Air Lease Corporation: Steven Udvar-Hazy

29:41Yes, yes. Okay, and then a few months later, a company called Hughes Air West was trying to sell a 727. And I found an airline in Brazil called Cruzeiro. And on that deal, I made$45 ,000. Wow. And I never even went to Brazil. They came up to California. So anyway, I thought I was smarter than I really was because I was dumb. And now you had$95 ,000. Yeah. And I said, I'm going to take half of that money and start an airline, which is the stupidest thing I ever did. Plus, I bought a Mercedes 280 SL, which is a two-seat convertible Mercedes, really jazzy. So you're like a player now You're like, hey, I'm rich I'm a player I'm 22, I'm going to buy myself And what did you, by the way, I'm just curious What did your parents think?

30:36I mean, they must have known They're like, our son has almost$100 ,000 I mean, that's crazy money Yeah, part-time, part-time But I was a full-time lifeguard in the summer For the county of Los Angeles And I loved that job down in Manhattan Beach Redondo Beach. And I would make probably about$1 ,200 a month for three months, which I thought was pretty cool. And I had a convertible Mercedes. People must have been like, wow, how does this lifeguard have a convertible Mercedes? I was an oddball. I'm sorry. I mean, it's unbelievable. You have$95 ,000 from doing – and you're a student at UCLA. I mean, it's – Yes.

31:20I mean, I'm trying to think like today, if you were just a solo person and you wanted to be a consultant for airlines, it would be almost impossible to get those gigs because they're corporate. But back then, what, you could just write to some name that was publicly listed and say, hey, I'm a consultant. Do you want to hire me? And it was like that. Yeah. And now it's KYC. They would have to do a background check. They look on Wikipedia. They would check you out. Request for proposals. You'd have to go through a nine-month process. They want references. Today would be a bureaucratic nightmare.

31:51It couldn't be done today. Yeah. All right. So you're now flush with$95 ,000 in cash and you decide around this time to start your own airline. Yeah, exactly. That was the dumbest idea I ever had. When we come back in just a moment, how Steve loses a good chunk of that$95 ,000, but in the process, figures out a way to make much, much more. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

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36:01Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's around 1969. Steve is in his early 20s and has about$95 ,000 in the bank from his consulting business. And with some of that money, plus help from a few friends and family, he raises a little over$200 ,000 to start his own airline. And he calls it... Astro Air. It's a great name. Modern Future Astro Air. And the logo was almost like a science fiction logo. So like a like like a neutron, like an atomic. My girlfriend at the time came up with the name. She was an art major. She says, I like that name Astro Air. So anyway, we had to apply to the California Public Utilities Commission, PUC.

36:46We had to go through hearings. We had to deal with the FAA. There was a lot of bureaucracy, which I hated. But here we are and we get licensed to be an airline. And we were going to fly to an airport that's very close to Vandermurg Air Force Base. Sure, in California, yeah. We charged$15 to go from LAX to a city called Lompoc. And the idea was you were going to service, you were going to basically serve these military folks. It was going to be a cheap way to get around for them. Yeah, and contractors, and also serve Santa Maria, California, and Lompoc, which is about halfway up the coast. And you had one plane that you leased?

37:26Yeah, we had one plane. It was a Carstead jetliner, which was a stretched de Havilland dove with turboprop engines. How many people could it seat? Fifteen. Okay. So if it was full, if your plane was full— We made a little money. If it was three-quarters full, we'd lose money. Three-quarters full, you would lose money? Yep. If we had 12 passengers, the break-even was probably about 13 passengers. And you leased this plane. You did not buy it. You couldn't buy it. It would be - It would be rented. And it was$4 ,500 a month for the lease. The rent, okay. Yeah. And it was leased from a company in Phoenix, Arizona called Apache Airlines.

38:07Yeah. And I met the guy who was the president. And he said, look, I can do with one less plane because business is a little slow. Yeah. So I'll lease you this plane for 4 ,500 a month. And this was a turning point in my life because whether five passengers showed up for our flight or 10 or 12, this guy got$4 ,500 a month, no matter what. If all your seats were full, he got$4 ,500 a month. If one of your seats were filled, he got$4 ,500. It didn't matter. Yeah, or if the weather was bad and we had to cancel flights. Yeah. You know, if the airport up there was fogged in, he still got this$4 ,500.

