What a $75 Million Airplane Actually Costs to Own

30:08Because their interest is making sure you get the best airplane for the best price. So a lot of times people think that they're going to save some money and they're going to find some good airplane. They find some off-market airplane they think is a really good deal. They buy it and they realize there was forced transactions before. So I think that's a pretty big mistake people make. What questions should they be asking in any of these processes from chartering to buying, whether it's the year of the plane, what kind of inspections they should be looking for insurance that kind of stuff i think corrosion is like really the big thing that gets you when it comes to buying airplanes there's nothing that would be more expensive than corrosion because that sounds terrifying it is very terrifying financially terrifying because like if you discover corrosion in an airplane sometimes they will have to re-engineer an entire component for an actual part of the plane that could take months and cost like hundreds of thousands of There's probably nothing that will cost you more money on an airplane than a problem with regard to corrosion, especially with regard to the engines.

31:07What about insurance? Like what are you or inspections and that kind of stuff? Like what are you? I mean, aircraft have engine insurance. It's called engine programs, what they're called, where the manufacturers insure the engine. I've heard stories of people not enrolling in these programs. I think David Sachs said that he wasn't enrolling his aircraft in engine programs. I guess if you have the balance sheet and you're willing to withstand, you can afford a pretty big event if something happens and you're willing to afford a few months of downtime, you could do that. But really, these engine manufacturers, they really have a monopoly on the supply chain of the engines.

31:46So if you're not on a program and something happens, you go to the bottom of the list for the parts. it is a big issue. And the companies like us and other companies that can get together and they have some negotiating power can go to these manufacturers and get some leverage. But if you're a single person buying an airplane on your own, a single airplane, you don't have a lot of leverage. And things can get very expensive. We're in a cockpit. Or as we call it nowadays, a flight deck. You were talking about, wait, really? Yeah, they changed it. They changed it? Well, I guess. Why'd they change it?

32:20I don't know. Maybe it's like a little bit more politically correct. I don't understand. Why? Cockpit's not politically correct? I don't know. They also changed it used to be called airman. A pilot was considered an airman. I see. That's sexist. Maybe airperson? I don't know. Pilots have to go every six months into simulator training. It's about a week long and you sit in something that looks just like this so everything's about the same. It's full motion, so you feel turns and everything, and you go over all sorts of emergencies and different sort of stuff. But I think something interesting that I found going from being a pilot to being a founder that's really helped me as a pilot.

33:05When you're flying the plane maybe over Las Vegas and you're an hour out from L.A., you're already starting to think ahead about the landing in L.A. You're thinking about what the weather's like there, what runway you're going to be using, what the sort of arrival is going to look like. So even though you're still over Las Vegas, you're kind of really thinking an hour ahead of time. And I think that running a business is very similar, right? Like even though there's stuff you're dealing with today, you're dealing with things that are happening on the day to day. You're also thinking ahead and making sure that you're planning for the arrival.

33:42So I think that's something that, you know, just the training of being a pilot helps in some ways of being a founder. What's been your favorite part of being a pilot? Getting to meet very incredible people. Really? Yeah, absolutely. How many people have you flown? I've flown quite a bit of people. I think it's like, you know, there's the celebrities and everybody wants to hear about the people we fly. But I think that really getting to know on an intimate level people that like building these good relationships with the businessmen, like the venture capitalists, people that really see private aviation as like a utility and a tool for them.

34:22getting to spend time with them, getting to talk to them, talk to them about my business. These are just an incredible experience that someone like me who dropped out of high school would never otherwise get to interact with. So I just think meeting some really incredible people, I would say. What do you think the biggest misconception is about private aviation and the glamour about it? That's a great question. And I have a great answer for you. Okay. people think it's a luxury people think of it they sort of they compare it to like a yacht right but like you know you cannot you you go on a yacht for you can spend a week on a yacht you don't spend a week on a private jet yeah right they think that private a private jet is a luxury and in reality this is a tool to allow people more time to do more today we're going to go to san francisco we got some meetings we're going to come back tomorrow right like we wouldn't be able to leave on our schedule, come back on our schedule and get so much done without private aviation.

35:24I think that there's a common misconception that it's a luxury and it really isn't. And I think that a lot of times private aviation companies tend to mask what they're doing with luxury because of how opaque the pricing is, because of how expensive it is. And it's very expensive to fly private. There is no cheap way to fly private. People like to mask that with this idea of luxury when it really isn't. It's just a tool. How big of a difference did it make on the business or at least the experience when you guys got Starlink? A huge difference. We've been operating Starlink from basically the moment that they came out.

35:59We started off with the Starlink minis and then eventually when they got the full certification, we installed the full certification right away. But it is a, the only way to describe it is a game changer. Like People today won't fly if you don't have Starlink. They won't get on the plane. To be able to continue what you're doing, like if you have Zoom calls, just be able to have that continuity. You know, the other systems out there, they have good connectivity when you're in the U.S., but they have lags. They work and they stop working. They work and they stop working. Starlink is just like an absolute game changer.

