What a $75 Million Airplane Actually Costs to Own

We are in the middle of the largest wealth creation event in modern history. SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, Cerebras, Cursor, and more are heading to public markets or trading in secondaries, minting more millionaires and billionaires than ever on over $4 trillion dollars in expected liquidity. Flying private is one of the first things people want after a liquidity event, and it pulls them straight toward $75 million jets, often skipping every step the industry is used to. Israel ‘Izzy’ Slodowitz is the Founder of Craft, a Part 135 charter operator that also flies supplemental lift for NetJets, Flexjet, and Wheels Up. He turned that flying fleet into something most operators can't offer: an exchange fund built for the founders and early employees whose wealth is locked in a single stock. It takes in that concentrated position tax-deferred and backs it with real aircraft, not the self-storage and real estate that prop up legacy funds. Members diversify out of one position, defer the tax, and keep access to the planes. I joined him on one of their Challenger 350’s from Van Nuys to San Francisco to break down what this wave means for private aviation. Who is buying, what it really costs, why jets are appreciating for the first time, and why a generation whose net worth is locked in stock needs a structure the legacy ownership models were never built to offer. In this episode: The new-money buyer and the coming aircraft shortage Jet categories and prices, from light jets to the Global 8000 Buy vs charter vs jet card vs fractional, and when each makes sense Full cost of ownership: depreciation, pilots, maintenance, and downtime Exchange fund model and why an operating business changes the tax math Bonus depreciation, the 2025 tax bill, and the recapture trap Starlink, hidden fees, safety standards, and selling a jet in under an hour Video also features Captain Raz Matus. Craft: flycraft.com http://flycraft.com Israel Slodowitz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/israel-slodowitz 𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊 YouTube: https://youtu.be/BKC-6UlXtBw 𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒 • Brex https://brex.com/sourcery—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery • Turing https://turing.com/sourcery—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. https://turing.com/sourcery • VCX https://fundrise.com/vcx—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com http://getvcx.com • Deel https://www.deel.com/sourcery—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery • Public http://public.com/sourcery–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets https://public.com/generated-asset, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery • Merge https://merge.dev—The leading provider of customer-facing integrations and agentic tools for frontier LLMs, Fortune 500 organizations, and B2B SaaS companies. Visit https://merge.dev Follow Sourcery for the latest updates! https://www.sourcery.vc https://www.sourcery.vc/ Disclosure Paid Endorsement. Brokerage services by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC-registered adviser. Crypto trading provided by Zero Hash LLC, licensed by the NYSDFS. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at public.com/disclosures/ga. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Not flying blind. My name is Israel Slodowitz. I'm the founder and CEO of Craft. OpenAI just announced that they're going to be public. We're seeing like not just insane wealth creation moment, probably the largest we've seen in the history of humankind. But we're also seeing shift in how people spend their wealth. The most sought after thing, once you make some money, is start flying private. It's like the one thing everybody looks to do. It's truly a unique tool that nothing else replaces.

• 0:25Molly O'Shea?

  What does like a Jeff Bezos have? What does Elon Musk have?

• 0:29Speaker 00

  So when you think about like the Jeff Bezos of the world and Larry Page and Sergey Brin, they're typically G700, global 8000 category. That's like the top of the line. If you buy a $10 million airplane, you could take a $10 million business deduction the year you bought the plane.

• 0:43Molly O'Shea?

  This is why people are buying $75 million airplanes.

• 0:46Speaker 00

  That's exactly what people are buying. There's no other good reason.

• 0:58Molly O'Shea?

  Izzy, welcome to Sorcery.

• 1:00Speaker 00

  Good to be here. Thank you.

• 1:01Molly O'Shea?

  What are we doing right now? Where are we?

• 1:04Speaker 00

  We're sitting on a Challenger 350. This is a super mid aircraft. That's a can fly coast to coast. New York to California. You can fly California to Hawaii or to Europe. This is one of the aircraft that we operate in our charter company. I operate a part 135 charter company that I started six years ago while I was still in college. We now operate a fleet of these. We have pilots and we fly them all year round. We do a lot of supplemental flights for NetJets and FlexJet and Wheels Up and all the large providers. And I'm excited to talk to you about what we're building and about the industry.

• 1:39Molly O'Shea?

  I'm excited. I came across you guys through LinkedIn and these posts. You were doing some collaborative posts with some of the interviews that we've done. I did this amazing series with Michelle Del Bueno of A16Z Perennial, which is Mark and Ben's multifamily office. We did two episodes so far and it's all centered on the major wealth creation event that's happening right now. We're about to have more millionaires and billionaires minted than ever before with the OpenAI, SpaceX IPO, Anthropic IPO, the Cerebrus one that just happened, and all the secondaries and tenders that are going on also behind the surface. But right now, we're in this crazy period of time where A lot of people are gonna be making a lot of money.

• 2:23Molly O'Shea?

  And so with these conversations, I've been trying to get down to, okay, what do you do once you have that wealth? How do you manage it? And one of the topics in the conversation on wealth management is private aviation. So I'm really excited for, to talk about this today. And I'm just really curious. So are we seeing more private jets? What's the state of the market?

• 2:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, so it's, like you said, it's absolutely insane what's going on right now. We're sitting here on a Sunday. SpaceX is supposed to IPO this Thursday. So some of our clients and a lot of our investors are gonna be in New York for this iconic IPO. It's probably the largest IPO by twice as much as the last one. And this is just the first of many, right? OpenAI just announced that they're going to be going public. And we're seeing like, not just insane wealth creation moment, probably the largest we've seen in the history of humankind. But we're also seeing a shift in how people spend their wealth and their priorities.

• 3:33Speaker 00

  And also the type of wealth that they are generating. It's not the same wealth that was generated historically, where people kind of built a business over many, many years and they slowly diversified.

• 3:43Molly O'Shea?

  New money.

• 3:44Speaker 00

  This is just like completely new money. So, so there's like this massive tsunami that's hitting. And we're seeing it in our business. We're seeing it in the preferences of what people are choosing, how they're accessing private aviation. And of course, like, of course, the, the most sought after thing, once you make some money, is to start flying private. It's like the one thing everybody looks to do. It's, it's, it's truly a unique tool that nothing else replaces.

• 4:09Molly O'Shea?

  So how is that changing who's buying jets versus who's chartering them? What is the difference?

• 4:14Speaker 00

  First of all, we're seeing people entering the market buying bigger airplanes. So this airplane, for example, this is a Challenger 350. It's considered a supermid. It's considered what I like to call a proper jet. It has a flat floor. Normally, people would sort of enter the market by starting the charter, or they would start with getting a light jet. And people are now going straight for the supermids, straight for the heavy. They're going straight towards buying like the, you know, or buying or even chartering the latest and greatest. So we're just seeing like this big sort of skipping of steps that we are accustomed to in our industry. The other thing that I'll say about our industry is, you know, if there's almost 8 billion people in the world,

• 4:58Speaker 00

  0.0001% of them are flying private today, and that doubles, which I think it's going to more than double, to 0.0002, that has like a huge cataclysmic effect on our industry.

• 5:13Molly O'Shea?

  Why? What do you mean?

• 5:15Speaker 00

  So our industry is just not really built for like the manufacturers, the OEMs, the supply chain, engines, parts, the speed at which these factories are able to build airplanes, the speed at which you can train pilots.

• 5:25Molly O'Shea?

  Are we gonna have a shortage of private jets?

• 5:26Speaker 00

  There's going to be a huge shortage, yeah. Yeah, I mean, these are obviously depreciating assets. These airplanes, you know, airplanes are equipment, right? They don't go up in value normally, but we're seeing them go up in value for the first time almost ever, especially in the higher end of the market. So that like small little change in wealth, which I think is actually huge, is something this industry is not at all ready for. And I think we're gonna, there's gonna be a lot of adjustment and price fluctuation and uncertainty until, until like the new, the new wave sort of takes effect.

• 5:59Molly O'Shea?

  I guess to give more of like the 101 behind all the sizes and pricings and that kind of thing, could you walk through, you mentioned it before, but like, can you walk through all the sizes and then up to like, okay, what does like a Jeff Bezos have? What does Elon Musk have? Drake has a very weird plane, but that's just him, and that was a deal. But I'm curious, could you like walk through all the different planes and like when you should start at which one? And then obviously, we can talk about the different kinds of. Financing options for those, but I guess first let's start with the sizes and the prices on them.