38:45And that was a turning point mentally in my life where I decided running an airline is a miserable thing. It involves people, regulations, fuel, airports, reservations. It was just a nightmare to run an airline. It's 24-7 and everything goes wrong. And I said, the guy that was making money off this project is the guy in Arizona. Not you. Not me. I was losing money and he's making money. You're losing money on every flight unless it's totally packed. Yeah, or almost say 90 % full. Because your fixed costs were higher than your... Exactly. Insurance, rentals, airport charges. The pilots, the personnel.

39:33The chief pilot was$750 a month, and the other pilots were$600 a month. Yeah. So anyway, we finally decided this thing is losing money. I found a buyer for the airline out of Las Vegas. And so I decided then and there, I'm never going to have an airline again. I'll work with airlines. Yeah. But I don't want to be an operator of an airline. So you basically lost most of that$95 ,000 that you'd earned. Yes. I would say I lost about half of everything I've earned up to that time on the airline venture. But I also had a lot of people, relatives and friends of my parents and other acquaintances that invested in the airline.

40:18Some, you know,$1 ,000, some$5 ,000. And I made a pledge to pay them back. So over the next several years, starting in 1969, 70, 71, when I was about 23, 24, 25 years old, I paid everybody back. Hmm. So, I mean, when that all sort of fell apart, you must have felt really terrible. I mean, these are family, friends, and other people who had invested money in this venture. Yes. So there was two sides to it. There's a sense of failure and a recognition that at that age, a person is somewhat naive. But at the same time, I thought it was a very valuable lesson about running a business. And I did have an appreciation that I went through this experience early in life rather than later.

41:20Right. OK. So this was – so 1969, you begin to wind down Astro Air. Yes. You're 23. And you had seen who was making the money. The person, the people making the money when you were running Astro Air wasn't your airline. It was Apache Airlines, the leasing company that was leasing you this airplane because they had to be paid whether you landed or not, whether you had a full plane or not, whether the weather halted your flights or not. They got their money. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And that experience sort of planted a seed in your mind like that's where the money is. I got to go there. I've got to service.

41:56I've got to sell the pickaxes and shovels, not try to dig for the gold. Exactly. But the key to that was it required capital on a much larger scale. Yeah. Both equity and debt capital. And so I felt that for a few years, I need to continue amassing capital through the various transactions that I was doing before. Right. And in fact, I increased the intensity of that activity. You went back to helping airlines find planes to buy and essentially taking a broker's fee. Exactly. And also helping them with their route planning. Consulting. Yes. And so you do a bunch of these deals and over time you start to accumulate some cash for the business that you really want to build, which is your own leasing company.

42:47You want to be the guy leasing planes. You want to do what Lockheed did. Right. Exactly. So maybe I'll give you an example. and one of them was Aeromexico, which was the government airline of Mexico, and they needed a DC-8. I found an airplane in Miami that was owned by National Airlines, and I talked Bud Maytag, who was president, into selling that plane to us with four brand-new engines for about$2.2 million. I didn't have$2.2 million, but I figured I'd put up around$150 ,000, equity and then get a bank loan. Aeromexico didn't want to buy it. They wanted to lease it. I went to a lot of banks.

43:33They all said, no, thank you. We don't want to finance a plane that's going to be registered in Mexico. So I went around, went around, went around until I found one bank in California called United California Bank that said, yes, sir, if you get a government agency guarantee, then we will give you a$1.7 million term loan. So I went down to Mexico City and I asked Aeromexico to arrange a meeting with a government agency that had credibility. And they made an appointment for me at 10 o 'clock at night. I remember Mexico City with the head of that agency. There were armed guards and so on. And there's a conference room with two bottles of tequila on it, nothing else.

44:21The end result is by midnight, I convinced this gentleman that signing this, co-signing the lease and guaranteeing the lease payments of another government-owned entity was not a risk. And I said, this would bring in thousands of tourists and will help the Mexican economy and blah, blah, blah. So he, after five glasses of tequila, he asked his secretary to bring out his big seal and the wax and the ribbon and he just put that they'll unconditionally guarantee the lease bingo i went back to la the bank said okay this is exactly what we wanted and on september 20th 1973 i bought a douglas dca for 2.2 million dollars from national Airlines and leased it to Aeromexico, which today is one of our best clients in Latin America.

45:17All right. So in 1973, you have the seed money to start your company, what became International Lease Finance Corporation. You actually went into business with two friends of the family, Leslie and Louis Gonda. And these guys were Hungarian. He was a Hungarian businessman. It was a father and son. And I guess they became co-investors and partners? Yes. Yes. Yeah. And you were? And I was the president. Got it. We were not in a position at that time to buy any new aircraft. We didn't have the resources for that. You had one plane that you could buy. Yeah, we had one plane, yeah. And it was a 727.