36:32And all of our aircraft have Starlink. And I think there's a dish right there. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah. There's literally, it's just a dish. No, no, we have an actual Starlink on top of the... Oh, this is just an extra one? This is like a backup, yeah. This is a backup? You've got backup Starlink? Yeah, yeah. Wow. We fly lots of fintech companies, founders of fintech companies that are... Need to be on the market? They are on... They don't take their head out of their computer from the moment they get on the plane to the moment they get off, right? So having the best of the best is very important.

37:03I have a hard question for you. That's very important. How long and what is the process like for installing Starlink? And why are the commercial planes taking forever? Because I think the majority of planes, their Wi-Fi is a scam. So what is the actual truth there? Yeah, well, I mean, it's good. We're seeing some airlines now say they're going to install Starlink. I think United and American both signed an agreement to further hopefully. I'm not sure why Delta didn't do that. I suspect you're probably going to lose some customers because of that. I think right now Starlink is changing their whole assembly line for their new version of the disk, which has like the ability to download much more like has higher bandwidth than than the current dish that we have right now.

37:47It's almost double. So I think that they've decided that they were going to stop production, upgrade the production line. And then now they're starting to roll out with the new one. So I think I think we're going to see it start to roll out quickly. quickly. Of course, commercial aviation seems to get a priority over private aviation sometimes. Really? I feel like none of them even have it on any of their planes. So I interviewed Jake Paul, he just got a beautiful new plane and I asked him if he had Starlink and I think he said he doesn't yet and it takes three months to get it installed so you have to ground it and that kind of thing.

38:19Yeah, well not to ground the plane, that's a little extreme, but maybe there's something else going on there. But we have orders for Starlink kits all the way through like end of next year all the way through end of 2027 so yeah you have to put down put down a deposit and then they they start they come about three months apart so yeah so we have like all throughout next year uh starlink uh kits being sent it's about three a three hundred thousand dollar cost to install on an aircraft like this very slightly on a bigger aircraft or full aircraft but to me if you're flying private if you're flying private and you don't have starlink why are you flying private.

38:54Exactly. It's a good place to leave it. Anything else we should talk about while we're in the cockpit? No. Or the people pit or whatever you call it now? The cockpit? The people pit? The flight deck? The flight deck. Anything else? Do you have a favorite button? Are you gonna put that one in? Yeah, absolutely. We're keeping that in. Oh no. Do you have a favorite button? Yeah, what's the favorite button? Well, this is the autopilot disconnect button. Okay. It's right about in here and this is when you actually start to fly and fly it yourself. So it's always nice to every once in a while take over and fly.

39:25I try to stay away from the buttons that have red on them in general. Not quite sure why. They just, they say don't touch. They scare you? Yeah, don't touch the red buttons. Okay. This is like our power lever. So this is like when you want to, when you're ready for takeoff, you push that forward. That's like hitting the gas pedal in your car. And you can just touch that while we're on the ground? Well, right now the engines are not running. Oh, okay. That's good to know. So, but when the engines are running, when the engines are running, that will, this will produce all the power. So you can watch on takeoff as the pilots advance this.

39:56This is the lever of where we put the landing gear up. So once the airplane's in the air and we have a safe distance from the ground, the pilots put the landing gear up. And then these three gears, this is the left gear, the right gear, and the nose gear will come up. My favorite button is probably this button, the autopilot button. I feel like I shouldn't have asked you this question because I'm being so nervous whenever you touch anything. yeah so um yeah so my favorite button is the autopilot button it's when once we get in the plane and once we're up once we're once we're off the ground especially autopilot button and and autopilot and chill so uh one of my friends got their pilot's license a couple years ago and i i asked i was like when you got your pilot's license was it like getting your driver's license and like feeling the freedom and he was like a thousand times more than that yeah did you like Is that how you feel?

40:45I got my pilot's license before I got my driver's license. Really? Yeah. I got my pilot's license on my 17th birthday. Okay. Which is the legal age to get it. Actually at this airport right here, Van Nuys Airport. And I got my permit maybe when I was 16 and a half, but I think I got my driver's license at 17 and a half. So I was flying airplanes by myself before I was driving a car by myself. And it is one of the greatest feelings of agency that you can have, especially as a 17-year-old, to fly an aircraft on your own. And I think that that maybe is another thing that has led me towards continuous agency in my life and continuously wanting to build and do more things.

41:38More pilots. We need more pilots. You need more pilots. Okay, cool. What do you think of the cockpit? I think this is really fun. It's very intimidating. What's your favorite button? I feel like I shouldn't be sitting here. I don't have a favorite button because I don't really know what any of them do. You can push this button in if you want. Why? Just to see what it does. I push it? Yeah, just push it down. No, I don't want to. Too scary. Is that going to make a plane? No.

42:10Israel Slodowitz:I have to get out of here. What's the most common cause of downtime and not being able to use the aircraft? Because I know people who have bought recent aircrafts. I don't know the model or the year or anything like that. But then they're all of a sudden stuck servicing it or the plane's been down for like a year or more and that kind of thing. So what are the most common causes and how do you avoid that? I mean an airplane like this there's Tens of thousands of individual parts on the plane 80 % of the parts if they're broken the planes down you can't fly So there is like a 20 % of them that we get exceptions that we can fly certain amount of flights until it can get fixed but almost the vast majority of the parts on this plane if they fail if these components fail planes grounded.