• 6:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, so typically like the the entry level, what was the entry level would be something like a maybe a light jet. So like a Phenom 100 or a Phenom 300. Seats about six, you can fly about an hour, two hour flight. Step above that, you go into the midsize category, Cetacean XLS or Latitude are like the popular ones. Step above that, we go into the super mid category. This is like, as I call it, the proper jet, which is what we're in today. Super mid category, you have like the Challenger 350 that we're in today. And then there's the Praetor 600, also phenomenal airplane.

• 7:19Speaker 00

  Above that, we go into the heavy jet category. So think of like a Gulfstream G450. People are flying these heavy jets quite frequently, even on short missions. So we're seeing people who have large families that want to travel, that they're like, we don't even want the light or super mid, like they'll go in straight for the heavy even on a two or three hour flight. And then, of course, if you want to go to Europe, you would need something called an ultra long range. Something like a Global 8000 is like the top of the line. So when you think about like the Jeff Bezos of the world and the Larry and Sergey Brin, or Larry Page and Sergey Brin,

• 7:59Speaker 00

  you're, they're typically G700, Global 8000 category. That's like the top of the line.

• 8:08Molly O'Shea?

  And you fly too.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  I fly, I'm a pilot as well, I'm certified pilot. I only mostly fly for fun now, I have a full company to manage and, and keeps me quite busy. But I am certified in this airplane, actually.

• 8:19Molly O'Shea?

  You're flying today.

• 8:20Speaker 00

  I'm not going to be flying today. Yeah, yeah, we have two great pilots on board, but I'll be flying from back here.

• 8:25Molly O'Shea?

  So walking through all of those different options, when does it make sense to buy a plane versus charter?

• 8:33Speaker 00

  So the traditional logic is somewhere between 150 hours a year to 250 hours a year is when you want to start thinking about owning a plane. But I think it's important to really understand why. And it's important to understand what are the reasons you really want to own a plane? The first reason is The flexibility. So when you charter or when you even own a fraction of an airplane, there's usually like long call out, usually at least a 24 hour notice call out. And they're not very flexible on changing your time when you want to leave. So I have an example of a customer of ours that flew to, he had a bunch of warehouses in the Reno area.

• 9:14Speaker 00

  He lived in San Francisco and he flew and he owns a plane and he flew his plane to Reno to go visit his factories. And initially his scheduled like return was supposed to be for 6pm, but by 1pm he was done his tour. So he decided, hey, text my pilots and see if they're ready to go. And by the time he got to the airport, the plane was all buttoned up and they were, they were out four hours early. When you're chartering or when you look at like a fractional ownership, it's a lot more difficult to do that. So there's like some flexibility, I think, in owning a plane. And even if you're flying less than 150 hours, you might want to consider owning, just because if you need that like four hour less sort of call out. On the other side of the spectrum, owning a plane is extremely complex.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  It's basically running a little mini airline. You're dealing with pilots, you're dealing with maintenance.

• 10:03Molly O'Shea?

  Do you have to put that in an LLC? Like does that, how do you actually make that like tax advantaged?

• 10:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean typically all aircraft are in a single purpose LLC, like an SPV. And they'll usually be like under the business. So an LLC is owned by the business. And then the LLC will have a lease agreement in place with the business for tax efficiency. But yeah, so I think like on the, on the other side of the spectrum, owning airplanes complicated. There's a lot that goes into it. We'll talk more about that. So we're seeing people that are even flying 300 hours a year. They're like, I don't want to deal with owning a plane. And I think actually like that's one of the big differences in this new generation of wealth. These people don't want complexity. Most of them are able to book well in advance. They're not last minute people. They're, they are willing to book seven days in advance, two weeks in advance. They don't need that four hour call out most of the time.

• 10:52Speaker 00

  If they do, they can find other options and. Those people would rather simplicity, ease of use. They don't want to deal with the complexity of owning a plane. So in some cases, even above 300 hours, it doesn't always make sense to own. But typically, in that sort of range, the second reason you own a plane is for cost efficiency. So once you start hitting the 250-hour range, the cost of owning and spreading the pilot costs and all the fixed costs around one aircraft flying 300 hours a year starts to make much more sense.

• 11:24Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, let's go through a scenario. You just bought a Global 8000. Walk through the financing of that and the maintenance. This is an extreme example, I'm aware.

• 11:33Speaker 00

  It's an extreme example.

• 11:34Molly O'Shea?

  But let's shock the people.

• 11:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, I think, first of all, a Global 8000 is like a $75 million airplane, just to put things into perspective. So that's like extremely expensive airplane to buy. It's really like you're going for the top of the line. Most people don't actually buy brand-new. Even if they can, they don't. So the maintenance for a brand-new airplane looks very different than a maintenance on a used airplane. Most people tend to buy used aircraft, aircraft that are pre-owned. That's what it's called. Whereas a new aircraft, you'll have warranties and all sorts of... The manufacturer will give you all sorts of stuff like that, make the maintenance costs a little bit less expensive. But say you bought a Global 8000, $75 million.

• 12:21Speaker 00

  Typically, the first thing you have to think about is depreciation costs. So the aircraft do generally go down in value. They generally do not go up in value. So if you factor in a 10% a year reduction in value, when you go to sell the plane, you're not going to be able to get as much money back. So a lot of people kind of ignore that, but you really want to bake that into the cost of running the plane. Then you need to hire pilots. So you'll have to go out and find pilots. Typically...

• 12:54Speaker 00

  You'll want at least three pilots, especially if you're going to fly longer missions. Pilots get sick, pilots need to go to training twice a year. So you'll need to hire three to four pilots. That might run you one to two million a year. There's insurance costs, there's hangar costs, and then there's maintenance costs, of course. Right? And maintenance costs is kind of where everybody gets, they buy the plane, they think it's like, it's a great investment. And then they're like, now the plane's down for six months because the windshield breaks or they can't get a part for the engine. So maintenance is like another area. And this is kind of where people maybe try it out and then swear off after doing it for some time.

• 13:30Molly O'Shea?

  Go through the different prices of Citation, G450. We obviously just went through Global 8000, but maybe just talk through the starter kind of prices.

• 13:42Speaker 00

  First of all, there's a journalist called Doug Golin, who has a website called Private Jet Card Comparisons. He does a great job. If you are very serious about flying private and you do want to get like the latest pricing on jet cards on different aircraft categories, highly recommend looking into Doug Golin. But I think the pricing is somewhere around $7,500 for entry level light jet per hour to fly. About $9,500 an hour for a midsize. So most people are actually, you know, buying, not, it's not that they can't buy new, they don't buy new. Because buying new is like very, very expensive. But if you're buying sort of pre-owned airplane,

• 14:24Speaker 00

  a light jet will run you around three to five million bucks.

• 14:30Speaker 00

  A midsize, something like this will be anywhere from 10 to 20. And a heavy jet, maybe 20 to 30 million dollars, just the sticker price, just to get into the airplane. Buying the plane is just the beginning of the journey, right? That's the cheapest part of owning a plane. Then you have the pilots, the fixed costs, the maintenance costs, the fuel costs. You're probably looking at anywhere from two to four million bucks a year to run the plane. It just... Just to keep it running for you. So as you can see, it's very expensive. And unless you really have a need for it, or a real business need for it, it's something that a lot of people will do and then they'll swear off of it.

• 15:07Molly O'Shea?

  Since we just went through what full ownership looks like, let's get more to like what people really, most people actually do. And so there's a couple of different options where you can charter, you can get a jet card, and then you can also do fractional ownership. What can you just define for people who don't know? Like, define what each one of those are and then how the pricing changes.

• 15:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, so typically, the way people first experience private aviation is maybe they've heard of like an empty leg, right? They've jumped on an empty leg. What an empty leg is, is where the plane maybe has one trip landing in LA. Another trip the next day is departing out of San Francisco. So the plane will need to move, reposition between LA and San Francisco. And sometimes companies will sell that as an empty leg and for a significantly reduced price because they have to go anyways. So sometimes people get experience to private aviation through these empty legs. But I think it's probably worth glossing over because it's not really the utility and the reason people fly private, right? Like, an empty leg is more of a luxurious,

• 16:13Speaker 00

  more of an experiential type of transaction. People buy airplanes or people fly private, they typically do it as a utility, as a way to conduct business or for like the ease of comfort with their family. And they want to be able to go on their schedule. They don't want to be flying on someone else's schedule. So typically, the way somebody will enter the market is through charter. Usually, the first taste they'll have of private aviation. We operate a charter company. We charter our airplanes out. Chartering a plane can be great, but because you don't have all the commitments. But you really have to be careful of like, safety. It's very hard to know what you're going to get. And the prices can fluctuate quite drastically.

