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Hey, my name is Nick Fialka.

I am a captain at a major airline flying the 757 and 767.

I run the Ready for Pushback podcast and I'm a coach at Spitfire Elite Interview Consulting AV Nation.

What is going on?

And welcome back to the Pilot to Pilot podcast.

My name is Justin Seams and I am your host.

Today we're interviewing Nick from the Ready for Pushback podcast.

He's also a Spitfire Elite interview coach and a major airline pilot pilot.

We talk about his journey from becoming someone who thought he couldn't be a pilot at all, to going to the Citadel, which is not known for training pilots, to becoming now a major airline pilot and a couple of stops in between.

He owned an RV park, which is fascinating and cool, and it took a bottle of whiskey from a retired Delta captain for him to realize he could be an airline pilot.

It was a really fun talk.

We get into the weeds, we dive deep about airline interviews, what you should do, what you shouldn't do, why you should use Spitfire, what we talk a lot about it.

So if you want a job, if you're looking for the regional job, you're looking to get hired in netjets or a major.

Listen to this podcast.

Check it out.

We talk very much about what he thinks hiring is going to look like, what it takes to get hired, some key tips on what you should do to nail your interview, and if you haven't got the interview, you got to know.

He also talks about what you should do as well.

AV Nation, as you know, the magazine has been released.

It has.

Unbelievable.

Thank you so much everyone that's ordered.

I truly, truly appreciate it.

I just did an update on Instagram about shipping.

There was a lot of miscommunication and I was told so many things about shipping and it just hasn't come true.

So what I asked was for them to ship me all the magazines and I will be doing all the shipping myself.

They did promise me they shipped out the first 100 orders that we had.

So if you have an order in and you're one of the first 100, you should be getting it soon.

They gave me no tracking on that, but I promise you it's worth the wait.

And I truly, truly apologize that it's taking this long.

I truly, I wanted this to be were delivered on Christmas, truly.

That's what my goal was and just didn't come to.

But the magazine is unbelievable.

When you hold it in your hand.

I'm going to hold it up right now, but when you hold it up, you can't see this, but I'm holding it.

And it is truly a coffee table book.

It is something that we worked very hard on and is amazing, has great stories and we're currently planning the second issue right now we're in the beginning stages.

So it is a quarterly magazine and if you think you are a good writer, just go ahead and hit me up and you want to write something.

We're always looking for suggestions or an awesome story to talk about.

So AV Nation, thank you so much.

You can go to pilot, the pilot HQ.com backslash mag to check out the magazine today.

And it is truly amazing.

So please, please go check it out.

Aviation.

That's all I got for you right now.

Without any further ado, here's Nick from the Ready for Push podcast.

Nick, what's going on man?

Welcome to the Pilot.

The Pilot podcast.

Justin, I'm in your presence.

I can't believe it.

Thanks for having me on, my man.

Yeah, absolutely.

We were talking off air about just this like really weird kind, you know, you're like one to two people away from everyone in the world, whatever.

You're six people away.

Separation of whatever.

However the statement is.

But I was doing my taxes, I was signing my paperwork.

The guy's like, oh wait, you do an aviation podcast?

I was like, yeah man, I do.

Like, you want to be a pilot?

He's like, no, not at all.

But my brother in law is also doing a podcast.

I was like, what?

What Are the chances.

And he's like, ready for pushback.

I was like, yeah, I've heard of ready for pushback.

And he's like, oh, cool, that's awesome.

But then haven't heard, like, we didn't connect or anything like that.

And then what?

It's been a year.

Get an email from you.

It's like, all right, cool.

Let's do a podcast, man.

Let's link up.

Yeah, I thought it was.

It was absolutely hilarious when.

When he told me that and then showed me all your taxes.

That was right.

You're like, you make that much money?

It's like, dang.

No, it's like, dang, I'm doing better than Justin.

Good.

Let's go.

All right.

Yeah.

No, it's a.

It's a small world.

I mean, we always talk about how aviation is a small world, and that kind of goes into kind of coaching and getting your job right.

Like, you want to make sure you're in your time building and your cfi, whatever it is.

You want to make sure you have a good attitude, because people remember that.

But it is such a small world in aviation.

You never know.

Like, if I was a jerk to that guy, you might never wanted to reach out to me to be on my podcast or ask me to come on your podcast.

So there we go.

I think that that is one of the points I really try to drive home to people especially that are going through the process of becoming a professional pilot as they're going through their flight training and their cfi.

Like today's CFI is going to be.

Could be junior to their student at an airline.

So always be to your people.

Always be a positive influence, because all of that, it just.

It just weirdly follows you the entire time.

And even though each airline has, you know, each major has like 17,000, 18,000 pilots.

Yeah.

It just is so small and it's so wild when things come back around and.

And so you just.

You always got to be on.

You always got to be the person your mom thinks you are.

I know.

And it's funny because when you talk about that is when I was flying single pilot freight, my chief pilot there, eventually when I moved on the net jets I had, I was like, dude, you got to come here.

I love it, I love it, I love it.

And then a couple months later, he applies and that just gets hired too.

And it's like, ha, I'm senior junior now.

It's like, if we were fly together, good thing you were cool and nice and weren't kind of A jerk chief pilot.

But it's all good.

But it's just funny how that works, right?

You never think in the moment like, hey, my chief pilot could have the potential to be junior to me at my next job or at my final job or whatever.

Even your first officer be like, hey, dude, gear up.

It's like, what?

It's true.

You always, you always have to.

Your, your reputation will precede you everywhere you go.

I mean, I've had people that have, I have people that have been on interview teams that have interviewed a person that had been negative to them in their past.

And that was an effect of them not getting a job offer because they had an.

And they, they would call me afterwards and like, man, I, I made this mistake years ago and this came back to haunt me.

That's tricky, man.

Well, I mean, even like.

So you said you work for Spitfire, you help coach.

I'm sure interviews or companies can tell when they are trained by Spitfire, when they are trained by Cage Marshall, when they are trained by whatever they use.

Because I'm sure they all have the way that they train them.

And they can be like, hey, dude, we're actually interviewing this person.

You flew here, you flew there.

Do you know them?

It's like, oh, yeah, he was great.

He was awesome.

He, this is what he said, that he was very open about everything.

Wasn't shady at all.

Like, I'm sure that happens.

So it's just, you really got to make sure you're on top of everything.

Yeah, you do.

And it is true when people, when people interview, they, they do have an indelible mark from the organization that they use to do interview prep.

And that's, that's what I do love about what we do at Spitfire is the, the way we don't, we don't teach you what to say, we teach you to understand who you are.

And if you know that, it doesn't matter what the question is because you can articulate yourself clearly and empathetically and, and put all the points on the board because every question you get, you're graded, you're.

There's, there's a point scale that they give you 1 to 5, 1 to 10, what, however they want to do it.

And at the end of the day, they add up all your points, put it together and have a conversation, decide whether or not you're going to have that job.

Yeah, I remember when I was at my airline that I got hired at, I was sitting there, you know, you do the interview, they're like, oh, this Is awesome.

This is great.

And then they go away, and it's like, oh, that's when you start getting nervous.

Like, what's gonna happen next?

You know, they have you all line up, they take one group out, and then you still sit there and you're like, well, was that the hired group?

Is that not the hired group?

I almost think they enjoy it a little bit just to kind of play with your emotions and see.

I feel like they're watching from the sky from, like, one last vantage point to see how you react in those moments.

But it's very, very high stress situations.

They do.

And I know that the HR teams at all of the.

All of the carriers, they work really hard to try to reduce that stress level.

But I'll tell you what, it just doesn't work.

And the worst thing you can do is have, like, eight or 10 of those free little bottles of water that are in the interview room and then just have to use the bathroom the entire time.

Like, listen, you got problems.

What's your medical look like?

Yeah, yeah.

How are your kidneys?

What's going on here?

Yeah, we got a doctor on site to come check you out.

Oh, my gosh.

It's true.

But you know that, that stressful part.

So when interviewed, they forgot about me.

And so they pulled.

They pulled like, the people got the nose, went out early, and then they grabbed.

There were eight or so left, and they grabbed them and brought them in this room.

And I literally sat there for 15 minutes, like, oh, my God.

And I, I. I'm like, I'm the interview coach, and I'm not gonna get this job.

Like, this is embarrassing.

And then the guy comes around the corner.

He's like, are you Nick?

I'm like, I am.

He's like, come with me.

What do we even do in here?

I was like, oh, thank you, Lord.

Maybe they knew your interview coach.

They wanted you to distress a little bit more.

They're like, all right, listen, we gotta freak them out.

Yeah, they hang me out to dry all the time still.

So it's.

It's good.

It's a good.

It's a good relationship, though.

Love it.

Well, Nick, let's.

Let's talk about you a little bit.

We'll get into interviewing.

We'll get every house, which I'm sure everyone really wants to hear, because, you know, the last couple years has been crazy for interviews.

It's been crazy for hiring.

It kind of leveled off a little bit and hoping to pick back up, which we can talk about what you think, what Spitfire thinks everything about that a little bit later.

