasture and I don't need to be around anymore. Thanks a lot. I don't know about that. Nobody wants to actually do it. I mean, the reality is, though, if something happened to you, Mark, like we would be pretty much fucked.

1:10:51Mark Lawrence:Yeah. Yeah. Mark, I mean, you're you're you're more than just information. You actually are entertainment, right? Well, you're kind of the police, too. I mean, you do keep us out of a lot of trouble. I try. I try.

1:11:06Chris Fochuk:How do you deal with – so a lot of times we're planning a trip that might take place in three weeks, a month, two months, six months. How do you deal with wins, like, on test plans? I don't.

1:11:19Wes Gardner:They're irrelevant 99 % of the time just because of the routes we have to take. So efficiency for us, especially when I'm doing it three months out. I don't even pay attention. It's like, okay, today it's a 90-knot tailwind and the plan still works, going the route that we have to take. That's what we get. And whatever happens, day of flight happens. When it gets hairy is when the flight plan is tight to begin with. And then three days before flight, the flight plan doesn't run anymore because we're having to do these dog legs to get, you know, to avoid the countries we don't want to overfly. So that's when it gets difficult and the things we have to keep an eye on.

1:11:57Chris Fochuk:And one of the ways you deal with that on the planning side is with assigning like a fuel penalty, like a bias to the flight plans, right? So we use 12 % generally on test plans?

1:12:10Wes Gardner:Usually it's about 12. 12 just for contingencies of what might happen down the road, especially when this is going in six months or three months or whatever. So we'll reduce it, you know, as we can when the trip actually happened.

1:12:26Mark Lawrence:Yeah. And we've got the advantage. So then after the... Sorry. Yeah, I was going to say we and we have the advantage that we've had so many years in business that we have a lot of historical data, you know, if not on paper in our heads that we know what, you know, pretty much what it's going to be.

1:12:41Wes Gardner:Yeah, it's when a weird aircraft comes up that we haven't dealt with very much before or I haven't dealt with. I mean, I think I've planned just about everything from, you know, Twin Otters. I mean, I think we even went lighter than that at the Skyplan in cold days. But pretty much know what an airplane can do. But yeah, it's the weird ones that kind of get the ones that we don't deal with very often, like some of the newer ones. the 350, the, you know, 380s and those that we don't deal with, that those are a different circumstance. But, you know, generally going in, if it's a 737 anything, I pretty much know what it can do.

1:13:25Wes Gardner:And it's basically going to fly the same route that we've always flown.

1:13:29Chris Fochuk:And our flight planning system is not the latest and greatest. It is not. Right. And that's because the flight planning systems out there that are the latest and greatest are tailored for people that own their own airplanes. So they have performance numbers, data, all the actual weights for each MSN.

1:13:45Wes Gardner:Yeah, I don't think we could, we couldn't. I mean, the system is antiquated. And the vendor who I'm not going to name knows that. But it does what I need it to do. It's ugly to look at. And it's like literally 1980s technology, but I can get it to do what I need it to do. And that's all that matters to us.

1:14:11Chris Fochuk:This is why Mark's picture is vertical on this thing, because his computer is so antiquated that he uses for flight planning, it can't run Riverside. Yeah, no, I'm actually using a piece of shit iPhone. So, you know. So after the test plans are filed away in the trip, things get moved to Chris. And then it's Chris. Chris is the one that does what we call a TCE, a trip cost estimate. Chris, why don't you walk us through the basics of the TCE process? We've got a route now. We've got flight plans. What happens next?

1:14:49Mark Lawrence:So, yeah, even before that, like Mark was saying, depending on the situation, you know, where we're flying to, we might do several versions or variants of a TCE on the same route or the same city pair, but a different routing, depending on what's going on, especially now with what's going on in the Middle East, you know. But, you know, weather could be another thing, too, if there's a hurricane or something, and we've got enough time we could plan around it, but also plan one through it in case it gets delayed. You know, so we have these variants. So we kind of know we've got options, I guess, when the trip actually we get a date.

