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I'm Marco Bell, major airline pilot.

Do aerobatics, air shows or flying since I was 1415 years old.

Aviation what is going on?

And welcome back to another episode of the Pilot the Pilot Podcast.

My name is Justin Seams and I am your host.

Today's episode is my good friend Marco Bao.

Our tracks and our career is somewhat similar now we've done some different flying to get to where we are.

He was a previous 121 regional pilot, then he found his way to the fractional and now he's at a major with a lot of other cool flying in between.

And there's also some aerobatic flying in there and a pretty gnarly story about pretty much a flat spin that needed to jump out of over water.

And guess what?

He's here to talk about it.

So he survived.

Wild story that's at the end.

You're not going to want to miss that one.

But Mark and I kind of talk about our experiences in the 121major world, our previous experiences in the 91k 135 world, so it's pretty Much.

Got everything you could ever want in one episode.

I hope you enjoy.

I really do.

If you do or you know anyone that's thinking about what route they should go, please send this to them.

I think it could be some.

Some help.

Now there's no shade any former companies.

If we have left the job to go where we are today, it is mostly just because of family circumstances and what we thought was best for their family.

We both agreed that we could have stayed at any job for a whole career if we really needed to do it, but we just thought that this would be the best option for us.

But AV Nation, I hope you're having a great day and I hope you enjoy this episode.

It is a really solid one.

I've been trying to get Marco to come on for a long time, so I'm pumped that he finally agreed to and I'm more excited that our schedule is finally lined up.

And it is crazy that the first time we ever met was in Munich when we lived like two and a half hours away from each other.

But that's aviation for you.

So.

Aviation.

I hope you're having a great day and I hope you enjoyed today's episode.

Without any further ado, here's Marco Bao.

Marco.

What's going on, dude?

Welcome to the Pilot to Pilot podcast, yo.

Finally.

It's about time.

Time.

My last episode was with a buddy of mine as well.

So it's.

It's fun interviewing two people that I have known for a while, who I call friends.

A lot of times it's the first time I'm ever talking to someone, which is always, sometimes interest.

Cause I'm like, I don't know if we're going to get along at all, if this is going to go well.

So it's.

It's nice, it's comforting.

I don't know, maybe they're worse.

Maybe it's worse when I know something about you.

You know, the other ones, I'm just like so caught off guard with what people say.

I'm like, oh, shoot, that's cool.

But we'll see, you know, we'll let the people decide if it's good that I interview my friends or if I should just keep interviewing complete Internet randoms.

Yeah, well, we can bash on people.

That's what's great about knowing each other.

True.

Yeah.

Let's talk crap about Neil.

We both owe Neil.

Terrible pilot.

There's a reason why open it right on the table.

There's probably be the first episode Neil ever listens to and he's gonna Be so sad that we started talking crap about him.

Wow, what?

25 seconds in.

So, Neil.

Yeah, at least I have to listen to the rest of it, though.

Yeah, Neil, at.

At minute 45, we say something nice about you.

And the last.

So you gotta listen the whole thing, buddy.

All right.

All right, man.

The first thing I always do is I always kind of just ask why.

I ask, why'd you want to become a pilot?

What was the inspiration?

Was it something to do with your family?

I know that your dad has owned airplanes, so obviously you can talk about that, but talk about why Marco wanted to become a pilot.

Yeah, you know, I grew up playing Microsoft Flight Simulator a lot.

And kind of being where I was at, there was.

There's always been a lot of ga and my dad was.

My dad was a big GA guy, and he.

We're all originally from Europe, so he originally had the opportunity kind of late in life to become a pilot and decided not to take that route because the time was pretty risky.

And so when we came to America, he kind of got back into aviation, and eventually I kind of got a little bit of a bug, and he was able to kind of introduce me to flying and stuff like that.

And first flight we did in a Piper Warrior, I just hopped in the back, fell asleep.

Didn't even was even awake for the whole time.

Just went back to sleep.

And then when I was probably like 16 years old, my.

My dad kind of was.

It was the summertime, and he wanted to go to Oshkosh, and I wasn't really doing much, and he had done a vacation with my older brother, and so he was like, you know, I'll take him to Oshkosh with me because he wanted to go.

And went to Oshkosh three days after I got back, started my first flight lesson.

Oh, no way.