Right now, I want to focus on Nick, the person, the pilot, everything.

So let's talk about you.

Why did you ever become a pilot, man?

I became a pilot because my buddy Justin Hartfelder told me that I probably couldn't do it.

That is why I became a pilot.

That's really funny.

When I was.

When I was in high school, this guy.

This guy, Justin and I grew up together from sixth grade on, and we're still friends today.

He ended up going to the Naval Academy.

I wasn't smart enough to get into an academy.

And.

And he told me, he's like, yeah, I'm going to be pilot.

And.

And he told me I probably couldn't do it.

And so I literally.

I went to the Citadel thanks to a local businessman that, from where I was, he actually paid for my first year of college.

He called me over to his house, and he knew that I didn't have any money for college.

And he.

He came to me and he.

He.

We walked around this.

This property that he lived on, and we were talking, talking, talking.

He's like, so, you want to go to the Citadel?

What.

Like, what are your plans?

It was like, I'm just going to enlist in the Marine Corps and try to save money and go.

And he said.

And he handed me a check.

He handed me a check for $20,000, and he said, that will cover the first year at the Citadel.

The next three are up to you.

And that gave me my start.

And then I worked really hard.

I got a Navy scholarship from there, and then I. I was one of four of us or so that ended up getting a pilot slot, and I went to fly in the Navy.

That guy changed my family tree.

And.

And here we are right now because of that generosity.

So now I've got to do it to some kids sometime.

And, yeah, I think it might be a little bit more than 20.

Your first year of school might be a little more than 20k now, though.

I know.

Yeah.

So expensive.

Good Lord, I got five kids, man.

I know.

I'm.

Oh, sheesh.

I'm.

Listen this.

And they all want to fly and all the things.

I'm like, boy, golly, I better figure I better get some college to sponsor the show or something.

I know, right?

Citadel, please help me.

So when.

When you have that type of generosity, like, when you get the check for $20,000 in your hand, what's your.

What's going through your mind?

Are you just, like, elated?

Are you excited?

Are you kind of like, no, no, no, no, no.

Like, I.

There is no way.

This is too much.

I cannot take this.

Or were you like, oh, my gosh, thank you so much.

Let's go and start a career.

I was crying like, yeah, I just to do or how to handle it.

It was.

I talked to my grandfather about it and what like, he just said, you know, this is a gift and this is your opportunity, so take advantage of it.

And I, I love that.

I think that, that.

I think that that opportunity.

The only reason that opportunity came my way was because he was friends with our family and he knew.

He knew how, like, dirt poor we were, and he just had it in his heart to do it.

What's crazy is a few years ago, he passed away and he.

His son took over his company.

It's a very big company in North Carolina, and his son has taken over his company.

And he and I chat a little bit every now and then.

And when he died, I wrote a letter to him and thanking, like, telling him like, your dad was a great guy.

Your dad was an amazing human.

And he had no idea that the dad had never told anybody that he had done this.

And so that, to me was extra special.

Yeah.

You know, that was really cool.

Yeah.

You know, when I was talking about how he reacted, I get like.

I don't know, I just feel uncomfortable when I get gifts or anything.

Like, you know, like, it just.

There's like a little feeling of uncomfort.

Until someone told me.

It's like, you know, being.

There's something about being a gracious giver.

And also you have to learn how to be a gracious receiver too.

You have to learn to accept someone's gift and let them kind of give you the opportunity to give you this blessing that eventually helped change your life and as you said, helped change your family tree.

So there's really something to it about learning how to be a gracious receiver as well, which is kind of a learned skill.

It's not as easy as someone would think.

I think that being a gracious receiver is virtue.

And to be virtuous is to be.

To be above where you should be.

And so I, on my show, I talk a lot about philosophy and virtue and leadership and the things that you can do to make yourself better on that constant opportunity to propel yourself from where you are to where you want to be, knowing that that place is incremental and never really attainable.

And I think that a gracious receiver is that.

I agree with you.

I, you know, I'm Catholic.

I Carry so much guilt and anxiety about that stuff.

And.

And.

But as I.

As I grow and I understand myself, the be.

The ability to say thank you and to engage, but also to make sure that I understand now it's my opportunity to give bigger to somebody else and to give more to the society.

Yeah, absolutely.

100 agree.

So you receive this gift.

You go to the Citadel.

Your navy buddy told you you could never be a pilot, and you were kind of.

You got a fire lit under you.

You know, you were like, all right, I'm gonna prove you wrong.

Was there any other part of you that wanted to be a pilot before this?

Or is it truly just because he said you can never be a pilot?

Yeah.

No, I never wanted to be a pilot.

I didn't even know you could be a pilot until he brought me and brought it up and said, like, no, because, like, where we are in North Carolina was, we're not close to Charlotte.

We're not close to Raleigh.

We're not close to even Asheville's airport.

And.

And so we were just in the middle of nowhere, and nobody was a pilot, and it wasn't around me.

I didn't see it.

If I was in Charlotte, I'd probably be surrounded by American guys and US Air guys and stuff like that, but I wasn't.

And.

And so I had this idea, like, I wanted to want to do it, want to do it.

And then the Citadel offered, like, hey, if you want to do it, you got to take this test, and we'll see if you qualify to do it.

I was like, yeah, sure.

I'll give it a shot.

I literally.

I had never been in a plane.

I had never.

I. I had flown one flight to visit my grandmother when I was 17 years old in Punta Gorda.

Like, that's the only time I had been in an airplane.

And then my second time in an airplane was, like, my first day of flight school in the Navy, so.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

Were you worried you weren't gonna like it?

Were you worried, like, I might get airsick, I might get this?

Or was it any kind of.

I did get airsick the first flight.

It's the only time I ever did it.

Yeah.

But I just thought I actually kind of had a bad attitude.

I was.

I was kind of an ass of a kid, and so I thought I was cool coming from.

Coming from the Citadel, joining the military, and I thought nobody could tell me anything.

And so I had a chip on my shoulder for a good portion of my military career.

And if you talk to guys that were in my squadron in 2002 and 2003, they would tell you, like, that guy you see on the podcast is not the guy that I knew.

Oh, really?

Oh, yeah, I was.

I had a bad attitude.

What's funny is, so I started when I started flight school.

My first day of flight school in the Navy was September 11, 2001.

Oh, wow.

So, yeah, it's a day to remember.

Yeah.

And then because it was a Tuesday and they only start ground school on Tuesdays.

And so then we got two weeks off, finished up ground school and started flying.

But yeah, I.

It took me a long time to get this mindset of how fortunate I was for the things I had.

I thought it was just like everybody gets this.

I didn't think anybody.

I didn't think anything special about having wings on my chest or anything like that or wearing a flight suit.

But yeah, that.

That bad attitude probably.

It probably changed once I got married to my wife Anna, and like, I saw what it was like to be a good person and I just kind of evolved from there.

And.

Yeah, so, yeah, it's wild.

I mean, there's something to having a good partner, a good wife, a good husband in your life that can show you the way for me as well.

I mean, this podcast I've talked about this many times would not be a thing without Christina the magazine probably want to be a thing.

So, yeah, shout out to the good person in our lives.

That's helping changing our attitudes and making sure we stay on.

On track and be thankful for what we have.

Yeah.

And giving us the opportunity to do these shows too.

Yeah, exactly.

I've never talked to anyone on the podcast that started at the Citadel to do their training.

You know, I've talked to Air Force Academy, I've talked to Naval Academy, I've talked to kind of army pilots, but I've never talked to anyone in the Citadel.

The Citadel is a very interesting place.

I feel like no one really knows of it that doesn't live in the Carolinas, especially in Charleston.

I mean, beautiful campus in Charleston.

Like, you can't ask for a better place to go to school, scenic wise.

Right.

But I don't know much about it.

I know that there is.

It's not.

It's not necessarily a military school, but it has.

It's like VMI a little bit almost.

Right.

Like it's like you don't.

I don't know how I'm gonna say this, but you don't have to go to the military after going to the school.

But you.

It is a military school, correct?

Yes.

Okay.

It's an interesting.

It's an interesting thing.

The Citadel is.

If first off, you want to get a kind of glimpse into it, you can pick up the Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy that was written about the.

The first black student at the Citadel and his experience.

But I think that to understand the Citadel is a little bit of.

It's a lot of Charleston.

It's a lot of Charleston history.

Like, if you think about what Charleston history is, it's not pretty.

And it has a lot of terrible.

A lot of terrible stuff that has happened with, with slavery and the Civil War and all the like in the plantations and all the things that the money in Charleston came from.

The school was set up in the 18.

1842 to basically be a militia in that.

In the state.

And so it was set up as a military school outside of West Point and outside of the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy didn't exist then, but.

And then the Virginia Military Institute, they similar.

Similar kind of setup.

And so, yeah, when you go there, you're a cadet, you shave your head, you're like get yelled at.

All the hazing stuff is what everybody always talks about, which is no fun.

But when you're receiving it, but when you're giving it, maybe it is.

Don't write that down.

Sorry.