1:15:23Mark Lawrence:So we know what's going on. So I basically get that information from Mark, the test plans, and the test plans would give me all the information of fuel, which countries were overflying, basically everything I need to do the trip cost estimate, which is not actually a ton of information from the flight plan. But anyway, I'll go through and I'll look at all of our fuel vendors to get the absolute cheapest price of fuel I can at every location because fuel is fuel. It's all the same stuff, right? Everyone sells the same product. So, and I feel like all of our vendors give us, you know, good service as well.

1:15:58Mark Lawrence:So I don't really, you know, I don't have a favor or anything. I literally go out and get the cheapest possible fuel because obviously our trips are all non-revenue. So we want to do it the cheapest possible. And that's my motivation too with these trip estimates is because they're non-revenue, we want for the customer to be able to get from A to B the cheapest possible way. But as Mark will attest, there's things that get into our way. And one is like geopolitics, weather. I mean, it could be the airplane itself could have an issue that, you know, creates a situation where we can't do the normal route or whatever.

1:16:32Mark Lawrence:So, yeah. So I basically collect all that information and I put it all together into the estimate. And then I pass it over to you guys who then review it again. Also, in the estimate, it includes everything as well as true travel, crew days, you know, crew catering. Permit costs. hotel navigation fees yeah nav fees all of it the rbsm costs uh important export for customs you name it all that all those costs go into the trip estimate so really have to be careful that we're including everything that we get charged for clearly um and because some of these estimates especially in the last few weeks are they're getting really large all because of fuel but uh Just some gross numbers coming out right now on fuel.

1:17:17Chris Fochuk:We're also always often, not always, but we're often competing against competitors. And there's not a ton of like ferry companies that do the volume we do. I don't know that there's anyone right now that does the volume we do. But the reality is a lot of our clients are getting their corporate policy dictates they have to get three quotes. So they, you know, we always have to keep in mind, we got to keep costs. Like we know what our margins need to be for us to make a profit. You know, I mean, we're not running a charity and, you know, we can adjust the sliders a little bit. But ultimately, you know, we want to provide the best value to our clients.

1:18:00Chris Fochuk:And sometimes that becomes a problem because our competitors, you know, maybe don't have as much experience as us. they're not necessarily leaning into the pitfalls that we expect on a certain route. And so it's not always an apples to apples quote.

1:18:19Mark Lawrence:Rarely is. It's never been like that. Yeah.

1:18:22Chris Fochuk:Yeah. And sometimes our customers just take the lowest bidder and learn the hard way. And sometimes they come back to us and say, I don't understand why you're$12 ,000 more than the other two quotes. And then we can look at it and say, well, we operate on a call sign. So navigation fees are paid by us, whereas our clients flying on a call sign, the owner of the aircraft is going to get billed for nav fees over the course of the next three or four months. And so just know those fees are coming. They're just coming to you later and directly.

1:18:56Mark Lawrence:Well, Bob can attest. I think Bob's probably seen back in the day, probably saw bills that were upwards of two, three years old. Oh, yeah.

1:19:02Chris Fochuk:Yeah. From Africa, man. For sure.

1:19:05Mark Lawrence:Yeah, they show up three years later. It's insane. Yeah. I used to hate those phone calls. Hey, Bob.

1:19:12Chris Fochuk:But also, I still think we owe a company in India some money still from a trip two years ago. I forgot about that.

1:19:20Mark Lawrence:But also, I think it's important to know, too, that because we do this all in-house, we have that past experience and things of timing. You know, I'll come to the guys and I'll say, you know, look, we're going to get the SFP on Monday and the customer really wants to leave on a Wednesday. You know, if you look at the most efficient route possible, it's impossible to do because you need four days lead time for a permit or this or that. So we have to adjust the routing to accommodate the customer's request. And I think when they get quotes, you know, some of our competitors don't have that past experience to consider that in there.