• 16:56Speaker 00

  So one day, it might cost you like $12,000. The next day, it's costing you $24,000 for the exact same flight, right? So a lot of times, people will charter and then say, you know, why are the prices fluctuating so much? And then they'll upgrade to what's called jet card. I'll explain to you what a jet card is. A jet card is essentially prepaid charter. So you're giving a deposit to somebody.

• 17:23Speaker 00

  And they are essentially sourcing charter for you at a fixed price. So rather than one day paying 12,000, the next day paying 24,000, they'll charge you 18,999, right? And you'll pay for both flights 18,999. So actually, you're actually paying a little bit more than you would have paid during charter, but you at least know when you want to fly, it's going to cost you 18,999. So you're really getting essentially more expensive charter. So it's, and also, JetCard is typically like where you'll first maybe get a taste of a NetJets or a Flexjet type of experience because they offer JetCard services as well. So that's typically where you'll maybe first enter into the bigger leagues of flying private.

• 18:08Molly O'Shea?

  And then where does fractional come in?

• 18:09Speaker 00

  So fractional comes in really at the next, the next step, right? So fractional, so you've maybe, maybe you flew some charters and didn't like that you got, kept getting different airplanes and different prices. You got a JetCard and you just gave them a massive deposit and you realized it wasn't that much better than charter. So you decide, okay, now I want to like maybe move to the ownership side of the aisle. And fractional is really on the ownership side of the aisle. So the main difference between the two is that on the fractional, you know, you're, you are carrying the residual risk of the plane. So if the airplane depreciates, the cost of depreciation, the cost of capital is essentially on your dime, not on the charter company's dime. So you're getting a more consistent experience.

• 18:54Speaker 00

  You're getting an ownership type of experience. So you're getting a premium sort of product, but you're also paying a premium for it because you hold the, essentially the residual risk of the aircraft. So fractional and the two largest providers is NetJets and then second largest is Flexjet, do a phenomenal job and you can essentially buy a 1/8 or a 1/16 of a plane. They'll manage all the operations, the pilots, you'll never have to worry about maintenance. Plane will be there at six hours or 24 hours notice and You're sort of getting a taste of of ownership.

• 19:31Molly O'Shea?

  You run a charter business. How is it different?

• 19:33Speaker 00

  Basically, there's two there's two sides to craft. There's like our operating business, which is like somewhere in between the fractional and the Jack Card. We're mostly like a B to B company. We sell to all these other larger companies, which are brokers on these platforms. But what makes it interesting is that we actually, because it's an operating business and we generate cash, we are able to run this exchange fund, which is a completely separate financial product that's designed for people that have low basis stock. Exchange fund, are you familiar with exchange funds at all? Yeah. So exchange funds, you know, a simple way to explain it is like, you know, 10 people come together with 10 different stocks and they all contribute the stock into a fund and they all get the benefit of owning. What people don't realize is that

• 20:15Speaker 00

  unless you have an operating business to run it through, like you have a business, right? You have income, you have cash flow, right? So you have a business you're running, you're running everything through. Unless you have an operating business to run it through,

• 20:27Speaker 00

  you're, there aren't really any tax benefits. If you're like a SpaceX employee and you have a lot of stock, right? You're not, you don't have a business to run this airplane through. So not only are you paying like sticker price for the flights, but you're actually paying almost double that because you have to sell stock to fund it. Right? So this is, I think, one of the problems with this sort of new massive wealth creation.

• 20:54Molly O'Shea?

  And just the onslaught of Silicon Valley becoming so big and all these people with like huge equity values.

• 21:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's insane. And and the the legacy models of like putting your, buying an airplane and running it through your business and taking tax it right off, like it doesn't quite work for these people. Their net worth is in capital gains, not in ordinary income.

• 21:15Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 21:15Speaker 00

  Right? So we actually built an exchange fund, which is a very old financial product or financial structure where people can diversify, people, a bunch of people can contribute their stock into a fund, pool together, kind of like a potluck, right? Where everybody comes with a dish and they walk away with a meal. And one of the requirements, one of the rules for these funds to exist is that there needs to be an operating business in the fund as well. And historically, exchange funds have used real estate and public storage units in Albuquerque, right, and like self-storage, like things that people don't care about. And what we did was we took an already existing, thriving, operating cash flow business, right? And we basically layered an exchange fund on top of that.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  And what it allows us to do is it allows us to offer the members in the fund access, premium access to these planes they wouldn't be able to get otherwise.

• 22:09Molly O'Shea?

  Wow. You have VCs on your website. Did you raise venture capital? Like, how did this start?

• 22:16Speaker 00

  Well, it actually just started by understanding that my problem was their problem. My problem was that I realized that when I had a single airplane, I had a very volatile P and L, profit and loss statement, right? So like, one month, we had like, very profitable, the next month, it was like, very unprofitable because there was some sort of maintenance issue or a pilot left. And what I realized is like, as I started adding more airplanes to my fleet, I realized that the volatility started to calm down. And then while one airplane was down, four airplanes were flying, and when one airplane was down, six airplanes were flying. And I realized that the customers that I was flying had the exact same issue. They didn't really have a private aviation issue.

• 23:01Speaker 00

  There are many options when it comes to private aviation, all very good ones. But what they did have was a stock problem, right? Big part of their net worth was concentrated in a single company. They were one article, one news report away from losing 13%, 14% of their net worth in a day, right? IBM lost 13% of its value in a single day. I think Broadcom, just now, just this past week, lost like, 10% in one day on a single earnings call or a single article that Anthropic is building some sort of software, right? So people who have now built this like, sort of generational wealth for the first time also had a volatility issue. And I realized that

• 23:45Speaker 00

  I had the same problem my customers had. And that's when I started to like learn about exchange funds and understand how they work and their mechanics and do deep dive and ultimately like came to my customers and said, hey, this is like what I'm building and and they were like immediately very interested. And that's kind of how we we pivoted into this exchange fund model.

• 24:03Molly O'Shea?

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• 24:44Molly O'Shea?

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• 25:29Molly O'Shea?

  Visit turing.com/sorcery. Okay, Izzy, we are now flying. We're in air. It's actually not that loud. I was really worried about that.

• 25:40Speaker 00

  It's pretty quiet.

• 25:41Molly O'Shea?

  There's pilots in the cockpit. You just walk through the different types of financing and ways to fly private. But what is the most economical way to fly private?

• 25:55Speaker 00

  On a friend's airplane.

• 25:57Molly O'Shea?

  Okay.

• 25:58Speaker 00

  It's free.

• 25:59Molly O'Shea?

  Uh, how do you find these friends?

• 26:02Speaker 00

  That's, that's the key question. Um, I think like, uh, the, the, the truth is like flying private is not economical or is no real economical way to do it. It's a very expensive thing and it's really a matter of like priorities and it's something that is important to you if you see like the utility of it as important to you in life. Um, but flying private isn't cheap. There is no, there is no cheap way to do it.

• 26:24Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah. Last year in 2025, I think it was publicly reported that Alex Karp spent around $17 million on flying and it, if you, if you kind of like do some of the math on the price and the per hour, it came out to around three months in the air.

• 26:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. I, I think I, I saw that, that report. Um, and, um, it's probably like the, I think they have like two airplanes. I think maybe the way they they leased it back from, to the company. They, they, they did some, uh, uh, they probably structured it as like a dry lease or something. But yeah, it's, it's, it sounds like they're in the air a lot. I mean, you see like, um, SpaceX, Elon Musk, like they're, he's flying, like, yeah, I mean, I'm sure you've seen that clip of like, you know, one year of his flights, like you just, there's just things you can't do without private aviation. You just can't do it. Like what we're doing today, just being able to go to San Francisco for the night, have a few meetings tomorrow and then come back when we're done. And you just can't do that.

• 27:18Molly O'Shea?

  LA is the best commuter place for people in San Francisco. You don't live in LA, you don't get it, but it's very beautiful. Okay. I have a really fun question. Who do you think flies more Elon Musk?

• 27:31Molly O'Shea?

  Alex Karp, Jeff Bezos, Taylor Swift, or Jensen Huang?

• 27:37Speaker 00

  I think the answer is easy Elon Musk.

• 27:39Molly O'Shea?

  Elon?

• 27:40Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 27:40Molly O'Shea?

  Even though it's mostly domestic?

• 27:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I mean, I think, first of all, he flies international as well, but like, I mean, he's running, what, how many companies?

• 27:48Molly O'Shea?

  A lot.