But the.

You don't have to join the military.

However you do.

You.

You spend your life doing military things and marching and, and, and physical fitness and all these things.

At the end of.

While you're there, you need to.

You have to take courses, ROTC courses given by the military.

So you can choose.

You can choose the Air Force, the Army or Navy.

Now you can choose Coast Guard stuff, which is cool.

And, and some.

And people that want to join the Marines, they jump onto the Navy stuff as well.

And that's kind of how you transition to there.

When I went, my class started with 600 and something.

I think we graduated 211.

So a lot of people drop out.

Wow.

Yeah, it's.

It's because it's hard.

It's really hard to make it through.

And I would.

Less than half my class joined the military.

But after September 11, it was like in the 90s percent of people just everybody joining.

And now I. I don't know.

Like, it's.

It's less.

But not everybody goes.

It's.

If you are.

If you are from that South Carolina, North Carolina area and your parents are.

Are generationally well to do, there's a really Good chance the Citadel is involved in that.

And you'll have.

And you'll have multi generational people going there so that they can pick up and take over dad's law firm or go do, you know, run whatever company and that there was a lot of that too.

So that was very interesting.

And I know we're not talking about flying, but that's.

I never talk about the Citadel.

This is wild.

I never thought we were talking about that.

No.

Well, the tie in too kind of like what's the track of someone at the Citadel that wants to be a pilot?

So obviously the Citadel, from my knowledge, does not have the ability to train pilots.

So you would have to choose then between Navy, Air Force, army, or do you like how does that work?

How do you get selected?

In which one?

Is it up to you?

Is it up to them?

Kind of talk about that.

So my buddy Jeff Couch, he.

He's an American.

He's captain American.

Pretty.

He's like 10 years senior to me at a.

As far as like being an airline pilot.

But he, he took the civilian pat.

Took the military path.

Most of the 99% is going to be like, you're going to have to join the military to get that flight time or the other side of that coin is you're going to be looking for either a 141 like an ATP CT ATP or a some kind of part 61 flight school afterwards just to knock it out.

And so you're going to.

You're going to pay for cut.

There is a flying club there.

I'm not sure how active they are right now.

I do.

I did buy one of their polo shirts to help support them a couple years back and that's about as far down the road as I've gone.

But.

And I hope somebody from the Citadels listen to this and wants to like send you a message and be like, here's exactly what we're doing now, please.

But yeah, there's really.

If, if you want.

If your goal was to be a pilot and not join the military, that would.

I would have that pretty low on my list.

Unless you really like marching in the hot South Carolina sun.

If so, then that's.

It's built for you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's pretty funny.

Yeah.

Not me.

Even though I played football and I feel like I got yelled at all the time playing for.

I probably got yelled at more playing football than I would have in the military.

Did you play football in college?

Yeah.

How about that, man?

That's pretty sweet.

Yeah, it was the best and the worst four years of my life.

But yeah, it was, it was a good time.

So your career.

Citadel.

And then you chose Navy?

Correct.

Okay, so the Navy.

And then did you go just do your four years at the Citadel and then eventually you went to pilot training after that?

Yeah, I did my four years at the Citadel and we graduated like May 12th.

And then I was, I was just waiting to start and a couple months later they sent me down to Pensacola.

That's when I started the training.

Six weeks of, six weeks of indoctrination stuff where you, like, they make sure you can swim and they, they teach you all the survival stuff.

And then, and then you start flight school, like ground school after that six week group of work that's called API.

They call it KNIFE now, I believe.

But they got all these names.

They've changed over every time.

Every time there's a change in acronyms in the Navy.

Like an admiral gets a star.

So it's a great thing.

That's really funny.

When you graduated the Citadel, are you considered an officer or do you have to go to officer school as well?

So you are considered, you don't have to go to officer school.

You, you get commissions straight in because you did the four years of ROTC training.

And there's, there's certain stuff you've got to do during the summertime just to go and get a little, like you spend a month with the active duty Navy to see what things are like.

I mean, it's fun.

I, I went to Thailand for a month.

It was amazing.

18 year old Nick with 600 bucks in his pocket for two weeks, three weeks in Thailand.

It was awesome.

That's a long way in Thailand, doesn't it?

Oh, man.

Yeah.

I was living like a king.

Yeah.

Out in Phuket, if you guys have ever been there.

Good golly miss Molly.

Yeah.

Nope, not me.

I've been to China before, but not Thailand.

So.

Yeah.

So you're doing your military career.

Was the goal then to stay military?

Like, did you have an idea of like, all right, I'm military trained, Military kind of on my brain.

I'm gonna stay here for the full 20 years.

Full 40 years, whatever it is, I'm gonna be military for life.

Or was it all right, get this done, put in my time, check out asap, get to the airlines?

No, neither.

Okay.

Get done as soon as possible.

The third question.

Oh, sorry, I'm kidding.

I didn't have another one.

The third one, just profit, it was, get in, get out, start a business, be a millionaire.

That was it.

Okay.

And that's, that was my plan.

And so I got in, I got out, started a business, and then I was not a millionaire.

And so that was out here in these streets, man.

It is, it is.

So I spent, I spent nine, my first nine years as active duty, and then I got out and stayed in the reserves and I thought, I thought I was going to, you know, take over the world.

And so I started.

But Also it was 2009 and the economy was completely crushed and I couldn't find it.

It was hard to find a job and do all that.

And it was a tricky, tricky time to be broke and out of the military.

So you were still flying in the reserves, but also trying to do your own thing, just civilian wise, business wise.

Right.

Yeah.

I was.

No idea of wanting to be an airline pilot.

No, I was, I had just.

Because I, I was a helicopter pilot in the Navy and then I switched to a fixed wing flight Instructor flying the T34, which they don't even fly anymore.

And, and so I just, I, I got out, I was doing.

I wasn't even flying.

I was just drilling in the Navy and just, just spending time and I was trying to.

My first job, I.

It was like Dunder Mifflin.

I sold toilet paper and office supplies.

And then, and then I ended up getting a finance job in D.C. in the Pentagon working with a consulting company.

And that was, that was pretty cool.

But it was very stressful and, but while I was there, some dude was like, hey, you should go fly.

At my old squadron, I was the commodore over here.

You can go fly 53s, which is a 53 MH.

53 is like 100 foot long helicopter.

It's like 20 something feet tall.

It's huge.

It's the transformer helicopter.

Yeah.

And so I went and flew that for like four years.

It was awesome.

And that was my, that's how I got my flying fix.

And I still wasn't even thinking about the airlines because I wanted to start an RV park.

And so I built an RV park in Florida.

Yeah.

Dang.

Sold my house, spent all my money, built an RV park for like almost $3 million and, and ran that.

And lived in a mobile home on the RV park and, and built it and, and ran it for about five years and I built it to the highest rated RV park in the state of Florida.

And then.

Oh yeah, there's a lot of RVs in Florida, so that's, that's something.

Yeah.

You know, I never knew the luxury market of RVs and how much you can spend in Airstreams and RVs and trailers and Mercedes Sprinter vans.

Like, once, I think probably before COVID like 2016 to, like 2018, it was really popular for YouTubers to buy these Sprinter vans, make them up, make them really cool.

And that's when I first, like, I was just like, oh, Sprinter may be cool.

I was like, okay, that's a lot.

Or an rv, because, like, okay, that's even more.

It's like a fifth wheel.

It's like, holy smokes, Airstreams.

Like, there's.

I never knew there's so much money in the RV world.

It is insane.

It was not uncommon to have a $3 million RV on my site, on my line.

I mean, all day long, when that's actually.

That actually kind of feeds into how I got to the airlines.

People were whispering, you know, all my.

All my Navy buddies are like, hey, should think about going to the airlines.

I was like, yeah, I don't know.

I don't know.

I'm liking what I'm doing here.

And one day this.

This, you know, like, $700,000 RV pulls in.

And it's this dude, he sits in my office, he looks around, he sees my I love me wall where it's got all my Navy pictures around.

And he says, oh, man, you're a pilot.

Why aren't you flying at the airlines?

And I made my excuses.

And he says.

He says, dude, like, why don't you just come talk to me?

And I'm like, oh, okay.

Weird.

So I went and parked.

The guy did some work.

Is like, Tuesday at 11 o' clock in the morning, I go over to his RV.

I knock on the door, I'm like, hey, what do you want to talk about?

He's like, hey, my name is Such and Such.

I just retired from Delta.

I want to talk to you about.

You should.

Maybe you go to the airlines.

Come on in.

So I go into his rv, pulls out a bottle of Eagle rare, puts it on the table, and we drink almost that entire bottle.

And I stumble home at 11 o' clock in the morning, and I look at Anna and I was like, we're going to the airlines.

And she's like, what in the hell are you talking about?

And she's like, she was very upset that I was drinking at 11 o' clock in the morning.

I don't usually do that.

And that was usually.

You say, good things don't happen when you do that, but it sounds like good things do happen when you do that.

For you did that day, it really was, it was very serendipitous.

The guy was super cool.