1:19:57Mark Lawrence:So, you know, it's always a challenge explaining why sometimes we're a little bit higher. But once they understand, you know, and we do a good job, you know, we've got some really loyal customers. Yeah. Yeah.

1:20:11Chris Fochuk:You know, one thing that I failed to mention earlier when we talked about when we brought everything in-house, when we poached these two guys and they became, you know, our employees rather than a vendor. You know, the biggest cost savings there is these flight planning companies, and there are third-party flight planning companies. In fact, almost all of our competitors utilize some of the third-party flight planning companies. The big issue is nothing ever happens as you plan on a ferry flight. It never goes the day you plan. It might be later, it might be earlier. It's usually later, and then it might be later again, and then later again.

1:20:49Chris Fochuk:Winds change, something changes. Everything changes. And the problem with third party flight planning companies are whenever we change, whenever we make changes, third party companies charge you revision fees. And, you know, when we would get a trip cost estimate from Colt back in the day, you know, we would say, OK, it's going to we're going to move this airplane from Arizona to the to Ukraine. And it's going to cost, you know, seventy seven thousand dollars in all the ancillaries, fuel permits, all that ground handling and all that stuff. OK, well, when the trip delays four times and then delays in route because you have a mechanical, that seventy seven thousand dollars becomes ninety four thousand dollars.

1:21:35Chris Fochuk:Very, very, very quickly. And so bringing things in house like these guys are salary, they're on salary. So they're they're getting the same paycheck regardless of what happens. Sometimes it's an easy job. Sometimes it's not an easy job. You know, I would say some days, sometimes Chris makes and Mark makes 100 bucks an hour. Some days they make 50 cents an hour, depending on how much work goes into a trip. Right.

1:22:01Mark Lawrence:Yeah.

1:22:01Chris Fochuk:It all evens out. The same goes for us, honestly. I mean, you know, we don't take salaries like we, you know, we've literally been doing this our whole lives.

1:22:09Mark Lawrence:Right. Like Mark and I literally been like, you know, just working weekends and evenings and nights and everything. Birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, our entire lives. It's kind of just become normal. Well, you guys, too. I mean, the pilots do have to do the same thing, right? Nights, weekends, holidays, everything. But you get her done. Yeah, there's no set hours. No. But that's the way our lifestyles have been for decades.

1:22:38Chris Fochuk:So when a trip is happening, when it is in the works, when we're actually, when Bob and I go out and we take off and we're en route to Uzbekistan, Who is on duty at that point in our ops? Let's talk about that a little bit because flight following is a big part of it too, not just the beforehand.

1:23:00Mark Lawrence:Well, during Mark and I, like the North American day and in the evening, MJ takes over at night because he's in the Maldives. So he will deal with everything at night. But during the day, I mean, when we're really busy, sometimes it takes both Mark and I to be dealing with, you know, multiple trips. But sometimes if it's just the two of us, we're just making sure that, you know, we're following the aircraft and setting the movements and making sure customs is updated and making sure that, you know, your catering is there and all those things to make sure that you guys can just keep trucking along, you know.

1:23:31Chris Fochuk:Yeah, movement messages are something that people may not even understand. So every time an airplane reaches a station and departs a station, there's a list of client representatives, handlers. Who else is on that list?

1:23:46Mark Lawrence:I mean, that's mostly clients, all of their folks and ground handlers. That's really 99 % of them right there would be those two. And sometimes there's, you know, 20, 30 emails on there.

1:24:01Wes Gardner:So, yeah, a lot of people know.

1:24:04Mark Lawrence:Yeah. Because there's a lot of people that have eyes on the airplanes that, you know, maybe not have access to flight radar or, you know, any of those. What do you call them? Tracking softwares. Yeah.