45:57No, a McDonnell Douglas DCA. For a given DCA, yeah. Yeah. It looks almost like a Boeing 707. Right. Right. Okay. So you had that one plane. And when you started the company with the Gondas, what was your thought? I mean, did you think this was going to be a relatively small to medium-sized business where you might have five, ten aircraft that you were - Exactly. That's what you thought. Our ambition was maybe we could have 8 to 10, maybe 12 planes, and we'd make a nice living off of it. And I could still continue to do some of the other stuff, brokering, consulting. We had no idea that within a few years we would develop into the largest aircraft leasing company.

46:43We had none of these… Ambitions. I think we had ambition, but we underestimated the potential of the market. I think – so basically it sounds like for the first couple of years, you're working with Aeromexico, right? You had that plane. And then, I mean, did you – how soon after that were you able to buy the second plane? You had cash flow coming in. By November. By November. Yeah. A month and a half later. Wow. It was another interesting coincidence. So I may have mentioned to you that there were these airlines in the western U.S. that merged together and became AirWest. And then Howard Hughes bought that company and became Hughes AirWest.

47:29And they had around 20-some of these 40-seat turboprop, what was called Fairchild F-27s. And they were transitioning to more jets and phasing out these turboprop Fairchild aircraft. And so we made a deal to buy 10 of these planes. OK, we didn't have three million dollars or two point eight million. Ten of these planes. Yeah. So you didn't have the cash. We made a deal with Hughes Air West to buy 10 of them. OK. Like one a month. So how did you do that with no cash? Well, we gave him a$10 ,000 per plane deposit. OK. So while you're going through that routine, you can currently run a marketing campaign and try to locate potential customers.

48:15We give them a$100 ,000 deposit. And then North Canada Air was willing to lease three of them for like$7 ,500 a month each. I mean, this speaks to the idea, and I've heard this from people before, which is you can actually invest in things and buy lots of things without any money. If you can figure out how to do the deal. And very wealthy people buy properties and make huge investments without money because they will figure out a way to do a leasing deal or something like this. I mean, essentially, you didn't have the money to buy the planes. But I had a piece of the action, so to speak. Right.

49:01Wow. All right. So as you're building this business up, something happens, which I have to imagine had a massive impact on your business, which was the Airline Deregulation Act in 1978, which I guess the result of that was it did increase competition and it did lower costs. It deregulated the airline industry. How did that affect your business? Well, it had a major effect. So in 1977, a year before deregulation, we bought our first brand new plane, brand new 737 from Boeing, and we leased it to a British airline called Britannia Airways, which was the largest charter airline in Europe. So we already reached a level of activity where we could buy a seven and a half million dollar brand new plane.

49:45It accelerated the fleet modernization of airlines in the late 70s, early 80s. And that really gave our company a tremendous amount of tailwind. and just as a side note we were very very prudent with our money i mean when we started international lease finance i remember our salary was six hundred dollars a month and maybe three or four years later it was still like a thousand dollars a month so we were not very extravagant yeah and also it's a very volatile industry you have several years of positive growth and profitability. Then you have oil price runaways or high interest rates or a recession.

50:30And the airline industry is very vulnerable to those changes. And so you could have multiple years where airlines are suffering and losing money. So you have to endure and survive this roller coaster. So, I mean, were you guys financially healthy during this period? I Were you profitable or not profitable? Oh, no, we were profitable, but we could scale up using limited partnerships. And Leslie Gonda was extremely supportive of this company. And he brought in some of his friends to invest$50 ,000 or$100 ,000 in a deal. International Lease Finance Court would be the general partner, and we would also invest money.

51:17But the limited partners would invest most of the equity. and then we would get a management fee. So in other words, for every million dollars of equity we had, we really had five or six million of equity because we leveraged it with these limited partnerships. Right, because you basically could get these partners who had cash who could finance these planes, yeah. Right, and they all made money. No one ever lost a penny. They all made money. They all did very well. Now, then we had a number of companies like EF Hutton and other Solomon brothers came to us from Wall Street saying, why don't you guys go public?