And so I called up my mentor, Michael Phillips, who I've interviewed on my show a couple times and I rolled in and told him like, hey, I'm thinking about doing this.

He's like, well if you want to do that, come on, I've have got access to an airplane.

Let's get your multi engine rating and get you sent off.

So I went, I got 26 hours.

I hadn't flown in like five and a half years.

I got 26 hours in a DA42, took my check ride, passed it, interviewed at Envoy like a week later and started like three weeks after that.

No way.

It was wild.

And I sold the RV park and I used all the money from the RV park to pay for the five years of making fifteen hundred dollars every two weeks.

Yeah.

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I've always, always wanted a plane from Textron Aviation.

My dream plane is a 182, maybe a 206.

So hopefully in the next couple years we can make that happen.

But shout out Textron Aviation and as I said, make sure you go to txtav.com that's something I love to talk about.

It's just, you know, as someone who came in new to the 121World from the fraction world, so I got to see the new, I got to see all this other stuff and I, my dad is an airline pilot, so I've seen the bad side.

I've seen, you know, US Airways after 911 where they take 60% you lose your, your, your pension.

I've seen the bad side.

So my dad was kind of like, if you, if I ever hear about you complaining about anything in your contract, I will slap you.

He didn't actually say that, but I have a feeling that my grandpa who watched the food in the airlines and my dad would both slap me silly if I ever complained about anything.

But it's very interesting to hear people complain about stuff that don't or how just don't remember or don't even.

Some people don't even know.

All they know is I went to flight school.

I got hired at a, at a regional.

I spent two years at the regional.

Now I'm at a American, now I'm at Delta, now I'm at wherever that didn't happen back in the day, 2009, when you got out of the military.

Probably one of the worst times to be a pilot, right?

Like, I mean, everyone's furloughed, can't get hired.

There's like 10 people getting hired maybe for an airline, maybe more, I don't know.

But it was to get hired there.

To get hired in 2009, you had to have 3,000 hours of aircraft commander multi engine heavy time and a 737 type rating.

And that made you just, just barely qualified to interview at Southwest.

And they would take 15 people that year.

Insane.

Yeah, it's insane.

I think you bring up a good point though.

Let me.

Can I talk to that for just a quick.

Absolutely.

Please do their.

I don't know when this is coming out, but last night of my phone started exploding and it was people that were on a conference call with A Velo Airlines and a Velo is announcing that they're furloughing 25 of the people.

So this happened less than 12 hours ago and they're going to drop off 5 of their aircraft and they're doing like a lot of things are going on and there's shock going through the community about this furlough on top of what's going on at Spirit.

And they're like, oh man, how can this happen?

This and that.

And because there's no perspective because we've lost like that gap from 2009 was a long, long time ago.

And so now like the smaller companies, the startups, the companies that, the companies that struggle to sell tickets and be consistent on routes and things like that, those are the companies that are, that are, that are having those ripple effects.

And that is literally the nature of aviation.

When you go to Miami and you, you look over there on the cargo ramp.

And you see, you're like, what are all these different airlines?

I've never even heard of these.

Like, they're like, summer exists, some don't exist.

And they come and they go and they rename and they sell their certificate and all this stuff.

And that is like, that is like the, the life cycle of aviation.

Not every, like, this time from the new contract Covid till now is freaking amazing, and we're in a wonderful time.

But also when you, you've like, you got to be like mad eye moody.

You've got to have one.

You, you're doing your job, getting your, getting your hours, but you've got to have one eye one, you know, looking somewhere else.

Like, what am I going to do next?

Because when, when my phone started ringing and it's these, these guys that are, that, you know, I'm.

I'm 25 from the bottom.

I've got, I just left the military.

I've got three kids.

How am I going to support them?

What am I going to do?

Like, be a good call.

And then another guy calls that.

He's like, dude, I just got hired by American.

I'm going to be leaving here.

I can't.

I'm so thankful that I was able.

I was listening to you and able to pivot and like, these two different sides, and it's so hard.

So my heart, like, the empathy that I feel and that I, that I try to bring to these guys and gals that I talk to, I mean, it is, it is real.

Because I, I.

Most of my phone calls are not like, like, hey, I've got two good choices, which.

What do I make?

It's like this bad thing happened.

How do I pivot?

Yeah.

So.

Which is tough.

And I saw the.

When I woke up this morning, I have phone calls because I don't help with interviewing, but I saw.

I was like, hey, Avello is restructuring and wanted.

Why I thought that was interesting is because I always thought it was cool that Ovelo had a base in Raleigh, Durham.

I was like, oh, man.

I mean, I'm not gonna work for them.

But like, it's cool to see someone have a base here.

And I like that.

And then it's like, well, jk, we are now changing that.

And I guess they're moving the base to Concord.

And they went from a ton of bases, just five or four or four or five bases.

And I didn't realize it was because of kind of like a downturn.

The way the article that I read was Just, oh, we're restructuring more profitable routes, more profitable airplanes are coming on.

We're getting rid of the less fuel efficient 737, 7 hundreds and focusing on the 800.

So yeah, it's, they're focusing, they're focusing on doing detainee flights to, to other countries.

Like that's what they're focusing on.

It's not like the, the ticket purchasing is really struggling as far as, as far as just their flying from, you know, Raleigh or whatever.

They closed Burbank, I don't know, four months ago.

Everything on the west coast closed down a couple months ago.

And it's just, it's, it's this march toward like, I don't want to say march towards insolvency, but like, better tighten that belt is what that, that the marketing team was trying to tell you at Avello.

Yeah, that's why it's a tough industry.

Right.

I mean we've seen, we've seen big giants go out.

We've seen massive airlines never think would leave.

I mean, this was a while ago, but it doesn't mean it can't happen again today.

You know, once you're, it's really interesting because once you're on top in the aviation world, like, they think it's going to stay like that forever.

They think it's going to be like this forever.

But you know, there was a time where Delta wasn't number one.

There was a time when United could not buy a good story about themselves.

And now everything you read about United is like, oh, this is the best.

This is awesome.

This is great.

You know, it's, they, they can, they really turned it around.

So what is number one right now doesn't mean in 10 years will be number one one as well.

So it, it's just such an interest.

I don't, I truly don't know if there's anything like this industry.

Like, it's truly just a wild, it's like the Wild West.

You never know what's going to happen.

I also think that just because you have seniority doesn't mean you're safe.

And when you look at Western Global, when UPS had the MD11 tragedy, they, the DOT grounded all MD11s.

Well, Western Global furloughed every MD11 pilot they had.

Doesn't matter if it's the number one guy or the brand new or the most brand new guy.

And that they, they, they furloughed out of seniority order to get all those people because they can't fly them anymore.

And they're like, all of a sudden, like, Monday was a good day.

Tuesday, we're about to completely collapse.

So that is aviation.

Yeah.

And you would like to think that that wouldn't happen at kind of, you know, the big four or the major airlines, but at the end of the day, airlines do what they need to do to try to survive.

And I'm sure if they had to, they'd be like, hey, we're going to do this.

You can fight it in arbitration.

We can wait the two years for this, and hopefully we'll will be better.

Or they're gonna be like, look, this is all we got.

We're gonna go out of business unless you let us do that.

And they're gonna be like, oh, okay, yeah, we can do that.

You know, it's so.

It.

It's.

Yeah, it's definitely crazy.

These contracts are great, though.

It is a great time to be a pilot.

It's really interesting thinking about, like, 2020, the massive downturn, what felt like everyone's gonna furlough, didn't know what was gonna happen.

And then what actually was happening was it was the perfect time to be applying to a major airline.

It was the perfect time to start your training.

It was the perfect time to continue your training and get caught in the biggest bo.

Well, hopefully it continues.

Like, it might slow down a little bit.

We're probably not going to see the same hiring numbers, which you could probably talk on as well.

But it seems to be that 2026, hopefully, will be another great year for hiring.

Do you see that?

Does Spitfire see that?

Or is it kind of just like a.

We'll see.

We don't know yet.

There's still a lot going on.

Well, I know the forecasts.

I know where everybody's.

What everybody's talking about.

It's nice to have access to the 121 carrier hiring teams and having these conversations.

And I'll tell you that it all changes.

Like, when you look back at 2025, when you.

When you just look at.

Look at United, their original.

Their original number was, like, 1700 that they were trying to hire.

They ended up.

They ended up over 2200 because they made a.

They made a pivot, a decision.

Scott Kirby and his team made a decision, I want to say, like, September or so, that, like, hey, we just.

Let's ramp this up and get going, and let's.

Let's cash in on these pilots now.

And they.

And so they did, and they, like, doubled down and really ramped up their hiring.

And with that hiring, they also really ramped up their, like, thanks, but no thanks as well.

And.

And so that, like, people.

People that weren't expecting opportunities, got opportunities, and some people were caught with their pants down and not.

And not ready and hadn't been getting ready ahead of time.

So I do want to warn you, like, if anybody's applying, first off, I think, yeah, 2020, all that stuff that was super cool, like, what a little.

What a wild ride.