1:24:17Chris Fochuk:They're not even always on all the track. I mean, sometimes especially out of like, you know, Iqaluit or something like that. Like it doesn't even pick up until we're climbing out, you know, along the coast of Newfoundland.

1:24:29Mark Lawrence:Yeah, but we're watching you guys basically taxi out and taxi in when you get to where you're going all the way, you know, until you stop. So, yeah, it's important that we keep an eye on, you know, where you guys are at all times. And then we pass it on to MJ when he comes on the evening and then he takes over and does the same thing at night.

1:24:49Chris Fochuk:And let's talk real quick about dispatch paperwork. Like, so every single trip, every single leg, we get a blast email with a ton of PDFs on it. What is what's included in those?

1:25:02Wes Gardner:So that'd be obviously your computer flight plan. That's probably the most vital thing. And then weather, notams, both textual and graphic. and then your fuel releases, information about your handlers, which now we have our own system where you can look that up instead of, you know, adding to the paper. There's also your customs clearances, especially in the U.S., your APIS reports, your GENDEX, things like that. So, yeah, you know, depending on the length of the leg, it can be, or the length of the day, because you can do multiple legs a day, I mean, the package can be 60, 70 pages long.

1:25:44Chris Fochuk:Yeah, and we typically like to have paper with us. I mean, we have the electronic copies. That's what we use. But iPads fail, you know. I mean, stuff happens.

1:25:55Mark Lawrence:Yeah. And just something to add to the process here, we have two admins, Pat and Emily, who are bringing docs out of emails and processing those docs. so that Mark and Chris can actually start using them for permits or whatever reason.

1:26:20Chris Fochuk:It's really hard to not miss something because every time somebody says something, I'm like, oh, we didn't talk about customs export. We didn't – there are so many aircraft documents, right? There are so many different – RVSM. There are so many little boxes to check on each trip throughout the trip. We're always collecting documentation.

1:26:40Mark Lawrence:And we're on different registrations, right? Then that adds in a whole other different set of documents because some will have this, some will have that.

1:26:47Chris Fochuk:Ferry permits have limitations. PTFs have inspection requirements and limitations. You know, we sometimes we we we come across like situations where the insurance, you know, document like so the airplane certificate of insurance, certain, you know, geographical locations, certain countries, certain regions require specific wording on the insurance policy. So often. Yeah. Yeah. So like Mexico, Turkey, even EASA. Yeah. So Chris is like one of the Chris is a guy that, you know, when documents roll in, they get posted up on a Slack channel, which is how, you know, we use Slack to we separate each trip and all the appropriate people for each trip are on this central communication Slack channel.

1:27:36Chris Fochuk:It's the bane of Mark's existence because it's always ringing. It's always ding, ding, ding, 24-7. I mean, whether we're flying or not, a lot of times it's these guys harassing each other about hockey or something. But it's mostly like some sort of chaos going on with a trip that's going to happen or already happened or something like that. So Chris is like the fail safe when it comes to that. Like Chris will look through an insurance document and he'll be like, you guys are scheduled out in two hours, but this insurance document doesn't meet EASA standards. So we're not leaving Bangor until you get a new insurance document.

1:28:14You know.

1:28:15Mark Lawrence:Yeah.

1:28:16Chris Fochuk:There's a lot to it.

1:28:18Mark Lawrence:Yeah. A lot of reviewing, reviewing of paperwork beforehand and making sure it's all in order. Because once you start the process, if something's wrong, then you got to go back to the client. And then it just, they don't like that. And it delays us. And so, yeah, it's a lot of pre-review and making sure all the ducks are in a row for sure. A lot of pieces to a puzzle. Yep.

1:28:39Chris Fochuk:So who's easier to deal with on a trip, me or Bob? Wes.

1:28:50Mark Lawrence:Thanks, Mark. I'll tell you later.

1:28:52Wes Gardner:Okay, thanks, buddy.

1:28:54Mark Lawrence:Canadians stick together. That's right.