43:03And sometimes, like we were talking earlier about the supply chain in this industry, because of all the demand of all the aircraft coming in, these manufacturers are trying to build as many airplanes as they can as quickly as possible. And their priority is the newer airplanes that they can sell to brand new customers, right? So their priority is not supporting the existing fleet. It's more on delivering as many new airplanes as quickly as possible so you can sometimes find yourself down for several months because of a windshield that breaks we just replaced a a lav panel for the toilet in the back of the plane 25 000 no yeah just for like a little lav panel um a set of breaks on this aircraft over a hundred thousand dollars what is the deal with people talking about the windows popping out what do you mean that i've heard from a couple of people like there were stories that the windows will pop out and people will get crushed lungs i've never seen that you've never heard that no i've heard it and now they're making planes without windows well i think the planes without windows is actually a very interesting idea and that has more to do with like the the airframe shape right they're like they're there there's uh there's one company i think that's building a newer like design these airplanes it's supposed to be more efficient i don't know much about it but it sounds pretty interesting and they're like hey like i don't know why we need windows they can just do screens on the side but i don't think that has to do with windows being crushed that's like not like the whole fun about just looking outside out the window like right now we're looking at like beautiful california california best place on earth there's farms down there there's lots of mountains you can't see it sorry but it's yeah i don't know i think i think i would want to have windows in my plane seems to me like uh we'll have to put up a poll yeah how many people want I would be curious to see what people have to say about that.

44:55I guess this is an interesting point because you mentioned that there's going to be a shortage of planes and everything as more demand increases, right? As more demand increases, I assume all the prices are going to go up. Buying a plane is really just the beginning of the torture, right? Yeah. It's everything that comes after buying the plane that really makes you maybe regret your decision. Are you going to like, like our net jets, flex jets, are you, are like, is arrow, like, are they, they're just all going to increase their prices substantially? Like, how does that work? Yeah. I mean, I think there's, we're already seeing like massive wait lists at these fractional programs.

45:31Like the, the, the, the line to get a ticket to get into an aircraft is maybe two, three years ahead of time. If you wanted to order a plane right now, a brand new plane from a Bardier, they'll probably take you three to four years until like, I think they're delivering now into 2030. Right. you can always find like you can actually buy a slot from somebody so somebody else who was in line people are actually like reselling these slots because people want like planes sooner so there's already like a huge huge demand for these aircraft and we are seeing the market price of them trade a little higher over time but again like at the end of the day they do depreciate it's not the aircraft are not like real estate right they do depreciate over time they get wear and tear they get fatigue and then at some point there's a newer airplane with a better a better like sound system or something you know that people like and and zero windows zero windows yeah and over time the value that airplanes will go down but we have been seeing in the last couple years like a very weird phenomenon where the price like we bought this airplane and now it's worth like more than we paid for it really yeah like almost two million more what yeah why just because there's like such a lack of uh of supply like of good airplanes that's crazy yes another thing that's worth talking about is like there's just different types of aircraft are some are better than others right so like sometimes people think okay i'm gonna buy this airplane it's cheaper but we're on like the challenger 350 this is like one of the most sought after airplane this was the first airplane when i started my company seven years ago, I started with the Challenger 300 and we still have that Challenger in our fleet today flying just as much as it was flying back then.

47:11Certain airplanes have better parts availability, better pilot training, engines if you need to put on rental engines on the plane. So it does matter what type of aircraft you buy, especially if you think you're going to start flying heavy volume. Have you seen people make the wrong decision in buying a plane by buying too small of a plane? At what point do you realize that? Yeah. So I know the trend now is buying heavy and buying really large, but do you see like, you obviously come across people extremely wealthy that probably buy tiny planes too. And you're like, what are you doing? So, so I know someone who, um, who just recently had a liquidity event and he exited about$500 million and he decided first thing he's going to do is spend 400k on a global 8 ,000 or 7 ,500 charter to Europe.

48:02And so he spent 400k, but 400k is still significantly less than 75 million, which is what it would cost to buy that plane. And he flew to the flight and he's like, that was nice, but I don't know if I need this airplane. Maybe I'll go one step down. So my advice to people is really maybe charter a couple of times the plane you think you might want to see if it's really what you want because the cost to have to uh buy a plane and realize it's too small or too big and then you have to sell it could be very expensive it's much cheaper to charter a couple times see how it goes and uh and then if you like it and you really want to buy the plane you can buy the plane we haven't talked about this yet but it's a huge deal it's actually a very big beautiful deal the big beautiful bill but uh can you talk about I think they renamed it.

48:54Did they really? I think so. I don't know what they renamed it to. Well, that's what I know it by. Yeah, yeah. But can you talk about how the government is now helping write off aviation? It's really writing it off in a huge way. The Big Beautiful Bill is not the first time we've seen this. In 2017, Trump announced the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was the first bill that introduced bonus depreciation. And then it phased down over time and it was reintroduced in 2025 with a big, beautiful bill. But essentially what bonus depreciation is, is it allows you to expense the entire value of the plane the year you buy it.