51:57You've got a great future, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we gave that a try in 1982, but the markets were very – Yeah, that was a recession year. Yeah. And so we decided this is not a good time to go public. But the following year, I suggested to our team that we focus more on the smaller investors rather than the big institutions. We did lots of roadshows to probably like 40 different cities. And we raised$26 million in an IPO on NASDAQ. Yeah. And that presumably supercharged your ability to grow, to buy more planes. Yes. And so basically, 1983, you become a public company and you become the CEO, right?

52:45The CEO of a publicly traded company. Yes. You had eight people when you went public. So did you need – by the way, did you need many more people? I mean given that now you had more money to buy more planes, did you have to – Yes. You did? We needed more people. In fact, the underwriters were teasing us that we should hire a couple of part-time college kids or something so we could say that we had more than 10 employees and then let them go the day after the IPO. But we didn't do that. But it was kind of oddball to have a public company with eight employees, including the three founders. So tell me about, I mean, we're going to come to 1990 when you were acquired or the company was sold.

53:31But in that period between 1983 and 1990, when you went private again, What, I mean, was it just, again, just growing, growing, growing every year, like buying, you know, five, ten new aircraft a year? I mean, what, give me a sense of what that period was like. I think the major change, which had never been done before, was that in 19, what we did after going public is we would buy new and used aircraft when we could match them up to an airline. But then I realized that we could get much better leverage in discounts and basically more weight if we could buy aircraft in bulk. And that was really a landmark gutsy decision because it was the first time that Boeing would sell quantities of aircraft to an aircraft lessor who couldn't even identify where these planes are going to go.

54:32But we had a lot of confidence that we would place the aircraft. And then we did a deal with Boeing and ordered 130 brand new planes, speculatively. People thought I'd lost my mind, including 747-400, which was the largest plane in the airline industry. So you obviously, as you were growing, you cut the attention of – I mean you were a public company, but you cut the attention of some suitors including AIG, the huge insurance group. And they made an offer to you to sort of buy you out. I guess it was a stock merger essentially where you could get – Yes, correct. And it was a huge offer. It was like a$1.3 billion offer.

55:24For a company that went public for$26 million less than seven years before that. Yeah. So it was 50 times greater. So your investors were going to get a huge return. Yes. I think 68 % of the company was still owned by the insiders. Wow. The Gondas and myself and my family. And the public had, I think, 32%. So they did really well. We decided that we would each take one and a half million cash, the three of us, and the rest we would exchange our shares for AIG stock. Wow. And so then at that point, you become – I mean AIG becomes your boss, right? But essentially, you continue to run ILFC. I mean you were – I mean did it substantially change how you ran it?

56:16I mean did you have oversight from AIG or – The benefit was that I think there were only one of half a dozen companies in the world that were AAA rated credit rating. So immediately, ILFC's credit ratings, which were separate, AIG never guaranteed one penny of our debt. Our credit quality immediately went up. Which meant you could get massive loans to buy more planes. And we could get it cheaper than our competition. Right. AIG was doing extremely well in the 1990s. And I was like the third largest shareholder of AIG. So by the time AIG stock peaked, it was in 2000, our holdings in AIG stock were considerable.

57:06Yeah. It was about five times more than when they acquired the company. Wow. When we come back in just a moment, a perfect marriage of timing and opportunity turns into a perfect storm when the 2008 financial crisis hits. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This. Some of my best trips have been on Airbnb because you get space, privacy, and the feeling of actually being part of the neighborhood, not just passing through. You can spread out with friends, share meals around a table, or just relax in the living room instead of a lobby. And it's not just about the homes. Airbnb experiences have been some of the most memorable things I've done while traveling.

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58:44Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So during the 1990s, Air Lease Corporation is in pretty great shape. Its new parent company, AIG, is doing well. And because Steve Hazy is now a major shareholder in AIG, he is also doing well. So well, in fact, that he gets approached to make a major philanthropic donation. A couple of gentlemen called my assistant in Century City, California, said, we'd like to have an appointment with Mr. Hazy. We want to talk to him about an aviation museum. to take a big plot of land at the Dulles Airport to eventually build a new museum that would open in 2003, which would be the 100th anniversary of the first flight of the Wright Brothers.

59:35So I listened to this and I said, oh, that's really nice, blah, blah, blah. And I said, well, what is this thing going to cost? They said it's going to cost anywhere from$120 to$130 million. dollars and that was their estimate so i said okay uh in five minutes i just thought about it i said okay i'm in for 60 okay so these two older gentlemen thought that what i meant is i would contribute 60 000 yeah that's kind of what they expected and i said no no no not 60 000 60 million and they just about had a heart attack. This took about five minutes. Wow. I said, if I don't do it, nobody else is going to do it.