1:28:56Chris Fochuk:Yeah, even after they harass each other, they still always stick together. Yeah. I get grumpy as hell on trips and I know that like. No, really? Yeah. Hey, easy there. Really fucked. Let's be real here. Mark has ripped the hell out of me many, many times. My son just handed me a note here.

1:29:15Wes Gardner:He's listening in the background and he says, there's one thing you forget to mention is how many times everyone says fuck for trip.

1:29:24Chris Fochuk:A lot. This episode is going to like we have some sensitive listeners. So there's going to be like an, like a explicit lyrics. Like, you know, I'm going to put one off of like a rap album from like the 90s and I'm going to put it on the cover of this. Explicit lyrics on this.

1:29:41Wes Gardner:Just put in your date of birth before you watch this podcast. Exactly. Are you 18 or over?

1:29:48Mark Lawrence:The tipper door warning.

1:29:50Wes Gardner:Wes's kids, Wes's kids can't watch this ever. My granddaughters will never see this.

1:29:59Chris Fochuk:You know, things like that. It's okay, Mark. Only like a thousand of hardcore avgeeks are going to be seeing it. So, no, it's, it's, it's, the reality is this, this job will make you crazy. Like the job of ferrying airplanes. We're a very capable unit. We can do the things that even airlines with 50 person dispatch centers have trouble doing. And it's because everybody is good at their job. Everybody knows what's next. We kind of know what to expect. We learn something every trip. But the reality is you got to keep it light. We bite each other's head off. I mean, I always Chris Bochuk's like the most mild, nicest guy on earth.

1:30:43Chris Fochuk:You know, we've been we've screamed at each other on the phone. I mean, it happens.

1:30:47Mark Lawrence:Chris did not scream back. I don't believe I just scream at Chris.

1:30:52Chris Fochuk:Chris just starts talking loud and slow and pacing my conversation.

1:30:58Mark Lawrence:Very definitive talk from Chris. And I know I'm in trouble. I'm like, okay.

1:31:05Chris Fochuk:Mark, I'm sure has had pipe bombs like ready to send to my house. Oh, yeah. It's all good. Daily. Look, I love these guys. I mean.

1:31:13Mark Lawrence:Have you ever seen a Ryder truck parked out front, Dave? Run. Quick.

1:31:18Wes Gardner:I know your address. I know where you live. I've got it Googled. Be nice to me. That's one of the reasons MJ came on is because you guys just about drove me to suicide. So I was working 24 hours a day and literally lost my mind. And we had to bring MJ on to cover the night shifts because there were times when I was going three or four days without sleep.

1:31:42Mark Lawrence:I was sleeping in the basement for weeks.

1:31:45Wes Gardner:Yeah, that's because your wife hates your guts.

1:31:48Mark Lawrence:We do have a company psychologist now, by the way. Yeah. I don't know if you saw it. Well, it's a couple of podcasts ago. Dr.

1:31:55Wes Gardner:Powell. Dr. Powell. Oh, well, shit. Give me your card. Actually, you know, my shrink is pretty good.

1:32:02Mark Lawrence:She's going to watch this and say, no, there's no helping mark. There's no helping me.

1:32:06Wes Gardner:It's been far too long. She's very calm. Yeah.

1:32:14Wes Gardner:All right, guys. But anyways, thanks to MJ, my friend, for being my reliever. And he's doing a good job. We'll get MJ on one of these days.

1:32:25Mark Lawrence:It was a tough start to this business starting in, what, 21 when we started Nomadic? Yeah. But it was all of a sudden. It was like no prep.

1:32:36Wes Gardner:It was like all of a sudden it went from zero to a million miles an hour overnight.

1:32:40Mark Lawrence:Yeah. It's kind of a blur, to be honest with you. Like there's definitely a couple, three months there where I think it was just like, what just happened? Like you should, you know, one day we'll do the four hour.