• 27:48Speaker 00

  Going between each company and he like goes in office and is there in person? I remember when I was like just getting like starting to fly out of Hawthorne Airport, I used to see his plane come in and land and see him get off and on and it was just very inspiring.

• 28:01Molly O'Shea?

  So Preston makes a lot of content around the financing of private aviation. What does he mostly cover? Like what should people be reading?

• 28:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, so Preston Holland, he has a podcast, he talks about aviation finance in general. He's a broker, so if you're looking for, if you're looking to buy a plane, you're looking for a loan, he'll help you find a bank.

• 28:22Speaker 00

  Financing a plane is kind of like financing a car, right? The bank, a bank will want to securitize the aircraft, they'll file a lien on the airplane and then they'll also want to look at your personal financials and make sure you have the ability to repay the loan.

• 28:38Speaker 00

  Financing fractional is a little bit more difficult. So if you go to like NetJets, for an example, they have their own in-house financing department, so you can get a loan there. But most other fractional, there's only a select few banks that will do finance. Actually, a fun fact is that only 30% of aircraft have loans on them.

• 28:56Molly O'Shea?

  Really?

• 28:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, 70% of people close in cash. And a lot of it has to do, it's just very difficult to go through the process, get a loan. A lot of people don't want to like personally guarantee these loans and how do they just close in cash? Don't want to deal with the hassle. I'm working on a company right now called Radar, which is focused on providing financing for people who want to do complete asset back, like no PG, non-recourse type loans for aircraft. Because they are really good assets to finance against.

• 29:25Molly O'Shea?

  So what are the biggest mistakes people make when they're buying a plane?

• 29:31Speaker 00

  It's a great question. A lot of times people think that they'll find like a better price on the market for a plane, so. Sometimes people won't sign an exclusive with a broker, like a reputable broker. They won't sign an exclusive and they'll say, you know, whoever brings me the best, best price, I'll buy their plane. And what ends up happening is you have all these sort of like back to back shady transactions that happen sometimes where, um, where somebody will bring you an airplane and they buy it for much cheaper and they flip it to you and you don't really know what's going on. When you have a reputable broker that you have an exclusive you sign with, they will, they will tell you if you're overpaying for the plane, right? Cause they're like interested in 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 gonna, uh, they're gonna find some, some good airplane.

• 30:16Speaker 00

  They find some like off-market airplane they think is a really good deal. They buy it and they realize there was like four transactions before. So I think that's like a pretty big mistake people make.

• 30:23Molly O'Shea?

  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?

• 30:34Speaker 00

  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-

• 30:42Molly O'Shea?

  That sounds terrifying.

• 30:44Speaker 00

  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 dollars. 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.

• 31:07Molly O'Shea?

  What about insurance? Like what are you, or inspections and that kind of stuff? Like what are you?

• 31:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean aircraft have engine insurance. It's called engine programs, what they're, what they're called, where the manufacturers insure the engine.

• 31:19Speaker 00

  I've heard stories of people not enrolling in these programs. I think David Sacks said that he wasn't enrolling his aircraft in engine programs. I guess if you have the balance sheet and you want to, and you're willing to withstand, you can afford a pretty big event if something happens and you're willing to, you could afford a few months of downtime. You could do that, but really, you know, the, these engine manufacturers, they really have a monopoly on the supply chain of the engines. So if you're not on a program and something happens, you get to the bot, 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,

• 32:00Speaker 00

  these manufacturers and get, they have some leverage, but if you're buying, 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.

• 32:11Molly O'Shea?

  Okay. You were talking about.

• 32:13Speaker 00

  Or as we call it nowadays, a flight deck.

• 32:15Molly O'Shea?

  You were talking about, wait, really?

• 32:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, they changed it.

• 32:18Molly O'Shea?

  They changed it?

• 32:19Speaker 00

  Well, I guess.

• 32:19Molly O'Shea?

  Why'd they change it?

• 32:20Speaker 00

  I don't know, maybe it's like a little bit more politically correct.

• 32:24Molly O'Shea?

  I don't understand.

• 32:25Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 32:26Molly O'Shea?

  Why? Well. Cockpit's not politically correct?

• 32:29Speaker 00

  I, I don't know, it's, uh, they also changed, um, it used to be called, uh, um, airman is what they, a pilot was considered an airman. And now it's, uh.

• 32:38Molly O'Shea?

  That's sexist.

• 32:38Speaker 00

  Maybe airperson, I don't, I don't know. Yeah. So yeah, pilots have to go every, every six months into, to simulator training. Um, it's about a week long and you sit in something that looks just like this, so everything's about the same. Uh, it's full motion, so you feel turns and everything and you, you, you go over all sorts of emergencies and different sort of, uh, 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, you know, when you're, when you're flying the plane, maybe over Las Vegas and you're, you know, an hour out from LA. Um, you're already starting to think ahead about the landing in LA, you're thinking about what the weather's like there, what runway you're going to be using, um, what the, what the sort of arrival is going to look like.

• 33:21Speaker 00

  So even though you're still over Las Vegas, you're kind of really thinking, thinking, uh, an hour ahead of time. Um, and I think that running a business is very similar, right? Like you're, you're, even though there's stuff you're dealing with today, you're, you're, 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, uh, for, for the arrival. So I think that's, that's something that, you know, just the training of being a pilot help, helps in some ways of being a founder.

• 33:48Molly O'Shea?

  What's been your favorite part of being a pilot?

• 33:52Speaker 00

  Came to me all, very incredible people.

• 33:54Molly O'Shea?

  Really?

• 33:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 33:55Molly O'Shea?

  How many people have you flown?

• 33:57Speaker 00

  I've flown, flown quite a bit of people. I think it's like, you know, there's the celebrities and, and everybody wants to hear about the people we fly, but I think that really, um,

• 34:07Speaker 00

  Getting to know on intimate level, people that like building like 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, getting to spend time with them, getting to talk to them, talk to them on my business, like, these are just like an incredible experience that someone like me who, you know, dropped out of high school, like, would never otherwise get to get to interact with. So I just think like meeting some really incredible people, I would say.

• 34:38Molly O'Shea?

  What do you think the biggest misconception is about private aviation and the glamour about it?

• 34:45Speaker 00

  That's a great question, and I have a great answer for you.

• 34:48Molly O'Shea?

  Okay.

• 34:50Speaker 00

  People think it's a luxury. People think of it like sort of they compare it to like a yacht, right? But like, you know, you cannot, you go on a yacht for, you could spend a week on a yacht, you don't spend a week on a private jet, 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 gonna go to San Francisco, we got some meetings, we're gonna come back tomorrow, right? Like, we wouldn't be able to leave on our schedule, come back on our schedule, and, and get so much done without private aviation. I think that there's a common misconception that it's, it's a luxury, and it really isn't. And I think that a lot of times, private aviation

• 35:31Speaker 00

  companies tend to mask what they're doing, but 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.

• 35:48Molly O'Shea?

  How big of a difference did it make on the business, or at least the experience, when you guys got Starlink?

• 35:54Speaker 00

  A huge difference. We've been operating Starlink from basically the moment that they came out. We 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, the only way to describe it is it's 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 the zoom calls, just be able to have that continuity. You know, these other, the other, the other systems out there like they're, they have good connectivity when you're in the U.S. But they kept, they, they have lags, they, they work and they stop working, they work to stop working. Starlink is just like an absolute game changer and all of our aircrafts have Starlink. And I think there's a, a dish right there.

• 36:36Molly O'Shea?

  Oh, my God.

• 36:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:37Molly O'Shea?

  There's literally, it's just a dish.

• 36:39Speaker 00

  No, no, we have an actual Starlink on top of the.

• 36:41Molly O'Shea?

  Oh, this is just an extra one?

• 36:42Speaker 00

  This is like a backup, yeah.

• 36:43Molly O'Shea?

  This is a back, you back up, they've got backup Starlink.

• 36:46Speaker 00

  We fly, we, we fly lots of fintech companies, founders of fintech companies that are.

• 36:52Molly O'Shea?

  Need to be on the market?

• 36:53Speaker 00

  They are on, like they, they, they don't take their, their head out of their computer from the moment they get on the plane to the moment they get off. Right? So like having the best of the best is very important.

• 37:03Molly O'Shea?

  I 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? Cause I think majority of planes, their wifi is a scam. So like what it, like what is the actual truth there?

• 37:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, I mean, it's, it's good. We're seeing some airlines now say they're gonna, they're gonna install Starlink. I think United and American both signed agreements, signed for their, hopefully, I'm not sure why Delta didn't do that. I suspect they're probably gonna 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 it has, has higher bandwidth than, than the current dish that we have right now. It's almost double. So I think that they've decided that they were gonna stop production. Upgrade the production line and then now they're starting to roll out with the new one. So I, I think, I think we're gonna see it start, start to roll out quick, quickly. Of course, commercial aviation seems to get a priority over private aviation sometimes.

