01:02:39 · Molly O'Shea, Israel Slodowitz
[01:02:39] S1: What's the craziest thing that you've seen? In terms of, like, event fees? Or Anything. [01:02:44] S0: Oh, had Kanye West fly with us and take a picture of my copilot shoes. What? Walk into the cockpit and say, can I take a picture of your shoes? [01:02:52] S1: Is that how they modeled off the Yeezy's? [01:02:55] S0: I guess so. Really? I think he was wearing his, like, big his, like, 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, 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, you know, typically, like, really solid people, solid experiences, nothing too crazy. [01:03:25] S1: What kind of safety protocol do you have to keep up with? And especially when people are looking at these planes or these different services, I think it's like net jets that's never had a death. I mean, that's how they run, like, their marketing. Yeah. Yeah. But, like, what should people be asking or or or kind of be comforted by on safety standards?
01:03:47 · Israel Slodowitz
[01:03:47] S0: And I think I think Warren Buffett said, like, you should spend every penny you can on safety and then more. So I think the large providers understand the importance of safety, and they run very, very safe operations. They understand how much more scrutiny private aviation gets over commercial aviation. So safety is something that is ingrained in the DNA. When you're chartering a plane, it's a little bit more difficult to to discern what the safety standard of the plane that you're flying. Like, 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. They have five, ten 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 a broker is very important. Having a broker, a charter broker, not a sale broker, charter broker who knows the industry, who's visited these operators, they've gone to these, like, in the hangars and met the 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 one thirty five certificate, if it's, like, legal and charter charter legal. I think I saw Chamath Paliapatia posted that he only flies on a plane with Argus Platinum. So I'll talk a little bit about Argus. Argus is like a third party safety rating that comes in and does an audit. It's really like a pay for play, You basically pay them money, and then they give you a certification, especially at their gold rating. Their platinum rating is a little bit more in-depth. They come to your office. They do an audit. And I think that certainly, it's better than nothing. But I do think we need more, I think we I do think we need a better system. I'll I'll I'll I'll say I think we need a better system for helping unknown travelers, like, from figuring out which aircraft are safer versus which aircraft are not. And I and I think that's that's a big gap right now in our industry.
01:05:59 · Molly O'Shea, Israel Slodowitz
[01:05:59] S1: 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. [01:06:09] S0: Oh, yeah. [01:06:10] S1: I don't like flying there. It's freaky. Do you have any rules around locations like that? Or or I don't what's that one island in, Saint Bart's? Like [01:06:18] S0: Yeah. Yeah. So say don't think any anybody really flies Saint Bart except for, the small little pro propeller airplanes. There's Saint 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. Really? Yeah. Maybe sixth actually behind the white planes. 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. Okay. 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's a couple of them out there, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Sun Valley. So there's certain airports that we have an extra set of standards, that our pilots operate by. We our pilots, use something called a GOM, a general operations manual Okay. 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.
01:06:18 · Israel Slodowitz, Molly O'Shea
[01:06:18] S0: Yeah. Yeah. So say don't think any anybody really flies Saint Bart except for, the small little pro propeller airplanes. There's Saint 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. Really? Yeah. Maybe sixth actually behind the white planes. 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. Okay. 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's a couple of them out there, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Sun Valley. So there's certain airports that we have an extra set of standards, that our pilots operate by. We our pilots, use something called a GOM, a general operations manual Okay. 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. [01:07:20] S1: Sounds like mountains are a big issue. [01:07:21] S0: Mountains are a big issue. Mountains and airplanes don't don't aren't very friendly with each other. [01:07:26] S1: So you mentioned busy airports. So what are the big busiest airports that you guys run out of?
01:07:26 · Molly O'Shea, Israel Slodowitz
[01:07:26] S1: So you mentioned busy airports. So what are the big busiest airports that you guys run out of? [01:07:30] S0: I mean, New York, of course, is the busiest. Teterboro is, like, where everybody's coming in and out of from a charter perspective. Think, like, maybe Miami, which is where our our main maintenance hangar is and our home bases, is probably our second busiest airport. Van Nuys, where we took off today, is our third busiest. We have a lot of demand out of LA. San Francisco, White Plains, then Aspen. [01:07:51] S1: San Francisco is about to get a lot busier. [01:07:53] S0: About to get a lot busier. [01:07:54] S1: A lot busier. [01:07:55] S0: Yeah. [01:07:55] S1: 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? [01:08:03] S0: Yeah. They are flying to San Jose. Flying San Jose a lot, Oakland, San Francisco. A lot a lot of people going to Hawaii from there. So I guess, like, far far enough away to to vacation. But San Francisco is I would say five years ago was probably not even in our top 10. [01:08:24] S1: 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 set up. [01:08:33] S0: Brett, let's [01:08:34] S1: about to touch the ground. [01:08:35] S0: What do think's gonna happen? Brett got a big smile. [01:08:42] S1: Well Voila. Well, we haven't hit it yet. [01:08:44] S0: So We are [01:08:45] S1: There we go.
01:08:45 · Molly O'Shea, Israel Slodowitz
[01:08:45] S1: There we go. [01:08:46] S0: Have just touched down in San Francisco. [01:08:50] S1: 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. [01:08:58] S0: This is a great flight. This is a great flight and a great conversation. [01:09:00] S1: The best part about living in California and living in LA and coming up to San Francisco for work all the time is it is literally the most gorgeous flight ever. [01:09:09] S0: There's nothing like it. [01:09:10] S1: 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. It doesn't make any sense to me. [01:09:23] S0: Yeah. Someone very wise once told me that every day in California is a happy day. You could live here. Yeah. [01:09:29] S1: Every day. It's a choice. It is [01:09:31] S0: a [01:09:31] S1: choice. Taxes are brutal, but it's really pretty. [01:09:36] S0: Might be worth it, but who who am I to say?