49:39So if you buy a$10 million airplane, you can take a$10 million business deduction the year you bought the plane. Even if you financed 80 % of it, maybe you only put down$2 million on the airplane. You get to take a$10 million expense in your business. And if you're in California and your income is 51%. My ears popped. Yeah, we're in our descent to San Francisco. If you're in California and you're paying 51 % taxes, right? You're essentially, rather than paying the government$5 million in taxes, you can buy a$10 million airplane, put down$2 million, reinvest the other three. So this is like, as you can imagine, a huge unlock for people.

50:23So this is why people are buying$75 million airplanes. That's exactly why people are buying$75 million. There's no other good reason. That's amazing. Yeah. The only thing is that it does need to be used in a true business purpose. You have to have a defensible business purpose for the plane. And you have to use it 51 % or more in business use. Now, this brings up a very interesting conversation because most of the liquidity and the wealth being created today, specifically with a SpaceX IPO, right? And in the tech world is not from people who have businesses. These are employees at companies that have been working there their whole life.

51:07They skipped like five steps in the wealth generation phase. And now they want to start flying private, but they don't have a legitimate business to run their aircraft through. And on top of that, most of their wealth is in the stock market, which is tax capital gains. Which, even if you had a legitimate business purpose to write off a plane against, you would only be writing off your capital gains. When you sell the plane, you have to pay something called recapture. and recapture is where you basically have to tell the government, now I sold the plane and repay the taxes on whatever you sold the plane for because you told the government it was worth zero when you initially bought it.

51:56Recapture is always taxed at ordinary income rates. So if you buy an airplane and try to offset capital gains, which is like, let's say your SpaceX shares, and then you sell it five years later and you recapture at ordinary income, you're essentially taking a very high interest loan from the government. You saved some tax today, but you paid way more taxes when you sold it. So I think this is going to be a big headwind for this new era, this new generation of wealth. And the current model, the traditional fractional ownership models, I think this is going to be a big headwind because the current structure does not quite fit this type of consumer.

52:46What kind of background checks do you need to do with new clients, new flyers? Well, whenever we fly someone on an airplane, they go through standard like TSA. We run their name against like the no fly list. If you're going to buy a plane, you're going to get a loan. There's going to be like KYC and AML. So like standard, like no different than if you were opening a bank account. um but that's really it did you see the mr beast winner who got caught smuggling drugs i think i saw that was pretty ridiculous what well it was like how does anybody was it on the plane that he won or was it on a different plane i think it was on the plane that he won huh i would imagine yeah that's crazy well like i said when you buy an airplane buying the plane is the cheapest part of the equation you have to maintain it so maybe maybe he needed uh some cash flow to keep it going Maybe that's what incentivized him to get the plane in the first place.

53:39Maybe he had a big mission ahead of him and it was his job to win the Mr. Beast contest in order to complete the mission. Yeah, I mean like every once in a while you see these things, but that was pretty crazy when I heard that story. Yeah, it was pretty wild. How long do you think it would take to sell a jet today? I've seen as quick as one hour. One hour? Yeah, there was a G650 that just sold in one hour. To who? They hit the market and then it just sold an hour later. I have no idea. Where's the market? What's the market? Is there an auction? Is there like a Sotheby's for planes? There's like brokers and they talk to each other.

54:12And yeah, so I mean, we're seeing like stuff as short as one hour. And then like, sometimes if it's a bad airplane, it could take six months. But it's a pretty, it's a pretty liquid market today. Damn. Okay, I'm really curious about this. I fly a lot. Is it true that if you fly private, you have less jet lag? I think the best benchmark in the commercial space is the Boeing 787. And the Boeing 787 has a cabin altitude of just under 8 ,000 feet. If you looked at the sort of the best example in the private jet market, like the global 7500, that has a cabin altitude of about 3 ,100 feet. What does that mean?

54:54So it means that the altitude that it feels like you're at when you're flying is significantly lower than on the commercial airline, which makes a big difference for fatigue. So I actually think this is the one area that actually, especially in long missions, can make a very big difference. If you're flying somewhere for a business meeting and you don't want to be groggy the whole day, and then on the way back, having a cab out. And there's all sorts of cool things happening right now. We're seeing airplanes that have like circadian rhythm lighting. So they'll actually, you, you, you program the, your, your destination and it'll figure out, you know, where you are, where your destination is, and it will change the lighting, careful lighting around the time of day so that you can adjust your body.

55:39So maybe we don't need windows on aircraft as long as the, as long as the lighting adjusts, but yeah, there's all sorts of interesting things that could happen that do make a difference on long trips, especially if you're flying a lot and you're high function person, like Elon Musk or Jensen and you need to be places. I genuinely like I get jet lagged from flying LA to New York I did it back to back for two weeks and then after that I was like I need an IV yeah and then I ended up in the hospital. You do a life lap? Sometimes yeah if I can afford it but what what is surprising to me is I will get so jet lagged from that doing that twice a week and then sometimes I'll go to San Francisco in between and then I'm completely dead.