• 38:04Molly O'Shea?

  Really? I feel like none of them even have it on any of their planes. Like I, so I, 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.

• 38:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, we, well, not to ground the plane, that's a little extreme. But we, maybe there's something else going on there. But we, I mean, we, 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, three months apart. So we, yeah, so we have like all throughout next year, Starlink kits being sent. It's about three, a $300,000 cost to install on an aircraft like this. Very slightly on a bigger aircraft or slower 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?

• 38:54Molly O'Shea?

  Exactly. It's a good place to leave it. Anything else we should talk about while we're in the cockpit?

• 38:59Speaker 00

  No.

• 39:00Molly O'Shea?

  Or the people pit, or whatever you call it now?

• 39:01Speaker 00

  The cockpit, the people pit, the flight, the flight deck.

• 39:04Molly O'Shea?

  The flight deck.

• 39:06Molly O'Shea?

  Anything else? Do you have a favorite button?

• 39:08Speaker 00

  Are you gonna put that one in?

• 39:09Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah. We're keeping that in.

• 39:12Speaker 00

  Oh no. Um, their favorite button?

• 39:14Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, what's the favorite button?

• 39:16Speaker 00

  Well, uh, this is the autopilot disconnect button.

• 39:18Molly O'Shea?

  Okay.

• 39:18Speaker 00

  This right button 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, and, uh, and fly. I try to stay away from the buttons that have red on them in general. Not quite sure why. Um, they just, they say don't touch.

• 39:33Molly O'Shea?

  They scare you?

• 39:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, don't, don't touch the right buttons.

• 39:35Molly O'Shea?

  Okay.

• 39:36Speaker 00

  Um, this is like our, our power lever. So this is like, uh, when you wanna, when you're ready for takeoff, you push that forward. That's like hitting the gas pedal on your car.

• 39:44Molly O'Shea?

  And you can just touch that while we're on the ground?

• 39:46Speaker 00

  Right now, the engines are not running.

• 39:48Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, that's good to know.

• 39:49Speaker 00

  So, but when the engines are running, when the engines are running, that will, this will produce all the, all the power. So you can watch on takeoff as the pilots advance this. This is, this is the lever of where we put the landing gear up. So once, 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 you, these three, uh, gears is the left gear, the right gear and the nose gear. Will come up. Uh, my favorite button is probably this button, the autopilot button.

• 40:13Molly O'Shea?

  I feel like I shouldn't have asked you this question because I'm being so nervous whenever you touch anything.

• 40:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, so, um, yeah, so my, 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.

• 40:28Molly O'Shea?

  So, uh, one of my friends got their pilot's license a couple of 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.

• 40:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:44Molly O'Shea?

  Did you, like, is that how you feel?

• 40:46Speaker 00

  I got my pilot's license before I got my driver's license.

• 40:49Molly O'Shea?

  Really?

• 40:49Speaker 00

  Yeah. I got my pilot's license on my 17th birthday.

• 40:52Molly O'Shea?

  Okay.

• 40:53Speaker 00

  Uh, which is the legal age to get it. Um, actually at this airport right here, Van Nuys Airport. And, um, and I got my, 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, um, one of the greatest.

• 41:16Speaker 00

  Feelings of agency that you can have, especially as a seventeen year old, to fly an aircraft on your own. And I, I, 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.

• 41:38Molly O'Shea?

  More pilots, we need more pilots.

• 41:40Speaker 00

  We do need more pilots.

• 41:41Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, cool.

• 41:42Speaker 00

  What do you think of the cockpit?

• 41:44Molly O'Shea?

  I think this is really fun. Uh, it's very intimidating. I feel like I shouldn't be sitting here. Uh, I don't have a favorite button because I don't really know what any of them do.

• 41:56Speaker 00

  You can, um, push this button in if you want.

• 41:59Molly O'Shea?

  Why?

• 42:00Speaker 00

  Just to see what it does.

• 42:01Molly O'Shea?

  I push it?

• 42:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, just push it down.

• 42:03Molly O'Shea?

  No, I don't want to. Too scary. Is that gonna make the plane?

• 42:10Molly O'Shea?

  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 where the plane's been down for like a year or more and that kind of thing. Like, so what are the most common causes and how do you avoid that?

• 42:36Speaker 00

  I mean, an airplane like this, there's tens of thousands of individual parts on the plane. Eighty percent of the parts, if they're broken, the plane's down. You can't fly. So there, there is like a twenty percent 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 any of these components fail, um, plane's grounded. And sometimes, like we were talking earlier about the supply chain um, in, in this industry because of all the demand of all the aircraft coming in, these manufacturers are trying to build as many airplanes they can as quickly as possible. And their priority is the newer airplanes that they can sell to, to, to brand new customers, right?

• 43:21Speaker 00

  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 lav panel for the toilet in the back of the plane. Twenty-five thousand dollars.

• 43:41Molly O'Shea?

  No.

• 43:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, just for like a little lav panel.

• 43:45Speaker 00

  A set of brakes on this aircraft, over a hundred thousand dollars.

• 43:48Molly O'Shea?

  What is the deal with people talking about the windows popping out?

• 43:52Speaker 00

  What do you mean?

• 43:53Molly O'Shea?

  That, I've, I've heard from a couple of people, like, there were stories that the windows will pop out and people will get crushed lungs.

• 44:01Speaker 00

  I've never seen that.

• 44:02Molly O'Shea?

  You've never heard that?

• 44:02Speaker 00

  No.

• 44:03Molly O'Shea?

  I've heard it. And now they're making planes without windows.

• 44:06Speaker 00

  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, there, there, there's, there's one company, I think, that's building a, 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, I don't know why we need the windows. They can just do screens on the side. But I don't think that has to do with windows being crushed in.

• 44:28Molly O'Shea?

  That's like not, like, the whole fun about.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  Is looking outside, right?

• 44:31Molly O'Shea?

  Looking out the window. Like, right now, we're looking at, like, beautiful.

• 44:34Speaker 00

  California.

• 44:35Molly O'Shea?

  California.

• 44:36Speaker 00

  Best place on earth.

• 44:37Molly O'Shea?

  There's farms down there. There's lots of mountains. You can't see it, sorry, but it's beautiful.

• 44:42Speaker 00

  I don't know. I think, I would want to have windows in my plane. Seems, seems to me like a.

• 44:47Molly O'Shea?

  We'll have to put up a poll.

• 44:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:48Molly O'Shea?

  How many people want windows in their plane?

• 44:50Speaker 00

  I, I would be curious to, to see what they're, what people, people have to say about that.

• 44:55Molly O'Shea?

  I guess, like, this is an interesting point, because you, you mentioned that there's going to be a shortage of planes and, and everything as more demand increases, right? As more demand increases, I assume all the prices are going to go up.

• 45:08Speaker 00

  Buying a plane is really just the beginning of the torture, right?

• 45:11Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 45:12Speaker 00

  It's everything that comes after buying the plane that really makes you maybe regret your decision.

• 45:16Molly O'Shea?

  So are you gonna like, like, are NetJets, FlexJets, are you, or like, is Aero, like, are they, they're just all going to increase their prices substantially? Like, how does that work?

• 45:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I think there's, we're already seeing like massive wait lists at these fractional programs, like the, the, the line to get a, to get into an aircraft is maybe two, three years at a time. If you wanted to order a plane right now, a brand new plane from a Bardier, they're probably taking you three to four years until like, I think they're delivering now into 2030, right? You could 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

• 46:07Speaker 00

  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

• 46:22Molly O'Shea?

  Zero windows.

• 46:23Speaker 00

  Zero windows. Yeah. And over time, the value of airplanes will go down. But we have been seeing in the last couple of 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.

• 46:35Molly O'Shea?

  Really?

• 46:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, like almost $2 million more.

• 46:37Molly O'Shea?

  What?

• 46:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:39Molly O'Shea?

  Why?

• 46:40Speaker 00

  Just because there's like such a lack of, of supply, like of, of good airplanes.

• 46:45Molly O'Shea?

  That's crazy.

• 46:46Speaker 00

  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 airplanes. 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. Certain airplanes are, have better like parts availability, better pilot training, engines, if you need like, 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 gonna start flying like heavy volume.

• 47:25Molly O'Shea?

  Have you seen people make the wrong decision in buying a plane by buying too small of a plane? Like, at what point do you realize that?