1:32:51Chris Fochuk:We'll do the four hour podcast where we talk about. I mean, nobody would even believe how crazy that transition from. Oh, my God.

1:32:58Mark Lawrence:It was you got to get MJ on sometime because he's got quite the story, too.

1:33:04Wes Gardner:Yeah, he does. Yeah, he's he's a really great guy. And I'm glad we have him. He's got quite the same humor.

1:33:11Mark Lawrence:He and I go back many years, like long before you guys had met him. He was, when I flew the Twin Otters on floats, he was a cabin attendant that used to tie my airplane up to the dock. And then he just progressed. He got into dispatch and crewing. And then when I helped start that airline in the Maldives, I brought him over as an assistant. And he worked all the way up to director of OCC at the time we went out of business. So I was glad that he was available when Mark said he needed someone. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to have to have him. We're going to have to have Pat Roa on here to continue this.

1:33:55Mark Lawrence:Yeah. Everybody's got some great stories and are some super great people we have here.

1:34:01Chris Fochuk:So this episode is kind of like the intro, kind of first, you know, getting everybody on, getting to know our group. But ultimately, I think down the line, I mean, we've got we had a lot of pods to make and we're going to have subject matter to deal with where we're going to want to bring different, you know, you guys on individually. I'll get you guys some better mics and cameras, too.

1:34:23Wes Gardner:You told me I look great. What the hell?

1:34:26Chris Fochuk:Well, you're just vertical, Mark. I mean, that's the biggest issue. We don't want it horizontal.

1:34:33Wes Gardner:That's way better. Now you're now you're sidewards. You're anti-gravity. Sidewards. What's sideways? I'm from Philly. I'm going back to vertical. I'm from Philly.

1:34:46Chris Fochuk:So, but yeah, and then Wes has so much good stuff. Wes is going to be kind of the third host that comes on here with, you know, the three of us. He could replace either one of us. You're going to see a lot more of these guys in the future and more. So thanks for coming on today.

1:35:05Wes Gardner:And if you don't like me, please note in the comments down there somewhere, get rid of that jackass. They'll know who you're talking about. They're going to love you, Mark.

1:35:13Chris Fochuk:Please comment.

1:35:15Wes Gardner:I'm looking forward to the comments.

1:35:17Mark Lawrence:100%.

1:35:18Chris Fochuk:Yeah. The famous Mark Lawrence. Yeah.

1:35:24Mark Lawrence:The one and only. The one and only. The only one. Mark's going viral. The only one.

1:35:30Chris Fochuk:We got to wrap it up. Chris has got to go pick up his son before his wife divorces him. And again, that didn't actually happen, by the way,

1:35:43Wes Gardner:she lied to me. Yeah. Yeah.

1:35:47Chris Fochuk:Oh, my God. Quite a dynamic here. Any final words? Anybody, Bob? No. Good thing we didn't have eight people on today. Nobody would have gotten a word out.

1:35:59Mark Lawrence:No kidding. Yeah. We were talking about bringing everybody on board this. That would have never worked out. Hey, Bob. It's great. Yes, sir. Send me a box of those. I'm going to go look for them, and I'm going to send you more.

1:36:12Wes Gardner:Put them on the channel. Put them on the channel. Put them on the website for sale.

1:36:15Mark Lawrence:I did find a big stack of stickers.

1:36:18Chris Fochuk:Yeah, if you can get me the graphics, Bob, I'll put some old retro Avia Cruise, the original heavy metal transport up in the gift shop at omdgear.com.

1:36:31Mark Lawrence:Yeah, that would be cool. Yeah, let's do it. I'll find the old vector files or whatever I had. Sweet. Awesome.

1:36:39Chris Fochuk:All right, guys. Well, I will probably be talking to you here soon in a more official capacity. Let's get back to work. Thanks for having us on. All right. Awesome. Bye-bye.

1:36:52Mark Lawrence:All right. See you guys.