56:22And then you see videos of Jensen Long. He's in San Francisco one day. He's in Taiwan the next. He's in China. He's in DC. Like he is all over the place. It's crazy. What is the secret? Well, I mean, I think he's an incredible, he's an incredible entrepreneur and founder and business leader, but no, I think you're obviously running a business and you can see the difference between like losing, losing days. And I think that's why private innovation is really such a tool that allows you to do so much more and unlock so much more and really save days, full days that otherwise you would have been sleeping or groggy because you got stuck in the system.

57:01It's really an incredible, I think in some ways, non-negotiable tool. Today's episode is sponsored by VCX by Fundrise, the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. Learn more at getvcx.com. Some of you may not have heard this yet, but our sponsor Public just launched something called Generated Assets, and it brings AI into investing in a way I've honestly never seen before. Here's how it works. You type in an idea like AI-powered supply chain companies with positive free cash flow, or defense tech companies growing revenue over 25 % year over year.

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58:17Paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures in the description. Enterprise AI runs on Merge, the AI infra platform for integrations, agent tooling, and model orchestration, so your teams ship product, not plumbing. Mistral, Dropbox, and Drada already trust Merge in production. Start building at merge.dev. Founders scale faster on Deal. Set up payroll for any country in minutes. Hire anyone anywhere. Get visas handled fast. And get back to building. Visit deal.com slash sorcery. That's D-E-E-L dot com slash sorcery. So you're a pilot. You've been flying for over 10 years. You fly a lot. What are your biggest health hacks?

58:57I don't know if I'm the healthiest pilot. Oh, that's exactly what people want to hear. Well, I think, you know, flying around is not the healthiest thing in general. Like flying so much, sitting in a chair for that long, you know, like probably not good. So I don't fly that much anymore. Look, you're sitting in a chair flying a plane versus people sitting in a chair like doing ad sales. Like I don't know. I guess it's true. But sometimes I think like when you keep changing time zones, it really messes with you, right? Like you're going, you're going across the, you know, you keep changing your circadian rhythm.

59:32You're flying coast to coast or across the, across the Pacific. Like these, these things over time, they start to really, really, really mess with you. How do you stay hydrated? I drink a lot of water. Just water. You don't add any fancy electrolytes? I don't know. Am I supposed to? Really? Yeah. Yeah. You're supposed to. That's like a whole thing. I didn't get all the, I didn't get all the, all the tips. Yeah. But no, it's, wow. Look at that. I tell you, there's just nothing like California. I know, Brad. I wish you were getting B-roll. You got to get some B-roll of that mountain there. We haven't covered this yet, but what are the hidden fees that people encounter when chartering?

1:00:07This is like a whole episode. Really? Yes. Actually, why? Because I'm very passionate about it. Oh. The easy one is de-icing. So a lot of times, you know, when you fly charter, if the plane has to de-ice, sometimes you don't even realize, maybe it wasn't even snowing, but the plane got in the night before and snowed overnight. And then before you got to the airport, they needed de-ice. Sometimes that could be more than twice the cost of the actual flight itself. Seriously? Yeah, we've seen it like$24 ,000 de-ice bill in Aspen. So de-icing is something that charter companies will typically pass along to the broker, which will pass along to you.

1:00:41And it could be a surprise because a couple of weeks later, you get the bill. They're like, wait a minute, I thought I paid for this flight. And if you read the contracts, it specifically says they could pass it along. When you work with the fractionals, like NetJets, FlexJet, typically they'll bake it into the price. So they'll include it in the price and they'll sort of absorb it across the system. And this way nobody gets any surprises. The second one, and the one I'm much more passionate about, is the event fees. So recently we've seen a private equity come into the private aviation space.

1:01:11They're buying these FBOs. They're called FBOs, the fixed-based operator, where you park the planes. People just sling that term around all the time. Yeah, people just assume that you know. But it's basically where the planes park overnight where people get on and off the airplanes. And what the private equity companies have kind of realized is that they can't really adjust the fuel price so much because everybody knows what the fuel price should be based on oil prices. But what they realize is that they have this monopoly on ramp space on the ground. And their only way to really squeeze additional margin out of these businesses is to sneak in these event fees.

1:01:46And they've really in the last year or two gotten very egregious. I mean, you'll see event fees for, I saw an event fee for Harvard graduation. Like that's not a special event, right? Like you don't need a special event fee for Harvard graduation. Of course, there's Super Bowl and there's like all those. And sometimes those can get ridiculous. They could be in the 20s or 30s or$40 ,000 just for a short slot to drop off or pick up. Again, another area where going fractional really helped because these companies, they'll buy, they'll pre-commit 500 ,000 square foot of ramp space knowing that the masters are going to have hundreds of arrivals.

1:02:23So it still costs you something, but it's significantly less. But event fees is something that has really caught everybody by surprise. And I think there needs to be some correction where these businesses are significantly taking advantage of their industry. What's the craziest thing that you've seen? In terms of like event fees or? Anything. Oh. I had Kanye West fly with us and take a picture of my co-pilot's shoes. What? Walked into the cockpit and said, can I take a picture of your shoes? Is that how they modeled off the Yeezys? I guess so. Really? Yeah, I think he was wearing his like big, his like, his big boots or whatever.