• 47:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, so.

• 47:33Molly O'Shea?

  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?

• 47:46Speaker 00

  So, so I, 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, you know, and he, and he, uh, and so, so, you know, he, he, he spent 400K, but 400K is still significantly less than 75 million, which is a lot of the cost to buy that plane, right? And he flew, did a flight and, and he's like, you know, that was nice, but I don't know if I need this airplane, like maybe, maybe I'll get like, 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

• 48:30Speaker 00

  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 of 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.

• 48:44Molly O'Shea?

  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?

• 48:53Speaker 00

  I think they renamed it.

• 48:54Molly O'Shea?

  Did they really?

• 48:55Speaker 00

  I think so. I don't know what they renamed it.

• 48:56Molly O'Shea?

  Well, that's what I know it was.

• 48:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:59Molly O'Shea?

  But can you talk about how, uh, the government is now helping write off aviation?

• 49:07Speaker 00

  It's really, um, writing it off in a huge way. Uh, 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 the 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. So 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 eighty percent of it.

• 49:51Speaker 00

  So maybe you only put down two million dollars on the airplane. You get to take a ten million dollar expense in your business. And if you're in California and your income is fifty one percent. My ears popped. Yeah, we're in our descent to San Francisco. If you're in California and you're paying fifty one percent taxes, right? You're essentially, rather than paying the government five million dollars in taxes, you can buy a ten million dollar airplane, put down two million, reinvest the other three. So this is like, as you can imagine, a huge unlock for people. So this is why people are buying seventy five million dollar airplanes. That's exactly why people are buying some of that. 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.

• 50:37Speaker 00

  You have to have a defensible business purpose for the plane. And you have to use it fifty one percent 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 the SpaceX IPO, right? And in the tech world, it's not from people who have businesses. These are employees at companies that have been working there their whole life. They skipped like five steps in the wealth, 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, right?

• 51:18Speaker 00

  And on top of that, there are also, most of their wealth is in the stock market, which is tax capital gains, which even if you had a legitimate business purpose to buy the plane, to write off a plane against, you would only be writing off, if you write off your capital gains, when you sell the plane, you have to pay something called recapture.

• 51:43Speaker 00

  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 zero when you initially bought it. Recapture is always taxed at ordinary income rates. So if you buy an airplane and try to offset capital gains, right, which is like, let's say your SpaceX shares,

• 52:11Speaker 00

  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.

• 52:22Speaker 00

  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.

• 52:46Molly O'Shea?

  What kind of background checks do you need to do with new clients, new flyers?

• 52:50Speaker 00

  Well, whenever we fly someone on an airplane, they go through standard like TSA. We run their name against like the no-fly list.

• 52:59Speaker 00

  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. But that's really it.

• 53:10Molly O'Shea?

  Did you see the Mr. Beast winner? Who got caught smuggling drugs on his plane?

• 53:16Speaker 00

  I think I saw that. That was pretty ridiculous.

• 53:17Molly O'Shea?

  What was, it was like, how, does anybody know?

• 53:19Speaker 00

  Was it on the plane that he won or was it on a different plane?

• 53:22Molly O'Shea?

  I think it was on the plane that he won. I would imagine.

• 53:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:27Molly O'Shea?

  That's crazy.

• 53:28Speaker 00

  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 some cash flow to keep it going.

• 53:36Molly O'Shea?

  Maybe that's what incentivized him to get the plane in the first place. Maybe he had a big mission ahead of him and he. It was his job to win the Mr. Beast contest in order to complete the mission.

• 53:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, like every once in a while you see these, these things, but that was, that was pretty crazy when I heard that.

• 53:50Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, it was pretty wild. How long do you think it would take to sell a jet today?

• 53:56Speaker 00

  I've seen, uh, as, as quick as one hour.

• 54:00Molly O'Shea?

  One hour?

• 54:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, there was a G six fifty that just sold in one hour.

• 54:03Molly O'Shea?

  To who?

• 54:04Speaker 00

  It hit the market and then it just sold an hour later. I have no idea.

• 54:06Molly O'Shea?

  Where's the market? What's the market?

• 54:08Speaker 00

  There's, there's.

• 54:08Molly O'Shea?

  Is there an auction? Is there like a Sotheby's?

• 54:10Speaker 00

  There's like brokers and they, they talk to each other and, um, yeah, so I mean, we're, 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.

• 54:23Molly O'Shea?

  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?

• 54:32Speaker 00

  I think the best benchmark in the commercial space is the Boeing seven eighty seven. And the Boeing seven eighty seven has a cabin altitude of just under eight thousand feet. If you looked at the sort of the best example in the private jet market, like the Global seventy five hundred, that has a cabin altitude of about thirty one hundred feet.

• 54:53Molly O'Shea?

  What does that mean?

• 54:54Speaker 00

  So it means that your, your, uh, the, the altitude that it feels like you're at when you're flying is significantly lower.

• 55:02Molly O'Shea?

  Oh, wow.

• 55:03Speaker 00

  Than on the commercial airline, which makes a big difference for fatigue. So I actually think, um, this is the one area that actually, especially on long missions, can make a very big difference. If you're going, if you're flying somewhere for a business meeting and, and you, you don't want to be groggy the whole day and then on the way back,

• 55:22Speaker 00

  having like a cabin, 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. Uh, so maybe we don't need windows in 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 a high functioning person like Elon Musk or Jensen and you need to be places.

• 55:54Molly O'Shea?

  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.

• 56:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:03Molly O'Shea?

  And then I ended up in the hospital.

• 56:04Speaker 00

  Did you do a life lap?

• 56:07Molly O'Shea?

  Sometimes.

• 56:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:08Molly O'Shea?

  If I can afford it.

• 56:10Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 56:10Molly O'Shea?

  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. And then you see videos of Jensen Huang, 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?

• 56:34Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, I think that 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, right? And I think that's why private nation is really such a tool that allows you to do so much more, unlock so much more and like really unlock, like save days, like full days that otherwise you would have been like sleeping or groggy because like, because you know, you got, you got stuck in the, in the system. It's really like a, a, an incredible, I think in some ways, non-negotiable tool.

• 57:07Molly O'Shea?

  Today's episode is sponsored by V C X by Fundrise, the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. Learn more at get V C X dot 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. Public's AI then dispatches a swarm of agents that scan every single US stock, evaluates them and instantly builds a custom index around your thesis. What really stands out is how clearly it explains why each stock is included.

• 57:52Molly O'Shea?

  And before you invest, you can even back test your idea against the S and P 500. So you're making decisions with real context, not just guessing. And beyond generated assets, Public lets you invest in stocks, bonds, options, crypto, all in one place. They'll even give you an uncapped 1% match when you transfer your investments over from another platform. If you want to build a portfolio that actually reflects your thesis, visit public.com/sorcery. Paid 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 team's ship product, not plumbing. Mistral, Dropbox, and Drata already trust Merge in production. Start building at merge.dev.

• 58:36Molly O'Shea?

  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/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?

• 58:57Speaker 00

  I don't know if I'm the health- healthiest pilot. But uh-

• 59:01Molly O'Shea?

  That's exactly what people want to hear.

• 59:03Speaker 00

  Well, I think, I think, you know, of, you know, flying around is like, is not the healthiest thing in general. Like, uh, fly- flying so much, um, sitting in a chair for that long, you know, like, uh, um, probably not good. So I'm, I don't fly that mu- that much anymore.

• 59:16Molly O'Shea?

  You're sitting in a chair, flying a plane versus people sitting in a chair, like-

• 59:20Speaker 00

  On a commercial airline.

• 59:20Molly O'Shea?

  Doing ad sales. Like, I don't know. It's totally different.

• 59:23Speaker 00

  I guess it's true, but sometimes I think like the, 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. You're flying coast to coast or across the, across the Pacific, like, uh, um, these, these, these things over time, they start to really, really, really mess with you.

• 59:40Molly O'Shea?

  How do you stay hydrated?

• 59:41Speaker 00

  I drink a lot of water.

• 59:43Molly O'Shea?

  Just water? You don't add any fancy electrolytes?

• 59:45Speaker 00

  I don't know. Am I supposed to?

• 59:46Molly O'Shea?

  Really?

• 59:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:46Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, you're supposed to. It's like a whole thing.

• 59:48Speaker 00

  I didn't get all the, I didn't get all the, all the tips. Yeah, but no, it's, wow, look at that.

• 59:56Speaker 00

  I tell you, Cali- there's just nothing like California.

• 59:58Molly O'Shea?