1:00:20Somebody's got to jumpstart this project. So they were in shock. And then later on, a few months later, they said to me, well, the regents and the government and the Smithsonian board, they want to name this museum after your family. I said, well, that's not the reason I'm doing this. The reason I'm doing this is I want other young people in the U.S. and visitors to be captured by the thrill of flying and aviation and space. And then they said that the budget had gone up to$130 million. So I said, OK, we'll go to$65 million. And then the project was go full steam, three shifts a day. And I just felt, for what America has done for me and my family, this was the least I could do to give back something to America that had value to millions of people and children.

1:01:24Yeah, it's just an incredible museum. And so that really was kind of your first public, I mean, you know, the first time you were sort of public, right? Because you were relatively, you know, quiet, private, and still are to this day. Yeah, we're low profile. We try to be low profile. Yeah. And do you, I mean, by 2007, right, you have, ILFC has, I think, something like 820 plus Boeings and Airbuses. That was more than, by far, more than any airline in the world. I read that you owned more than Air France, Lufthansa, and British Airways combined. And so things are going well. I mean, it's – you know, ILFC is a great company.

1:02:08It's a strong company. But you're about to hit a massive dark cloud. Very dark, yeah. A dark cloud may be an understatement. I mean a disaster. And AIG is right in the middle of that disaster because a financial crisis hits. And AIG is the insurer of all of these banks. And guarantees and instruments and subprime mortgages that were then packaged into various derivatives that were bought by all kinds of investors. And when you found out about this, because I have to assume that you didn't really know. I mean, that's not your business, insurance. You were running the airline division, essentially, of AIG.

1:02:54I guess AIG was insuring these loans, it seems secure, but that had a massive impact on your ability to run your business. Yes. So here's what happened. AIG was a very, very capable insurance company. Yeah. But they went off tangent with this guaranteeing other people's obligations. And they really had no business guaranteeing subprime loans. And so when everything started to crumble around September, October of 2008, AIG would have become insolvent immediately had everybody called in the guarantees. Yeah. Okay. And that's precisely why the U.S. government did an emergency rescue of AIG by injecting$185 billion, which was more than the whole automotive industry, the whole high-tech industry received.

1:03:53No other company got as much financial bailout as AIG. And, of course, Congress and the government came down really hard. How could you have allowed yourself to be in this situation to begin with? And here we are, the company just made a billion-dollar profit, and we're now right in the middle of this thunderstorm. You're talking about your company, ILFC. Yeah, ILFC, yeah. Which was essentially – you're sort of a subsidiary, right, of AIG? Yes, but we had our separate debt book. Right. And so they owned our equity. We owned AIG equity. And they owned all your airplanes, which was collateral. Yeah.

1:04:34And that basically AIG turned out to be a huge disappointment that almost caused the collapse of the global financial system. There's nothing I could do to... You were part of a toxic brand. Yes. Yes. So all of the money you were making was now going to pay back the government's bailout. Exactly. And we became paralyzed. We couldn't buy. We couldn't sell. We couldn't finance. We had our existing book of business. Airlines continued to pay rent. We had an ongoing business, but it was like in a cage, like an animal that's in a cage. And Steve, I have to assume that your personal wealth took an enormous hit because you had enormous shares in AIG stock.

1:05:22Yes. I mean, their stock price plummeted probably 70%, 80%, maybe more. I don't know. Yeah, I think it was more than that. Yeah, it was a great tragedy. And the company would have gone under had it not been for the U.S. government. So you decide basically, I'm done, I'm out of here. And you resigned. Well, I retired. Retired, forgive me, you retired in 2009. Yes. We had a family council gathering with my wife and our children, and we said, okay, we can either continue this status quo or we put this chapter behind us and start fresh. Yeah. And the unanimous decision was made to start fresh. So on February 3rd or something of 2010, I submitted my retirement papers.

1:06:18Yeah. And that was it. They were in shock. But I said, look, we've had our fun. I've tried. And this is not what I want to spend the next 10 years working for the government. Yeah. So you stepped down from ILFC, this company that you founded. But you knew you must have known that you were going to start a new company pretty soon after, right? I mean, already in your mind, you probably knew that you were going to do that. Today, we filed the incorporation of Air Lease in Delaware. Air Lease Corporation. So you basically said, I'm done running ILFC. I'm going to start my own company again, doing essentially the same thing.