1:03:00Yeah. So, I mean, there's like, you know, we see some pretty crazy stuff. But I think for the most part, like, we fly a lot of very normal people. like people who just like live their life they they look at this as a way to get more done and um um you know typically like uh really like solid people like solid experiences nothing too crazy what kind of safety protocol do you have to keep up with and especially when people are looking at these planes or these different services i think it's like net jets that's never had a death i mean that's how they run like their marketing but like what should people be asking or or kind of be um comforted by on safety standards and i think warren buffett said like you should spend every penny you can on safety and then more right like uh they're so i think like the large providers understand the importance of safety um and they run like very very safe operations like they understand how much more scrutiny private aviation gets over commercial aviation.

1:04:08And so like safety is like something that is like ingrained in the DNA. When you're chartering a plane, it's a little bit more difficult to discern what the safety standard of the plane that you're flying. Like you don't really know. If you looked at all the hours flown in 2025, 35 % were flown at the top five providers. And then all the rest was done with all the rest of the hours flown were like small charter operators that have five, 10 airplanes, maybe sometimes even three airplanes. So it's a very long tail of operators out there. And when you're looking for a flight, you really don't know what you're getting.

1:04:44So having a good broker is very important. Having a broker, a charter broker, not a sale broker, charter broker who knows the industry, who's visited these operators. They've gone to these like in the hangars and met the staff to to people i think it's very important having a broker you can trust to help guide you there is some like online data you can look up like the fa has has some guidance about um you can see like if the aircraft is on a 135 certificate if it's like legal and charter charter legal i think i saw chamath polyapathia posted that he only flies on a plane with argus platinum um so i'll talk a little bit about argus argus is like a third party safety rating that comes in and does like an audit it's really like a pay for play, right?

1:05:29Like you basically pay them money and then they give you a certification, especially at their like gold rating. Their platinum rating is a little bit more of a in-depth. They come to your office, they do an audit. And I think that like, you know, certainly it's better than, than nothing, but I do think we need more. I think we, I do think we need a better system. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll say, I think we need a better system for helping unknown travelers, like from figuring out which aircraft are safer versus which aircraft are not and I think that's that that's a big gap right now in our industry.

1:05:59Do you have any particular flight rules around safety like times you can fly in certain areas or like sketchy I don't know like Aspen that airport is sketchy as hell oh yeah I don't like flying there it's freaky do you have any rules around locations like that or or what's that one island and like St. Bart's like yeah yeah so say I don't think anybody really flies St. Bart except for like the small little propeller airplanes um there'sst martin which is which is nearby aspen is a very tricky airport and of course it's a very popular airport people like to fly people like to fly to so i think our fifth busiest airport is aspen really yeah uh maybe six actually behind the white planes so people people fly into aspen a lot um aspen has its own unique tricky uh set of constraints we don't fly into aspen at night we won't do it okay um yeah we're we're like not even allowed to like even if you want to but you shouldn't be falling into asthma tonight there's no there's no good reason to do that telluride is another airport that we have some restrictions around yeah i mean there there's a couple of them out there jackson hole wyoming sun valley so there's certain airports that we have an extra set of standards that our pilots operate by we our pilots use something called a gom a general operations manual which is like basically where They have the rules of what they can and can't do within our company.

1:07:17And we have very strict rules about certain airports. Sounds like mountains are a big issue. Mountains are a big issue. Mountains and airplanes aren't very friendly with each other. So you mentioned busy airports. So what are the busiest airports that you guys run out of? I mean, New York, of course, is the busiest. Teterboro is like where everybody's coming in and out of from a charter perspective. I think like maybe Miami, which is where our main maintenance hangar is and our home base is, is probably our second busiest airport. Van Nuys where we took off today is our third busiest. We have a lot of demand out of LA.

1:07:48San Francisco, White Plains, then Aspen. San Francisco is about to get a lot busier. About to get a lot busier. A lot busier. Yeah. What do you think that pass off is going to be like? I'm so curious. Are you getting a lot of demand from people in San Francisco? Have they been reaching out yet? Yeah. They are flying to San Jose. Flying to San Jose a lot. Oakland, San Francisco, a lot of people go into Hawaii from there. It's, I guess, like, far enough away to vacation. But San Francisco is, I would say, five years ago was probably not even in our top 10. By the way, we are landing right now. And I really just wanted to keep on rolling because I wanted to see if Brett could handle this.

1:08:31Right now, we have two cameras set And we're about to touch the ground. What do you think is going to happen? Brett's got a big smile.

1:08:41Well. Voila. Well, we haven't hit it yet. So, there we go. We have just touched down in San Francisco. Brett is still standing. There's a little bit of shaking. But overall, I think you can see it was a pretty smooth landing. We don't have Navy pilots over here. This was a great flight. This was a great flight and a great conversation. The best part about living in California and living in LA and coming up to San Francisco for work all the time is it is literally the most gorgeous flight ever. There's nothing like it. I try to fly around the sunrise and sunset because you get the real view. Although in the foggy season, you can't really see much and it's scary.