  I know, Brad. I wish you were getting B-roll of this.

• 1:00:01Speaker 00

  You gotta get some B-roll of that mountain there.

• 1:00:03Molly O'Shea?

  We haven't covered this yet, but what are the hidden fees that people encounter when chartering?

• 1:00:07Speaker 00

  This is like a, a whole, a whole episode.

• 1:00:10Molly O'Shea?

  Really?

• 1:00:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:00:11Molly O'Shea?

  Actually, why?

• 1:00:11Speaker 00

  And because I'm very passionate about it.

• 1:00:13Molly O'Shea?

  Oh.

• 1:00:13Speaker 00

  The easy one is de-icing. So a lot of times, you know, when you fly charter, uh, 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 it snowed overnight. And then before you got to the airport, they, they needed to de-ice. Sometimes that could be more than twice the cost of the actual flight itself.

• 1:00:29Molly O'Shea?

  Seriously?

• 1:00:30Speaker 00

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

• 1:01:12Speaker 00

  they're buying these FBOs. They're called FBOs, the fixed base operator.

• 1:01:16Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:16Speaker 00

  Where you park the planes.

• 1:01:17Molly O'Shea?

  People just sling that term around all the time.

• 1:01:19Speaker 00

  People just assume that you know, but it's it's basically where the planes park and they overnight, where people get on and off the airplanes. And what this private equity companies have kind of realized is that, you know, they can't really adjust the fuel price so much because everybody knows what the fuel price should be, right, based on like 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 out of these businesses is to sneak in these event fees. And 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

• 1:02:03Speaker 00

  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 helps because these these companies like they'll buy, they'll pre pre-commit 500,000 square foot of ramp space, knowing that the masters are going to have, you know, hundreds of arrivals. So it still costs you something, but it's significantly less. But event fees is something that like is really caught everybody by surprise. And I think there needs to be some correction where where these these businesses are significantly taking advantage of of their industry.

• 1:02:39Molly O'Shea?

  What's the craziest thing that you've seen?

• 1:02:41Speaker 00

  In terms of like event fees or?

• 1:02:43Molly O'Shea?

  Anything.

• 1:02:43Speaker 00

  Oh, I had Kanye West fly with us and take a picture of my copilot shoes.

• 1:02:49Molly O'Shea?

  What?

• 1:02:49Speaker 00

  Walked into the cockpit and said, can I take a picture of your shoes?

• 1:02:52Molly O'Shea?

  Is that how they modeled off the Yeezys?

• 1:02:55Speaker 00

  I guess so.

• 1:02:56Molly O'Shea?

  Really?

• 1:02:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think he was wearing his like big, his like, uh, his big boots or whatever. Yeah, so I mean, there's like, you know, we, we, we see some, some, some pretty crazy stuff. But I think for the most part, like, uh, um, we find 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.

• 1:03:25Molly O'Shea?

  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 NetJets that's never had a death.

• 1:03:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:35Molly O'Shea?

  That's how they run like their marketing.

• 1:03:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:38Molly O'Shea?

  But like, what should people be asking or, or, or kind of be, um, comforted by on safety standards?

• 1:03:47Speaker 00

  And I think, I think Warren Buffett said like, you should spend every penny,

• 1:03:52Speaker 00

  you can on safety and then more, right? Like, uh, uh, they're, 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. Um, and 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, uh, to discern what the safety standard of the plane that you're flying. Like, 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.

• 1:04:36Speaker 00

  They 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. So having good brokers is very important. Having a broker, a charter broker, not a seller broker, charter broker who, who, um, knows the industry, who's visited these operators, they've gone to these like in the hangars and met the, met the staff, the safety 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 FAA has has some guidance about, you can see like if the aircraft is on a 135 certificate, if it's like legal and charter legal. I think I saw Chamath Palihapitiya posted that he only flies in a plane with Argus Platinum. So I'll talk a little about Argus.

• 1:05:21Speaker 00

  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? Like 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 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's a big gap right now in our industry.

• 1:05:59Molly O'Shea?

  Do 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.

• 1:06:09Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:06:10Molly O'Shea?

  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 in like St. Bart's like?

• 1:06:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. So say, I don't think anybody really flies St. Bart's except for like the small little propeller airplanes. They're St. Martin, which is, which is nearby. Aspen's 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.

• 1:06:33Molly O'Shea?

  Really?

• 1:06:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, maybe sixth actually behind White Plains. So people, people fly into Aspen a lot. Aspen has its own unique tricky set of constraints. We don't fly into Aspen at night. We won't do it.

• 1:06:46Molly O'Shea?

  Okay.

• 1:06:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, we're, we're like not even allowed to, like even if you want to. You shouldn't be flying into Aspen at night. 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, there's a couple of them out there. Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Sun Valley.

• 1:07:03Speaker 00

  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. And we have very strict rules about certain airports.

• 1:07:20Molly O'Shea?

  Sounds like mountains are a big issue.

• 1:07:21Speaker 00

  Mountains are a big issue. Mountains and airplanes don't, don't, aren't very friendly with each other.

• 1:07:26Molly O'Shea?

  So you mentioned busy airports. So what are the busiest airports that you guys run out of?

• 1:07:30Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:07:47Speaker 00

  We have a lot of demand out of LA. San Francisco, White Plains, then Aspen.

• 1:07:51Molly O'Shea?

  San Francisco's about to get a lot busier.

• 1:07:53Speaker 00

  About to get a lot busier.

• 1:07:54Molly O'Shea?

  A lot busier.

• 1:07:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:55Molly O'Shea?

  What do you think that pass off is gonna be like? I'm so curious. Are you getting a lot of demand from people in San Francisco? Have they been reaching out yet?

• 1:08:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. They are flying to San Jose. Flying to San Jose a lot. Oakland, San Francisco, a lot, a lot of people going to Hawaii from there. It's I guess like far, far enough away to, to vacation, but

• 1:08:18Speaker 00

  San Francisco is, I would say, five years ago was probably not even in our top 10.

• 1:08:24Molly O'Shea?

  By the way, we are landing right now and I, I really just wanted to keep on rolling because I wanted to see if Brett could handle this. Right now we have two cameras, so.

• 1:08:33Speaker 00

  Brett's got it.

• 1:08:34Molly O'Shea?

  And we're about to touch the ground. What do you think's gonna happen?

• 1:08:36Speaker 00

  Brett's got a big smile.

• 1:08:42Molly O'Shea?

  Well.

• 1:08:42Speaker 00

  Voila.

• 1:08:43Molly O'Shea?

  Well, we haven't hit it yet, so.

• 1:08:45Speaker 00

  We are.

• 1:08:45Molly O'Shea?

  There we go.

• 1:08:46Speaker 00

  We have just touched down in San Francisco.

• 1:08:50Molly O'Shea?

  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.

• 1:08:58Speaker 00

  This was a great flight. This was a great flight and a great conversation.

• 1:09:00Molly O'Shea?

  The best part about living in California and living in LA and coming up to San Francisco for work all the time is literally the most gorgeous flight ever.

• 1:09:09Speaker 00

  There's nothing like it.

• 1:09:10Molly O'Shea?

  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. I hate flying in zero visibility. I don't know how pilots do it. Doesn't make any sense to me.

• 1:09:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, someone very wise once told me that every day in California is a happy day.

• 1:09:27Molly O'Shea?

  You could live here, yeah.

• 1:09:29Speaker 00

  Every day.

• 1:09:29Molly O'Shea?

  It's a choice. Unfortunately.

• 1:09:31Speaker 00

  It is a choice.

• 1:09:32Molly O'Shea?

  Taxes are brutal, but it's really pretty.

• 1:09:36Speaker 00

  Might be worth it, but who am I to say?

• 1:09:39Molly O'Shea?

  So I think like after everything we talked about today, one of the biggest takeaways I got from you is that flying private is a 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. Elon 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?

• 1:10:13Speaker 00

  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 be in multiple places in one day, that like that's going to be extremely important. Having Starlink, we talked about having Starlink onboard. 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...

• 1:10:44Molly O'Shea?

  And they don't get the tax write-offs.

• 1:10:47Speaker 00

  And they don't get the tax write-offs. I think we're gonna see, the people who are working hard today will work even harder and will be able to do even more.

• 1:10:52Molly O'Shea?

  You're seeing that with your clients?

• 1:10:54Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:10:55Molly O'Shea?

  With Starlink too?

• 1:10:56Speaker 00

  With Starlink too.

• 1:10:57Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, so as we close out, thank you so much for everything in the flight up to San Francisco. If people wanna reach you, how should they get in touch?