But it is, like, if, like, my kids, like, as they're wanting to start into aviation, like, now's a great time to get into it because there's.

We are.

We are in a place where there's.

I don't want to say there's more stability, but there's.

There's more ability to absorb abnormalities if another Covid happens or another September 11th.

Like, even if another September 11th were to happen, I'm not sure that the flying public would stop flying for such a great amount of time.

I'm not sure that would happen.

Or, like, with the economic crisis and the bankruptcies, there's a lot more cash on hand.

There's a lot less debt being managed by every airline except, like, Americans still paying down their debt as well, but they're getting, like, they're getting to.

Everybody's getting to this really good footing to be able to absorb some kind of black swan event, if you want to call it that, or whatever it is.

And so that's good, but I'm not.

I don't want to, like, stake my claim that it'll never happen again, because I can't.

Like, it will.

It's some.

Every eight years, some happens, and.

And so you roll with it.

And you've always got to be like, you're my what ifs.

I'm.

I'm a captain at my airline, but.

But every day I'm a what if?

I.

Like, I. I.

You.

You cannot believe how much money I try to save just because I spent my whole life with no money.

Just because, like, I want to make sure that if it ends today because I say something on the show that somebody doesn't like, and they fire me today, like, okay, like, I will be okay.

I will find another path.

I will have, like, I will be able to support my family.

And also, if you were a pilot and you want to get back into aviation, I also think now is a great time because I. I had a phone call on Sunday of a guy I had.

I've known a guy I went to the Citadel with, and he.

He was a pilot.

Was.

He's Got a whole bunch of kids.

And he doesn't like his desk job.

He hates his desk job.

And he's like, I want to figure out how to fly.

And so we've started the conversation about how to get to a regional, but you can now get to a regional with just a little bit of savings.

If you.

If you are trying to support a family like that, first year pay is.

Is not great.

It's probably a pay cut for whatever you're doing now.

But then year two and three and four, like, that's a lot better.

Yeah, man.

And so.

So be, like, be ready for that.

Like, enjoy that and be.

Lean forward if you can, but have a talk with your spouse first.

Figure it out.

You know, it's crazy that you can actually have a living wage now at the regional airlines, right?

Like, I remember talking about when I first started the podcast.

I started talking to more people that were just getting hired by the.

The majors there at the regionals for a while, kind of in the bad years.

And there's a lot of stories of, you know, I slept on the bench, I slept on the crew lounge.

I slept on by the gate.

I was shaving in the terminal bathroom.

I was brushing my teeth there.

Like, couldn't afford anything.

Like, honestly could have been on welfare because, yeah, my.

The people at my church were buying us groceries, and I could.

I had to choose when to pay our electric bill.

It was very difficult.

And, I mean, I went through my entire life savings I had.

I literally was down to zero by the time I got hired by the major.

It was the most serendipitous moment of my life because we were about to call uncle, and I was gonna go figure something else out.

So you never know.

Like, I was on the razor's edge, man.

And so, you know, I'm.

I'm thankful.

I'm thankful for the experience.

If I didn't have that experience, I wouldn't be able to have the show, wouldn't be.

Have the conversations and the depth of experience that I've had.

And so it's great, man.

Yeah.

Let's go.

So as someone who is an interview coach now at Spitfire, did you use interview coaching?

Did you use a program to get hired, or did you.

Like, I could do this.

I know how to answer questions.

I feel like I'm a natural speaker.

I. I actually have taken classes in storytelling and public speaking, and there's no way in hell I would go to an interview without interview prep ever.

I have seen people do it, and I would say the majority of them are unsuccessful.

And then I'm, you know, you meet the ones and twos of the.

The person that did do it and got the job offer.

Like, good on you, bro.

You beat the.

You beat the curve.

But if you have the opportunity to put the odds in your favor so that you're going to win the game, why wouldn't you do that?

That.

Yeah.

And the other way I look at it is, is the airlines see kind of.

They see so many people go through interview coaching, like, they probably see all the time they do.

So that is the bare minimum of the answers of the preparing that they expect.

Like, they expect you at the very least, to be able to.

To be able to put out what you guys.

Everyone that you guys can put out.

And if you can't match that on your own, then they're gonna be like, well, you didn't feel like this job was important enough to prepare this hard for or to pay the $600 for them.

Why would we hire you over someone that is really wanting this and really has put the time and effort to interview?

If you're 25 years old and you're interviewing at a major airline, you've got $22 million at stake.

And one of the things we like to say at Spitfire is we make more millionaires every single year than professional baseball will do in five years.

And that is like, that's the fact of the matter.

And it's not about the money, but it is about the fact that you need to realize, like, there's a lot stake, bro, and you need to.

You need to double up on it.

And so to answer your question, I did use Spitfire.

I started off with another organization, and I thought that it was antiquated, and I thought that they had a bunch of videos online.

I thought they were, like, old from, like, the 90s.

It was.

Yeah.

And it just.

It didn't.

I was like, this is fine, but I was scared.

I was like, man, I don't.

Like, I don't feel.

I don't feel it.

And some Spitfire was just starting, and.

And somebody had reached out and said, you should give this a try.

And so I. I mean, like, I spent the money and it was.

It was a scary thing to spend the money, and.

And, man, it just changed everything.

It is true that the interviewer can.

The interviewer can.

Can smell what you're putting down, and they know.

They know who you've used based on how you articulate yourself, because there's a couple different varieties and flavors of how to talk about Yourself.

There's a canned answer where like, hey, I've heard this story before.

I've heard like I've.

Man, the, the names have changed, the times have changed.

But golly, man, I keep hearing this basic style of story over and over and over.

And then there's, there's one like, oh, this person led with empathy and this person led with, with the way to articulate back to me what the question was.

I pushed them a little bit.

They were able to, to, to pivot.

They used great crew resource management.

They really understood the position.

And then at the end of the, at the end of the question, they told me how that experience was going to make, make things better at United and make things better at American and how they are, they are the asset that we want to make our company go to the next level.

And so getting, getting from, like tell me about a time you did this to.

Let me tell you how with me at your organization, we're all going to win together.

Like, that is, that's a, that's a, that's a higher level conversation that takes experience to be able to articulate believably.

Yeah.

Do you.

The way that.

I mean, this might be wrong, but I kind of view it or I have viewed it in the past as if you want to go to United, you go to Cage Marshall, Denver.

Denver, right.

If you want to go to American, as a recent, you go to Spitfire.

I don't know what Deltas would be, but is that true?

Is that completely false?

I would say if you want to go to Delta, use Spitfire.

If you want to go to American, you should use Spitfire and United.

A really good choice for United these days is Spitfire.

And I love Cage Marshall as well.

So no shade to the ladies at Cage Marshall.

I think they're awesome and if you want to use them 110%.

I back you on that.

I think that they have so much to offer and it's one of my favorite, one of my favorite companies.

So I, I do like, I want to, I bristle a little bit to, hey, this is the, this is the, the company focused on that organization.

Because what happens there is if they are, if they are completely focused on one company, that's where your canned answers come from.

That's where you're like, hey, I know what they like to hear.

I know what they want to hear.

So I'm going to teach you the thing that they want to hear.

Like it's, it's bigger than that.

And so you need to zoom out to know, to know like, we didn't start, we, like, we didn't even start to try with America.

We started because the, because the, the FedEx CRM exercise was like created by Bill and Tron, the owners and they taught to it and they help people understand how to, how to accomplish it.

And you know, FedEx hasn't hired in 18 months.

But the we were started did to help minorities, women and people with English as a second language get into aviation.

And so if we can help them get there because they are the least represented of anybody in, in the aviation industry, then everybody else benefits because you can.

Like, if we can help them, we can easily help you, right?

And so it doesn't matter if you're military, it doesn't matter if you're a civilian man.

If I'm, I'm filling out an application.

If I'm, if I'm, if I'm like, hey, I've got, I've got my ATP CTP next week and I'm starting to fill out my application.

By the time you hit send, you had already, you should already be signed up for interview prep.

Because I was like, when did, when should someone sign up for it?

All right, let's say I'm at Endeavor.

I want to apply to all the airlines.

Do I do it before I even start the application?

Do I do it in the application?

Do I do it for the resume?

Like, when is the perfect time for this to happen?

Happen?

I think that if you are going to start form, I think if you start formally moving that way, then you, the first thing you need to.

Listen, let me, let me digress a little bit.

You need your notebook.

Get your notebook together, start writing down your stories.

And then you need to start writing down your budget and where your expenses are going to go.

Because the expenses happen a lot and they happen.

They're just super dynamic.

And every time you turn around, it's a logbook thing or it's an app review thing, or it's an interview process prep thing, or it's a suit or it's shoes or it's a, you know, a haircut.

You need all of those expenses written down and then you've got to allocate.

When am I going to buy that?

Do I have all the money right now?

Well, then let's just go get it.

If not, then you need to rack and stack that in, in level of importance.

Am I going to go to a conference?

That's $1,000 minimum.

I mean, if you don't fly for free, if you can't non Rev, that's, I mean, that's $2,000.

So those are things you've got to think about.