1:07:02Yeah. But maybe on a smaller scale. I didn't want to have a thousand aircraft and$50 billion balance sheet. But we learned a lot in those 35 years and even in the years before International East Finance. So we said, okay, let's start it. At that point, I didn't really involve any of the other people at the company. I didn't want – And you had no non-compete clause. You were allowed to do this. Nor was I soliciting any employee or officer. So you were going to start with a completely new team. Completely new team. But we were across the street from ILSC in a new building. In Los Angeles. Yeah, in Century City.

1:07:44And so as word got out that Steve Hozzi is starting a new aircraft leasing company, my phone started ringing. And so most of the senior officers said that they've had it with AIG as well. And they wanted to come work with you. They wanted to come. Wow. Wow. It does speak to the loyalty that you engendered and the people around you. I mean, I'm sure there were times where, you know, maybe you got mad at people or you lost your temper. I don't know. Maybe not. But clearly you had and still have a lot of people who are loyal to you. Yes. Well, and it was also, I think, an opportunity to create a new enterprise and to create wealth.

1:08:30Because not only my family lost a lot on this, but every executive at ILFC that had AIG stock. Lost probably everything. Yeah. So they understood what was going on. You were coming to the table with so much experience at this point and such a great track record that you were able to raise money quite quickly. And I mean from big banks, like over a billion dollars, you were able to raise that. Correct. We raised about$1.2 billion. And I said, we will provide$100 million of equity, cash equity. And then we'll raise another billion from outside investors, including banks and well-known private equity firms and international institutions.

1:09:25And that was oversubscribed. So we raised about$1.2 billion within a few weeks after the company was formed. We didn't have any airplanes, but we already had capital lined up. And obviously you knew how to source those planes. Within a year, or a little over a year, you went public. And year after the races, you raised like$800 million. I think it was almost$900 million. We raised JP Morgan and Credit Suisse were the two underwriters. Did you see ILFC as your competitor now? Were you chasing them? A little bit. Look, the clientele that we had were generally airlines that also were leasing planes from ILFC.

1:10:18But I would say that once we left and started Air Lease, most of the airlines went with us. They did either no or very little future business with ILFC, particularly since it was still under this government AIG umbrella. Yeah. So I would say a large number of the customers that ILFC had migrated to Air Lease on their own volition. Yeah. Yeah. I have to assume that you recovered your losses more than recovered them with your certainly with your new business. And now you have I mean, you know, you're, you're still running this business. And you are, you're not an old guy, but you're not, you know, 23 anymore.

1:11:03And I wonder, I mean, you have obviously enormous resources to do whatever you want. And you've got a foundation, but I wonder, what do you think you're going to do? I mean, you can't possibly spend a fraction of the money that you've made in your lifetime. So what do you think you'll do with it? That's a good question. Look, the idea of retirement doesn't have a lot of appeal. I'm not a good golfer. I'm not a retiring type. Yeah. So I plan to continue to work and hopefully add some value to the industry and creating this spark in young people about aviation and aerospace. Yeah. Steve, when you think about, you know, what you built and, you know, starting this business so young and where you are now, and you really are, I think, I've read, I mean, people consider you to be the most influential person in aviation, full stop.

1:12:04how much of where you are today do you attribute to how hard you worked and your intelligence and how much do you think had to do with luck? I think you need all of those. I was fortunate that my father exposed me to aviation at such a young age and that I immediately connected myself to that. I think having come from a background where I grew up in a communist, oppressed country, but then you have a certain amount of energy that propels you to achieve greater things. And that comes from within. It's not something you can learn in school. So I'm very grateful for what America has enabled our family to achieve.

1:12:56And, you know, having this passion for aviation and the airline business is just, that's been the fuel that kept things going. That's Steve Udvar-Hazy, founder and executive chair of Air Lease Corporation. By the way, do you ever get scared in an airplane when you're flying today? No. Never. Even massive, severe turbulence or whatever? No, because I know how airplanes are designed and built. So I adapt really quickly and I can sleep easily anywhere. I'm like a horse. I can sleep standing up. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click follow on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode.

1:13:40And as always, it's totally free. This episode was produced by Kerry Thompson with music composed by Rontine Arablui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Sam Paulson. Our production staff also includes J.C. Howard, Casey Herman, Elaine Coates, John Isabella, Chris Messini, Carla Estevez, and Ramel Wood. Our engineers are Gilly Moon and Patrick Murray. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This. If you like How I Built This, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.

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