• 1:11:05Speaker 00

  You can come to our website, flightcraft.com. You can reach out that way.

• 1:11:08Molly O'Shea?

  Please don't take my LA to SF flights. I would like them.

• 1:11:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:14Molly O'Shea?

  Thank you so much, Izzy.

• 1:11:14Speaker 00

  I will see you on the way back.

• 1:11:15Molly O'Shea?

  Okay. Alright, so we're now here in San Francisco. We flew all the way from LA. And I have Izzy with me and Captain Raz. Okay, so Captain Raz was kind enough to fly us. Captain, how did you get your pilot's license?

• 1:11:30Speaker 02

  Um, I started flying in the Air Force.

• 1:11:34Speaker 02

  Started in the Flight Academy, got most of my training there. And then I, uh, went to a different role in the Air Force. But I always knew I wanna be a pilot, so, uh... 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.

• 1:11:59Speaker 02

  And then eventually, I decided to make this a career. So I went back to flight school, professional training, and I made it to here.

• 1:12:12Speaker 02

  Anybody's dream job, really. And it's the best office view I can ask for. And that's really the reason why I like doing it. Every time I'm in the air, it's like meditation for me.

• 1:12:24Molly O'Shea?

  What's the longest flight you have flown?

• 1:12:27Speaker 02

  Longest flights?

• 1:12:31Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:12:42Molly O'Shea?

  Do you get cramps in your legs?

• 1:12:44Speaker 02

  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 point. It's actually very important to do so on the long legs. Because the cockpit can get a little cramped, yes. But we try to also interact with our passengers, which is a whole different aspect of being a corporate pilot, which is very nice.

• 1:13:16Molly O'Shea?

  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?

• 1:13:25Speaker 02

  Drink a lot of water during and before flights. And lotion, a lot of lotion. The air can get pretty dry up there. Jet lag? It's a challenge.

• 1:13:40Speaker 02

  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 because you can find yourself on the East Coast and then the next day on the West Coast and then even Alaska or Hawaii. It feel, it, you feel it.

• 1:14:03Speaker 00

  It can be quite challenging.

• 1:14:05Speaker 02

  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, but it's part of the job.

• 1:14:13Molly O'Shea?

  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?

• 1:14:23Speaker 02

  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? 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.

• 1:15:00Molly O'Shea?

  What do you think?

• 1:15:01Speaker 00

  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 onboard and they're like, no, we prefer not to have one. People want privacy. People like to just have their own space. You know, it's 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 be in your own element, you know, and prove that your own rhythm. And I think having a flight attendant is just, just calm, okay, now.

• 1:15:30Molly O'Shea?

  JSX.

• 1:15:31Speaker 00

  JSX. That's a JSX landing right there. Yeah, so I think people just don't, people prefer like quiet. So that's I think what we see a lot. Some aircraft, like the bigger aircraft are required to have flight attendants. So above a certain number of like seats onboard. For safety reasons, you have to have flight attendants to have like emergency exit training and stuff like that. Also, 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 attendant.

• 1:15:57Molly O'Shea?

  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?

• 1:16:05Speaker 02

  I never had a bad plane.

• 1:16:08Molly O'Shea?

  Okay.

• 1:16:08Speaker 02

  I like them all, single-engine props. I still tend to fly them quite often, just to keep the skills sharp.

• 1:16:18Speaker 02

  This is an amazing plane. 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. 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.

• 1:16:38Molly O'Shea?

  And it has two of everything, so it's super safe?

• 1:16:41Speaker 02

  Two of everything. If, if something fails, we can get safely anywhere, no problem. If we're flying over mountains, over water. This plane is super redundant. They made over a thousand of these, which is tremendous in airplane terms. It's, 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.

• 1:17:07Molly O'Shea?

  What do you think people should look for when they're chartering or buying planes?

• 1:17:14Speaker 02

  There's a lot of technical stuff, but when you charter, small details. I, 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.

• 1:17:31Speaker 00

  That'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 super center. 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 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 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, in our, our crew for a very long time.

• 1:18:04Molly O'Shea?

  So what is your favorite type of plane to fly?

• 1:18:06Speaker 00

  We said you think you can guess. So what do you, what would you guess?

• 1:18:08Molly O'Shea?

  I'm serious.

• 1:18:08Speaker 00

  There you go.

• 1:18:10Molly O'Shea?

  Well?

• 1:18:10Speaker 00

  I've had a different experience with the aircraft. I mean, I flew the Gulfstream G550. It's an American built airplane. You could tell it's American built. It's like driving a GMC.

• 1:18:17Molly O'Shea?

  Oh, no.

• 1:18:18Speaker 00

  Everything is just so big. Everything is like the throttle lever is like this big. It's like, you know, everything is just like, even if they have double, they have quadruple for everything. So I really love that airplane. The Challenger is just an amazing airplane. I mean, this was, this was my first like real job I ever flew. And it's such a capable mission oriented airplane, but there's nothing like taking on a small little Cirrus and flying around the mountains and going to, going to small little airports and, you know, there's nothing like really getting to experience and enjoy flying. You know, in these airplanes, you don't really enjoy flying as much because it's very, very process oriented. You get in the cockpit and they have a, there's a script and a checklist and you file the flight plan. The autopilot's flying most of the time. It's very, uh, very like, you know, not, not very manual. You don't really get to enjoy flying.

• 1:19:02Molly O'Shea?

  Okay. So we're on the tarmac. What is the most challenging plane to fly? What is the most difficult one?

• 1:19:09Speaker 02

  Challenging?

• 1:19:10Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:11Speaker 02

  I would guess a tailwind, uh, tailwheel, sorry. A plane that has, this is a tricycle, so it has one gear in the front and two in the back.

• 1:19:23Speaker 02

  Other most small airplanes, um, 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.

• 1:19:36Molly O'Shea?

  By the way, I could tell when we landed that you were an Air Force pilot and not... Yeah, it was, it was great.

• 1:19:42Speaker 02

  Not Navy.

• 1:19:43Molly O'Shea?

  It was great. I mean, we have it on film. We can show you. Couldn't even feel it, but I, I mean, we were joking because there is a certain, I'm not going to name names, but there is a certain airline around here that is, is a Navy landing every single time. It is so hard.

• 1:19:58Speaker 02

  It's called professionally firm.

• 1:20:02Speaker 00

  Professionally firm.

• 1:20:03Molly O'Shea?

  What do you think is the most challenging?

• 1:20:05Speaker 00

  To fly?

• 1:20:06Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:08Speaker 00

  I don't know, I flew on like a G150 once.

• 1:20:11Speaker 02

  They're pretty old.

• 1:20:12Speaker 00

  That was a pretty old airplane. I was like, I didn't fly it, but I saw the pilots flying it. It looked like they were sweating.

• 1:20:17Speaker 02

  Would I do anything else? No. I wouldn't do anything else.

• 1:20:21Molly O'Shea?

  Really?

• 1:20:22Speaker 02

  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. So, we take this into consideration. We made a stop on the way, but this was one hell of an experience. We saw polar bears there. It was pretty cool.

• 1:21:04Molly O'Shea?

  Damn.

• 1:21:05Speaker 00

  Another area, by the way, that's like quite crazy, like the catering on airplanes. Like, people order like the airline catering, and it's like so expensive, and it's like such bad food, and like...

• 1:21:14Molly O'Shea?

  Such bad food.

• 1:21:15Speaker 00

  Everybody just orders DoorDash. It's like way better.

• 1:21:17Molly O'Shea?

  It is.

• 1:21:18Speaker 00

  You got like In-N-Out, or you got like Chick-fil-A. Like, people just prefer that. Like, you'd be surprised. You think you're flying, you know, flying private is all about like, you know, fancy dining, but there's nothing like a good Chick-fil-A.

• 1:21:29Speaker 02

  And In-N-Out is always priced the same, whether you take it on an airplane or in the car.

• 1:21:34Molly O'Shea?

  That's funny.

• 1:21:35Speaker 00

  And passengers love it. They really, like, they just don't care.

• 1:21:39Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, that's a good tip. Catering, don't do it.

• 1:21:42Speaker 00

  Don't do it.

• 1:21:42Molly O'Shea?

  Get Uber Eats or DoorDash. Okay. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for flying us today.

• 1:21:48Speaker 02

  You're very welcome.

• 1:21:48Molly O'Shea?

  That was a lovely flight.

• 1:21:50Speaker 02

  It's our pleasure, always.

• 1:21:51Molly O'Shea?

  Hey, it's Molly. If you enjoy our interviews, check out our newsletter, sorcery.vc, 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.