1:09:17I hate flying and zero visibility. I don't know how pilots do it. It doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah, someone very wise once told me that every day in California is a happy day. You could live here, yeah. Every day. It's a choice. Unfortunately, taxes are brutal, but it's really pretty. Might be worth it, but who am I to say? So I think like after everything we talked about today, one of the biggest takeaways I got from you is that flying private is utility. You save time. You get more hours in the day. We're seeing so many hardcore work maxing types of cultures here in San Francisco, too. it's not just 996 but it's like 24 7.

1:10:00Elon Musk does this he doesn't even have a time zone that's what Ashley Vance said so what's your view on where you think work's gonna go with all these liquidity events and do you think people are gonna work harder or less I think like certain people will it's like in their DNA they will always work harder and I think that you're gonna see like certain people especially the people today that are like building continue to build and for them like having the ability to do be in multiple places in one day that like that's going to be extremely important having Starlink we talked about having Starlink on board I think that's gonna be extremely important right to be able to be like connected the entire way and but I think like I think certain people are not gonna work but I think it would seem to me that the people and they don't get the tax write-offs and the tax write-offs I think we're gonna see the people who are working hard today will work even harder and we'll do we'll be able to do even more you're seeing that with your clients yes with Starlink too.

1:10:56With Starlink too. Okay. So as we close out, thank you so much for everything in the flight up to San Francisco. If people want to reach you, how should they get in touch? You can come to our website, flightcraft.com. You can reach out that way. Please don't take my LA to SF flights. I would like them. Yeah. Thank you so much. I will see you on the way back. Okay. All right. So we're now here in San Francisco. We flew all the way from LA and I have Izzy with me and Captain Roz. Okay. So Captain Captain Roz was kind enough to fly as captain. How did you get your pilot's license?

1:11:30Israel Slodowitz:I started flying in the Air Force. Started in the flight academy, got most of my training there. And then I went to a different role in the Air Force. But I always knew I wanted to be a pilot. So finishing the military service, I went straight to flight school, got my civilian licenses started as a private pilot that's where everybody starts it was just for fun back then and then eventually I decided to make this a career so I went back to flight school professional training and I made it to to here anybody's dream job really and And it's the best office view I can ask for. And that's really the reason why I like doing it.

1:12:22Israel Slodowitz:Every time I'm in the air, it's like meditation for me. What's the longest flight you have flown? Longest flights? We go coast to coast quite often. The longest that I have flown was probably Hawaii to the East Coast. So it was about nine hours of flight. Challenging. Do you get cramps in your legs? You get up. So these size of airplanes, you always have at least two pilots in the cockpit. So every once in a while you can get up, stretch your feet, go to the restroom if you need a break, maybe nibble on something just to get your blood flowing. It's actually very important to do so on the long legs because the cockpit can get a little cramped, yes.

1:13:06Israel Slodowitz:But we try to also interact with our passengers, which is a whole different aspect of being a corporate pilot, which is very nice. So I asked Izzy what his health hack is when flying so much. How do you avoid jet lag and how do you not get dehydrated? What's yours? I drink a lot of water during and before flights and And lotion, a lot of lotion. The air can get pretty dry up there. Jet lag, it's a challenge. Pilots work by Zulu time, right? So international coordinated time. You just get your breakfast, lunch, dinner according to that clock. So it doesn't matter on which coast you're in. You just get your schedule.

1:13:55Israel Slodowitz:Because you can find yourself on the east coast and then the next day on the west coast. and then even Alaska or Hawaii, you feel it. It'd be quite challenging. It is challenging, mostly for my wife. When I get back home on the East Coast, I'm jet-legged. She doesn't like it, but it's part of the job. So there's a hot take and it's with flight attendants. I want to ask you both, do you need flight attendants on private aviation? So it really depends on the customer's preference. This plane is totally certified to fly without one and we usually don't have a flight attendant But as soon as we get up to altitude away from the ground, we're pretty much free, right?

1:14:37Israel Slodowitz:So we have three pilots on this plane a captain a first officer and an autopilot as soon as we're not task saturated one of us can get out and The passengers should never feel that they don't have a flight attendant. We cater we make drinks we clean we entertain them everything that a flight attendant will do we do the same what do you think i mean that's that's exactly right and i think that what we found is that most of our customers actually prefer not to have a flight attendant we've had times where we've offered them like for free hey we have a flight attendant on board and they're like no we prefer not to have one like people want privacy people like to just have their own space you know it's a part of flying private part of the convenience of flying private is just having you having your own space being able to just kind of uh uh be in your own element uh you know and and and prove your own rhythm and i think having a flight that's meant just just fall okay now jssx that's a jsx landing right there um yeah so i think people just don't people prefer like quiet i i so that's i think what we see a lot some aircraft like the bigger aircraft are required to have flight tenants so above a certain number of like seats on board for safety reasons you have to have flight tenants to I have like emergency exit training and stuff like that.

1:15:49Also like when you do long flights, making beds, meals, you know, it's nice to have, but 90 % of the missions we have, like people prefer no flight than it. I'm really curious for both of your answers on this. I think I know your answer for sure, but what is the favorite type of plane that you've flown?