But when you're building that application, your budget should be leaning toward it's time to do interview prep.

Because even if it takes two years to get the interview, I, it took me five years to go from, to go from as a Navy pilot.

It took me five years to get hired from my regional to a major.

And I thought it was going to be 18 months, but I had, I had my interview prep stuff in my pocket it.

That entire time because my application was already published.

I would update it every single week for five freaking years.

Sorry, what's that timeline look for right now for someone that's applying right now?

Like, what, what do you see?

Was there a trend?

Is it just different?

Does it, Is there just.

Is there a magic sauce to be getting faster?

Is it just kind of like it's.

Yeah, you need 1501 hours.

Okay, if you have 1501 hours, you'll be hired.

You're hired.

I, I would tell everybody, like, don't believe the lie of this guy had 50 hours less than me and he got hired.

Yeah, that person did.

But that person also had other things that the applicant.

I mean, the application is awful.

It's 30 pages long.

The application takes so long to fill out.

And because of that, there's a lot of information about you on there.

And, and, and that story creates the entire profile of who you are on top of your interview.

And so just to get called, like, you could maybe, you know, hey, they might have 50 hours less than you, but they were gold SEAL instructor.

They were a blue angel.

They were an astronaut.

Like I, like, they were.

Pick your, pick your thing.

They, they volunteered for the union.

They're the vice president of the, you know, of obap, or they're this or they're that.

They volunteer, they give back, they do things more than they, they take.

And they're part of this aviation community.

I've seen them at five conferences in a row.

I've seen them at 10 conferences in a row.

I've seen them here, I've seen them there.

I see them being positive on LinkedIn, like all these things.

That's like the big picture.

It's all of it.

And it's.

You've got to, you've just got to roll with it sometimes.

You're going to get the interview, you're going to get a thanks, but no thanks, and you're going to pivot and you're going to roll to the next interview and you're going to than thanks and you're pivot and roll the next interview and they're going to say, welcome aboard, we're happy to have you and you're going to be home.

So it's, you know, it's more than just 1500 hours.

It's more than just 3000 hours.

It's a bigger picture.

So don't focus on that.

Focus on making yourself better every single day.

If you can make yourself just incrementally better, you have a better chance tomorrow and a better chance the next day.

Do you guys talk at all about social media presence and how that can negatively affect you or positively affect you?

Like going like to air airlines when they see applicants or they invite you out, do they actually go check your social media to see what you're posting, to see what you're doing?

Is it something you should make pride?

Just kind of talk about Spitfire's guidance on social media?

Because I'm guessing an airline would want to prevent a headache that could pop up.

You are, you are one of the biggest podcast aviation podcast hosts in the world, right?

You fly for a major airline.

I, I am a medium sized podcast host.

I fly for a major airline.

When you go on my socials, you'll see that I fly in a major airline.

You're not going to see my wings, you're not going to see my shoulder board.

If maybe I wore a hat, you wouldn't know because I wouldn't have a picture of it up there.

However, I understand that people are, people are dynamic in their social media and they're influencing the things they want to do it.

I have seen it work positively and I have seen it work very negatively.

I've seen people lose their jobs because of that.

And so you have to know yourself and how you're going to thread that needle.

And if you are an influencer and you do get an opportunity, I wouldn't be flaunting that opportunity before, you know, know before you have a seniority number because that like, man, there's just so much they can get rid of you for when you're on probation or when you have a CJO and they're like, we're just going to pull that cjo.

I, I work with some influencers.

I've, I've, I've had a ton of them come through Spitfire and, and it, they're all different ever.

Like some, some people are like, you know, like, look at this experience that I'm on.

What a wonderful experience.

Some people are like, hey, look at me and how cool I am and what I do and this thing.

And then, you know, there's, there's different flavors.

And so you need to know your flavor and be honest with yourself.

If, if you.

I think about one of my, One of my favorites is my layover life.

The dude from United, like, he clearly shows he's from United, but he has permission from United.

I have permission from my airline to talk about what I do, but I'm very careful about it because I don't want to, I don't want to impact their brand.

I want them, I want them to be successful so that I can be successful.

Right.

And so, you know, if I'm, if I'm flying a trip every day to St. Thomas, like, I got to be careful about how I'm going to deliver that.

I would say you got to do you.

But also if there's a.

Like I would, I would air on the side of being more conservative on the things you're going to do.

You.

Because it is a.

Like when you go to this job, they don't want to know, they don't want to know how many people are following you.

You know, you're getting that job because you really, you need the money, you need the insurance, and that's why you're going to get that job.

Like if you're making $10 million a year doing your, doing your influencing, like you don't need that job.

So that's not who's going to get the job.

Right.

Also, if you are making $10 million a year, please call me.

Please give me a call.

I would like to talk to you.

Yeah.

How do you do it?

I'm not pretty enough.

What are your kind of.

Without giving away too much, right.

Obviously, go to Spitfire, of course.

What are your top three do's and don'ts for the application process?

This could be a resume, it could be the application, it could be an interview.

Like the top three things airlines don't want to see and the top three things airlines do want to see to see.

I think that the number one thing is you need to lead well with who you are.

And so that means I need you to have your application tight.

And the way you get your application tight is to have somebody review it, that it does it professionally.

That's seen thousands of resumes.

They can tell you how to, how to reword your dui, how to reword your incident, how to reword your accident, how to put, you know, write the word drive instead of doctor with a period or how to be consistent across an application.

That application takes weeks to fill out.

Tell me I'm wrong.

Like it takes.

It's awful.

And that's just one airline and anyway, yeah that.

So be ready with that.

But also your resume is.

Your resume is who you are and your logbook is your thesis.

So both of those need to be tight when we go.

So Spitfire, we, we pride ourselves as the only interview coaching company to go to every single one of the conventions, all seven of them.

We go every single year.

And, and now we're, we're actually starting to partner with the Arab American Aviation Professionals which is brand new group starting this year.

Like that are.

Get that it formed last year and they're really getting moving forward this year.

So there will be an eighth conference in 2027.

So we, we invest very heavily in that.

But while we do resume review and we'll have every day we have people waiting 30, 45 minutes for us to go through resumes and re, rejigger them and, and get them set.

All of that stuff, you're doing yourself a little bit of a disservice showing up and needing a review.

Like you should show up in front of a recruiter with the tightest resume you ever had and the most confidence and the most brushed teeth and, and just go in there with a smile and crush.

And so if you can do those things and know your logbook and have it in order and do like do the basics that's going to set you off on that opportunity that somebody else is not going to have.

What's a common resume mistake that you see?

Like maybe like one of the most common ones that's like, oh my gosh, for the love of whatever, please change this.

I have a really great episode about how to write the perfect resume.

And I would first off push people to go watch that.

I spent a lot of time, I asked for, I asked for people to send me resumes, resumes.

I got more than a thousand resumes and I went through them all.

It took forever.

And I saw a lot of white space.

I see a lot of misspellings.

I see, I see a lot of people using.

We are, we are in a conservative job doing like dressing conservatively like acting.

You know, you could go to a convention in 1955 and go to a convention in 2025 and it looks similar.

People in suits, booths, that kind of stu and, and same thing at the interview.

It all looks the same.

So you need to be, you need to be aligned and know that the, that the, the Things you're talking about and the things that you're doing are all, are all organized to be as conservative as possible and so on resumes using newer format stuff.

I'm not hiring a graphic designer.

I don't need your cool emojis.

And like, that's a cell phone.

That's my cell phone number.

Here's a little computer.

It shows what my email address is.

Like, get that stuff out of here, man.

Like, get it tight.

Get it conservative.

And, and less is more based.

Not less is more.

With like, no, there's a ton of white space.

But less is more like, I don't need you to be decorative.

I don't need you to be the social media.

And don't put, do not put your Instagram handle on your resume.

Could you imagine?

Yeah, I've seen it.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

I see it.

Like, I'm like, follow me.

Yeah.

Well, they're like, hey, I got this line here about me being an influencer.

I get this market and I'm like, get that out of here.

Like, no way.

Like, they don't.

That's a, that's actually kind of a threat.

So they don't want that.

I want, I want, you know, who your mom thinks you are.

I want you to be that, that really good pilot, that really good instructor, that really good, that really good, you know, regional pilot, whatever it is.

The.

I want you to talk about leadership.

I want you to talk about safety.

I want you to talk about crew resource management.

I want you to talk about customer service.

If it doesn't, if it doesn't talk about those four things, I don't want to see it because those are the things I'm hiring for.

I'm hiring the chick fil a of pilots and I want that.

So tell me how you are.

That.

Yeah.

What do you say to someone that maybe has been out of regional for longer than they wanted to be?

They've had a couple interviews, maybe they didn't get that.

They just got the thanks, but no thanks.

What do you say to someone that's kind of down in where they are because they see, you know, the other people, I got 1500 hours, I just, I'm in, right seated, whatever regional.

And I just got hired at United.

I just got hired at Delta, just got hired at American.

They see all these people get hired and they're like, what the heck?

What am I doing wrong?