1:16:06Israel Slodowitz:I never had a bad plane. Okay. I like them all, single engine props. I still tend to fly them quite often just to keep the scales sharp. um this is an amazing plane i i owe my career to it it will take you far and wide and also to places where you really can't go with anything else um it's it's great it will go coast to coast it will go into the mountains it will go in the islands this is the plane i like the most and and i have my most experience on it and it's two of everything so it's super safe two of everything if if something fails we can get safely anywhere no problem if we're flying over mountains over water.

1:16:50Israel Slodowitz:This plane is super redundant. They made over a thousand of these which is tremendous in airplane terms. It's crazy popular. Everywhere we go there's at least another one parking right next to us so it's a really good plane. What do you think people should look for when they're chartering or buying planes? There's a lot of technical stuff, but when you charter, small details. I like to say that when you go to a restroom at a restaurant, if the restroom is not clean, the kitchen isn't clean. So if the planes look good and they're tidy and they're clean, you can count on the people in the cockpit.

1:17:31That's a very good point. Like, you know, a lot of times when you go on a charter, you'll open the drawers and stuff. You should do this on your next flight. You open the drawers and stuff and you just see like it looks like a walmart supercenter there's just like you know like there's just like every type of snack there and like there's just no there's no like rhyme or rhythm there's nothing there's nothing you know people just kind of it's just like a complete disaster if you look at our plane you'll just see everything is super clean everything's itemized it tells you a lot about the company behind the scenes that's running it based on like how the drawers look and and so it's just like something that we've been really drilling drilling in our our crew for a very long time so what is your favorite type of plane we said you think you can guess so what do you what do you what would you guess there you go well i've had a difficult distance aircraft i mean i flew the gulfstream g550 it's an american bill airplane you could tell it's american bill it's like driving a gmc oh no everything is just so big everything is like the throttle lever is like this big it's like you know everything is just like they even they have double they have quadruple for everything um so i really love that airplane the challenger is just an amazing airplane i mean this was this is my first like real jet i ever flew um and uh it's such a capable mission-oriented airplane, but there's nothing like taking them a small little Cirrus and flying around the mountains and going to small little airports.

1:18:43And there's nothing like really getting to experience and enjoy flying. In these airplanes, you don't really enjoy flying as much because it's very, very process-oriented. You get in the cockpit and there's a script and a checklist and you follow the flight plan. The autopilot's flying most of the time. It's very, not very manual. You don't really get to enjoy flying. Okay, so we're on the tarmac. What is the most challenging plane to fly? What is the most difficult one?

1:19:10Israel Slodowitz:Challenging? Yeah. I would guess a tailwind, a tailwheel, sorry. A plane that has, this is a tricycle, so it has one gear in the front and two in the back. Other, most small airplanes, they have the one gear in the back. and that's very challenging, especially during taxi and landings. I don't have much experience on them, but I've tried it a few times. It is very challenging. By the way, I could tell when we landed that you were an Air Force pilot. Was it a good landing? Yeah, it was great. Not Navy. It was great. I mean, we have it on film. We can show you. Couldn't even feel it. But, I mean, we were joking because there is a certain...

1:19:50I'm not going to name names, but there is a certain airline around here that is a Navy landing every single time. It is so hard.

1:19:59Israel Slodowitz:It's called professionally firm. Professionally firm. What do you think is the most challenging? To fly? Yeah. I don't know. I flew on like a G-150 once. They're pretty old. That was a pretty old airplane. I didn't fly it, but I saw the pilots flying it. It looked like they were sweating. Would I do anything else? No. I wouldn't do anything else. Really? Yeah, it is challenging. It's being a lot outside of the house, on the road You get to learn how to live out of a suitcase A small carry-on But it's always dynamic It's always new places New cultures I've flown this to Sao Paulo, Brazil And I've flown it to Nome, Alaska You do have to make stops Sometimes for other considerations Like we could make it But we really don't want to end up at the very far end of Alaska with minimum fuel.

1:20:54Israel Slodowitz:So we take this into consideration. We made a stop on the way, but this was one hell of a, of a, an experience. Um, we saw polar bears there. It was pretty cool. Sam. Another area, by the way, that's like quite, quite crazy. Like the catering on airplanes, like people order like the airline catering and, um, and it's like so expensive and it's like such bad food and like everybody just orders DoorDash. It's like way better. It is like in and out or get like chick-fil-a like people just prefer that like you'd be surprised if you think you're flying you know flying private is all about like you know fancy fancy dining but there's nothing like a good chick-fil-a is always priced the same whether you take it on an airplane or in the car that's funny and then passengers love it they they really like they they just don't they just don't care okay that's a good tip catering don't do it don't do it uber eats or doordash Okay.

1:21:45Well, thank you so much. Thank you for flying us today. You're very welcome. That was a lovely flight.

1:21:49Israel Slodowitz:It's our pleasure, always. Hey, it's Molly. If you enjoy our interviews, check out our newsletter, Sorcery.bc, where we deliver a once a week top deals and tech headlines email, and also go deeper on our podcast interviews. Subscribe to Sorcery today. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen. Link in description to sign up. Thank you.