What do you say to someone in that situation?

I say the same thing that I do to my 18 year spirit pilots.

The guys that have Been at Spirit for ever and now they're having to make a bad, like they're, they're like being forced into make this decision that they don't want to make.

First off, I love you and it's going to be okay.

Like start with, start with that.

Like it is, is going to be okay.

So let's take a look at the big picture.

And a lot of times the big picture has to do with attitude and presentation.

And it is important that if you've been there for so long and you've been there longer than, and you all of a sudden you expect that they owe this to you or you're furloughed from your company and you expect because there's a benefit to being a furloughed pilot to get a preferential interview.

Like if they smell that a mile away, that's a thanks but no thanks all day long.

I don't even need to finish the interview.

I don't even need to ask any more questions.

So who you are, how you, how you present yourself, like you met your, like the first time you met the girl that's going to be your wife.

Like that first date, you have to seal the deal for your whole life right there on one date.

And so do it.

Be the best that you possibly can be.

Smile.

And when they say no, it's.

That literally could just be not yet.

And that's okay.

So take a breath, step back, make yourself better.

Go in with an even more exciting attitude.

Like do all the things, get the reps more and just go back happier and better and just be consistent with.

And something will happen and something will give.

And don't be just like one now.

No, two no's, three no's, just keep going, it's okay and keep re attacking.

Six months goes by pretty quick.

I've had, I've had people at major airlines get four or five thanks, but no thanks and then finally got picked up.

That's consistency, that's keeping a good attitude.

Like do it.

It's.

It can happen.

What's one thing in the interview other, I mean, we've talked about being yourself, we've talked about being clean, being conservative.

But from my point of view, the number one thing that got people in trouble in the interview that I was in was their logbooks, was not having a clean log book, was not having a prepared logbook.

And I think it caught me a little bit off guard.

I mean I, I made sure, I printed out, I bound a logbook, I marked everything, every check right.

Everything I Notebook.

I did everything for my logbook, but just the idea, like, how much they emphasized the logbooks.

I think it caught me off at how.

I mean, I know it's important, but, like, how important that was.

Like, I think if you were on the fence and you had a bad logbook, it was a no.

If you're on the fence, you had a great logbook.

It's a.

A yes.

Yeah.

The logbook is your thesis.

It's a.

Literally a legal document that.

And so if, like, I. I almost didn't get my job because of my logbook, and I will say that I pride myself on having badass logbooks.

Like, my logbooks were legit, and I had everything tabbed.

I had it color coded.

I had my wife, who's a calligrapher, like, write this stuff, like, perfectly, beautifully.

Every page was signed.

Every, like.

And if there was a discrepancy, I had a cover.

She showed where the discrepancy was and wrote out what.

You know, why?

And they still found a problem with my logbook.

And the problem was.

And everybody's going to roll their eyes, but you got to think I'm a military pilot coming into the civilian world.

So I need you to give me a little grace on this before I say it, because I'm super embarrassing.

I kept a thousand hours of 121envoy time in one of those pocket logbook.

A thousand hours.

And I had every page signed, and I had every page totaled, and it rolled to the next page, and it was perfect.

And the person in the interview team says, hey, is this your logbook?

And I said, yes, sir.

What can I do for you?

He says, that's not a logbook.

I said, well, it says logbook right here.

He's like, that's a pocket logbook, and that is for keeping track of expenses.

That is not for flight time.

And I was.

He said, do you have anything else?

And I was like, oh, boy.

And I. I told you, like, I am Mr. Anxiety.

I had printed out.

I had sat down with all of my paper log books and hand typed them into an Excel spreadsheet, like, thousands of hours into.

Took me.

Took me like two and a half months of just, like, cranking out numbers.

And I had it all bound and I had all those pages signed and they all added up.

And I just.

I just had it in my.

In my bag just in case.

And I said, well, if you let me go over to my bag, I have a spreadsheet that I can show you.

And he's like, What?

And I handed it to him and he said, this is perfect.

This will do.

And that saved my bacon.

So you don't have your logbook sorted, bro?

Like, too bad.

So sad.

See, on the other side, it takes so long, long.

And it's so much work.

And like, yeah, you can go pay somebody to go do it.

And maybe you should.

I have a guy right now who has like 5,000 hours that he's all got.

Like, he's got in bounds and bounds of books that he's having digitized right now just in case, because he's freaking out about having to get, having to get this next job.

So do what you got to do, but realize, like, that's your thesis and you better be able to defend your thesis.

And, and sometimes, especially at Southwest, if they start like, hey, what about this right here?

And they're trying to put you on the spot.

The fact is, sometimes they're trying to test you to see if you're going to get stressed out, to see if you're going to become a jerk.

To see.

And like, that's one of the, like, that's an old school test of like the logbook people, the admin people, like, pushing on you to see how you're going to respond in a stressful moment, because that's how you're going to respond in the airplane.

And a lot of people have been sent home because they're like, hey, what about this?

This doesn't make any sense.

I'm not sure we can do anything with this.

That.

And if you were like, oh, I'm so sorry.

Let me, let me figure this out.

I know, like, I know that I had this right, but let me figure it out.

And they're like, no, I actually, no, I think this is okay, thanks.

Or if you're like, I know what I'm doing.

I spent so much time on this thing and it's right, like, see a sucker, you're out of here.

So interesting.

Yeah, that's a real, like, that is one of the old school tricks that people don't know about because Southwest hasn't hired all year.

As someone that prepares people for multiple, multiple companies, do you think anyone has the best interview experience?

Like, as what you see?

Not at, not from your airline, not from whatever as a Spitfire coach.

Do you see some.

A company that has like, the best interview, the either the most calming, the best prepared, the best footprint, whatever it may be, or are they all about the same?

There's one, there's one that's above everybody else.

It's Alaska Airlines.

They're awesome.

Like it is, it is group, group interview, group therapy.

Like everybody comes together.

It is.

I mean, you want to talk about drinking the Kool Aid?

I have, I live close to the Chick Fil A headquarters and I, I hang out with some of the executives out there that are really great.

And when I go there I get this experience that everybody there just is like, just like in the restaurant.

And that's how it is over there too.

So the best interview, like, I know you didn't expect Alaska, but.

No, I don't.

They are head and shoulders great.

The majors, like everybody, everybody has their own flavor, but also everybody's starting to tighten the screws right now as far as people being prepared and being exceptional because people are there, there's an opportunity to look for the exceptional.

And so that's, that's what it is.

So it's a high stress, high stakes.

Big reward board, you know, is the outside looking in.

I mean, I don't know all the numbers, you know, but I'm going to ask you kind of who you think is going to hire the most?

From what I see.

I see that Delta has hired more than the other two.

Second by United and then followed by American.

Do you inversely expect that for American to hire more this year than United, than Delta or is it kind of still up in the air?

They all could hire the same, Delta still might hire more or what do think you see?

So I mentioned earlier, it's a little bit of moving target.

And last year's numbers were, last year's numbers I think are going to increase by about 10 or 15%.

I can, I can see American hiring about 22, 20, 2300.

I can see United being between that 19 and 2100 and I can see Delta looking at 600 to 900ish.

And, and there's a lot like, there's a lot going on with how those numbers are created based on deliveries and fleet fleet size and, and all of their, like where they're growing and where they're not growing and, and what their, what their future plans are for, what they're going to attack.

United's fact of the matter is they got more wide bodies because they fly a lot of east and west over, over to Asia.

And so they've got to be able to staff those.

It takes, it takes 45 pilot like FOS to staff 176.

So you've got to like get them going.

You got to get a, you got to get a bunch of butts and seats.

But also there's enough people that want to go do it that they're able to be very.

They can.

They can say no to whoever they want.

They can just pick their.

Pick their apples from the tree that.

Are the right host.

Do you think the days of, you know, you've heard it like, hey, I.

Someone's like, I really want to go to United.

They got hired by dude, Delta.

And then six weeks later they're like, all right, I finally got my CGO at Delta.

I'm gonna go here now.

Do you think that's kind of over?

Do you think of, you know, in the past, you always got hired by who you got hired for and you stayed there and that was your airline.

Do you think those days are kind of over, or do you still think there's the opportunity for you to.

To kind of choose and then get the airline you really thought you wanted?

I think so.

There used to be this.

There used to be this mentality, especially, like, Americans.

Olion, like, hey, I just got a CJO with United.

Would you, you know, I know I really want to fly for American, but I'm not ready to flow yet.

Would you interview me?

And they're like, that, that's out of here.

Like, that.

That's not a thing.

So if I think that, I think that people, People kind of grow where they're planted.

If you are living in Atlanta and you get hired by United there and.

And you are looking at 30 years of commuting to Dulles, like, maybe that's not really what doing.

And then, you know, maybe you'll be able to get.

Get your app in and get a.

Get a call from Delta.

Maybe not.

I see people.

I see people from every airline commuting out of Atlanta or commuting out of Dallas or commuting out of wherever.

And so it happens.

People will.

People do switch airlines.

It's way less right now because, like, if there's a big extenuating circumstance, that's the thing that's going to pull you out.

Like, oh, oh, I've got a special needs kid and I live in Denver and they like these special doctors, you know, so, yeah, I get it.

So.

But it's not very typical.

Yeah, one of the.

Okay, no, tell your story.

One of the ones I really hate is my.

A dear friend of mine who was like six years senior to me at my airline.

He was at a major passenger carrier.

Then he went to FedEx.

FedEx stopped hiring.

He got frustrated and then he went to a secondary.

A second Passenger, carrier.

Carrier, where he's now, like, super junior.

So he gave up, like, seven years of seniority and, like, chasing the brass ring is a really tough, really scary thing.

So just be careful what you ask for, you know?

Yeah.

And that goes back to kind of what we're talking about earlier, where just because Delta's on top now doesn't mean the 10 years Delta can't be in the middle of the pack or the bottom, you know, so you really don't know that.

Great contract right now.

Just.

Just sit tight, just wait.

You know, there's a good chance that the bottom could become the top or.

Yeah, it all settles out.

And you never know if you make the right decision until age 65 comes, you retire and you look back and you're like, yeah, I had a pretty good career.

I did.

I think I did everything right.

Or you'd be like, I'm an idiot.

I should know.

Why did I leave?

What was I doing?

Oh, you know, it is what, like, and don't live in the past.

That's okay.

Yeah.

Which is tough not to.

Yeah.

April 25th is the day that Delta starts renegotiating their Section 6 contract for next year.

So that's.

We're already three years into this contract, so everybody else is going to start negotiating contracts, too.

So it's be.

Prepare yourself for lots of gnashing of teeth and lots of.

Lots of angst.

And that's just what happens during contract negotiations.

It is.

It is.

Yeah.

When I left my last job, I only applied to two airlines, one never heard from, and the other one, within a week of me applying was like, hey, you want to do an interview?

I was like, sweet, let's go.

So it's really crazy how this all works.

And I think that just having the ability to have someone on your side, and as we talked about earlier, you know, there's kind of a bare minimum.

Minimum that these companies look for, and that is this.

The using these services.

They will put you up against everyone that has you.

Spitfire, Cage, Marshall, whoever you use and use Spitfire.

I'll go ahead and say it.

It's been fun.

So I'll tell you, I give you a shout out, but just everyone that you use, like, they expect that.

They expect you to be able to answer questions just like that.

And if you can't do it, it's going to be like, well, why didn't you pay 600?

This is a $22 million job in your career, and you didn't want to spend 600.

Now, are we not worth that investment.

You know, it's like they kind of think that.

So definitely try to do it if you can.

I think it, I think it would be worth it.

One thing I'd like to say is purchasing interview prep can be a transaction or an opportunity to join a community.

And that's that I think is the big difference is that the community that we bring together, like when we go to these conventions, we have our own private chats with our, with our, our clients.

I mean, we'll have 1400 people on the chat that are all our clients that are all working together to like, hey, this is going on.

That's going on.

We just found out this information from this company.

Hey, if you're looking at this company, this is what I heard.

Here's some new information.

And all of that information flows.

And then even after the conventions, like, it continues on, friendships build.

I mean, I've, I, I, I think I benefit from just being the face of everything, that everybody's my friend, but I love, like, I love friends.

And like, it just is like having people going through the battle with you, like, it makes it, it makes your endurance continue and it gives you even, even in the lows, it helps you, helps get you get lifted up again.

So community is first.

Agreed.

I mean, I, when I got hired, I was in Indoc and there's a bunch of spirit people and this was 2024, so a little bit different time, but still kind of riding on the wall of what could happen happen.

And he was telling me about how there's this spirit pilot group chat of this airline pilots, and all they're trying to do is try to help out their buddies.

So it's about the community and as many communities as you can get in, you don't know which community is going to help you, right?

You don't know if it's gonna be the Spitfire community, if it's going to be your, you know, if there's a group chat for your regional and your friends with people have been hired, they probably know people too.

So be a part of these communities, be present and don't just kind of shell in yourself.

It can be hard.

I am an introvert to my core.

I don't seek out to talk to people very often, which some people are surprised by that since I do talk a lot on a podcast, but it's hard for me.

But it's very important that you try very hard to join as many communities as possible.

So you can just have all the options out there, just so you never Know who's going to be the one to help you.

It might be someone you never thought in your wildest dreams that could help you 100%.

100%.

Like, the more you can get out there and the more.

The more mentors you can get, the more you can mentor.

Like, it's a.

Agreed.

It's.

It's.

You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.

Like, go do it.

Do whatever you can to get.

Get yourself out there.

And it's hard to put yourself out, but do it.

And be nice about it.

Always be nice.

And the last thing I'll say once you're there, give back.

People have helped you out in your career.

It could be starting a podcast.

Could be whatever you want it to be.

It could be mentoring.

It could be being an interview coach.

It could be working for a union.

It could be anything.

But just give back.

Don't put off the next generation.

Help them.

Because you needed help at one point, too.

It could have been someone being like, hey, come talk to me in my seven $100,000 trailer and drink this bottle of whiskey with me.

We're gonna get you excited about the airlines.

It could just be possibly talking to high schoolers.

Like, there's so many people out there that I realize, like you said, where you grew up, you didn't know it could be.

It was possible for you to be a pilot, but it is possible for anyone to do this.

All you have to do is just give them the idea.

So go to high school.

Go talk to high schoolers, Go talk to middle schoolers.

Just.

Just talk to people about aviation and tell them how great this is, because, I mean, we all still need pilots, and the world's gonna need pilots, and it's a great job to do, and let's let everyone have a chance.

Yep.

And if you are a pilot and you are walking around the airport and you're in your pilot uniform, high five those kids.

If you're a person that hands out playing cards and, like, trading cards and stuff, like, hand them out.

Like, be.

Be that person that, like, excite.

Like, because every time I walk past a kid, they're like, there's a pilot.

Yeah.

Like, nobody goes, you know, nobody's like, oh, there's a guy that does a regular job that's.

That sits at the desk all day.

Like, no, because it's like, an aspirational guy job.

So, like, raise that up.

Lift that up.

That's a good thing.

My kid has gotten trading cards from an airline, and he's also gotten, like, Those fake little wings.

Probably the two best days of life.

He's like, dad, look.

It's like, buddy, I'm a pilot too.

He's like, I don't care.

Let me see those wings again.

Listen, my kids just want me to bring him first class snacks.

They're like, got any gummy bears?

What you got?

Those sound like good snacks.

Yeah, I'm hungry.

I gotta get some food.

Well, Nick, I appreciate you coming on the podcast.

It was a lot of fun.

If anyone wants to follow you, listen to your podcast.

You know, your chance to plug yourself and make it work, dude.

Well, ready for Push Back?

We create the roadmap for aviation.

And I just want to say thanks for having me, Justin.

Like, it's been awesome to talk to you and to spend time.

I have been listening to your show since the beginning, and I'm thankful for you and I'm thankful for what you do for this community.

So thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Anytime.

And Spitfire.

Go ahead and at least talk about their website too, so people know.

They're like, oh, Spitfire.

I've heard of the other ones.

Maybe not Spitfire.

So.

So link that up too, so people have the opportunity to go check you guys out.

Yeah, check us out.

Spitfire elite.com.

you can use the code R, the number 4P2026 and get a discount.

So R4P 2026.

Put it in the show notes if you want to reach out.

Podcast spitfire elite.com.

i'll talk to you.

You want to talk about something hard, something easy.

You want to tell me you hate my smile?

Like, whatever it is, reach out.

Happy to.

Happy to chat.

Yeah, well, we know pilots all love discounts, so I'm sure people will be using that.

You're the man, dude.

Well, thank you so much for having me, man.

Yeah, anytime.

We'll.

We'll talk to you soon.

And I'll.

I'll join your podcast here soon so we can get you.

Get you on that as well.

All right.

It's promise.

All right, dude, we'll see you later.

Appreciate it.

That's a wrap on today's episode.

Thank you so much for listening.

What a fun conversation.

It was great talking with Nick.

He's got a great voice for podcasting.

I like, feel.

I feel like he talked earlier maybe off podcasts where they just shipped him a bunch of equipment.

Like, hey, we need you to start a podcast.

They couldn't have picked a better guy.

He's been doing great.

I would love to get them in the.

In the magazine.

You know, I have a little interview tip section in here so maybe we can make that work.

But Nick, thank you so much for coming on, everyone.

I appreciate you listening.

It's been a lot of fun.

And 2026, you know, I'm really looking forward to 2026.

2025, honestly, I'm not gonna lie to you, was probably the worst year of my life.

It was, it was a tough year.

We, we had some battles with, with some health stuff in our family and we're looking for 2026 just to, to be better, healthy, everything.

And yeah, appreciate everyone supporting the podcast.

Appreciate everyone buying the magazine and continuing to listen and share this podcast and help more people become pilots because I can't do it without you all.

So thank you so much for listening.

I truly appreciate, appreciate it.

But that's a wrap on today.

We'll see you next week.

Happy flying.