So that was kind of like the initial bug to be a pilot, per se.

I didn't really pursue airline flying in the beginning.

It was actually act flying was what really caught my bug initially.

And then I think until I got older was when I realized, like, oh, you know, family, career and path and stuff like that.

But, yeah, mine was kind of the why was really just.

It was just kind of a bug that got nipped on me really early on.

And just from there, it kind of took off.

What was it about Oshkosh that kind of turned you on to flying?

Because you mentioned that you were in G airplanes before, but nothing really caught your eye there.

But Osh Kosh in particular was like, hey, this is kind of what I could do.

Was it just seeing people your age?

Was it seeing people that look like you, that.

That you could kind of talk to and see that it's accessible and easy for you to do?

It was the air shows, you know, the aerobatic guy.

Like I said, I do aerobatics now.

Getting the air shows.

And that was really the bug.

Like I said, the airline fly wasn't really this whole avenue.

I was like, I was watching people like Michael Gulian and Matt Chapman, you know, Sean D.

Tucker, people like them.

And I was like, man, that's really cool.

Like, you can go make money and go to these big shows and do all this stuff.

And I was like, ah, that's.

That's what I want to do.

And from that point on, I was like, all right, well, I'm gonna go down that route.

And then the act flying avenue in the beginning was like, whoa.

It's kind of like aerobatics.

You get to do high banking, low flying kind of stuff.

But yeah, that was.

That's really what was sort of wasn't anything to do with.

You know, back then they didn't have.

This has been 2005, 2006.

So they didn't have the workshops like, they do.

Not the STEM type stuff now.

They had stem.

It was more of like, fabric and mechanical side.

It wasn't this whole network of education and say, you know, airline advertising.

It was just.

Just an air show at that point.

Yeah.

And was there any, like, performance in particular you mentioned A couple names.

Well, there's like any one person you can single out that you're like, oh, dude, that's awesome.

I want to do that.

Yeah, I would say it was.

Michael Gulian's performance was really like the eye opener, you know, he.

I think then he was a green and white plane, if I remember correctly.

He was.

He was flying and just the noise and the smoke and everything.

Now that I do it, I couldn't tell you which performance, how it was.

I just remember just it was captivating to watch a plane there, what he could do.

So have you.

Have you gotten in touch with him at all?

Have you.

You like.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

You know, we.

We messaged.

He was kind of a helper, me getting.

Getting my sack card, my.

My.

My air show card, as well as through the aerobatic contest scene, you know, just through there.

So, no, I've definitely met him in the future, so.

Love it.

Dude, that's awesome.

It's really cool to see kind of like people that you've looked up to someone that had such an impact on your life and your career.

And with social media, with Instagram, with email, you know, much easy and accessible for you to reach out to them.

And whether they reach.

Reach out back to you is a different story.

But the fact that he took the time to do that, it's pretty cool.

And just understand that, like, hey, let me help out my, my future, my future pilots.

I'm handing the cards down to you.

You know, Marco, one day maybe someone's going to, maybe my kid will look up and watch you at Oshkosh one day, be like, I want to fly.

You don't want to fly like Marco, Trust me.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Yeah.

No, that's what I was pretty cool about it, right?

You know, in my mind, they're stars.

You know, they're.

They're people that are doing something.

They're on an elevated platform.

Even though they're all human, they're.

They're in the general eye.

They're on an elevated platform that you look up to.

And you know, the fact that somebody like me, who wasn't really.

I didn't, I didn't have, when I first originally reached out to him, I didn't have anything.

I had like a little small biplane and that was really it.

But every.

When I asked him the questions, he didn't hesitate to answer.

And there wasn't nothing right away.

But, you know, he took his time out of his day who, you know, just super busy and was able to answer back.

And, you know, the last year with, with stuff going on for me, with, you know, getting to the air show stuff as well as that, you know, if I had questions, doesn't hesitate to reach out.

And so, you know, just nice to reach out to people and they'll, you know, if they see something, they'll reply back.

And that's what's, that's what's great about those guys is absolutely.

And aviation in general is, you know, such a small knit group of people that majority of the time, if you reach out, somebody's gonna try to help you out in the right path.

100 totally agree.

Or the wrong path.

I don't know.

You gotta be careful, Neil.

Sorry, dude, second one already.

We're six minutes, eight minutes in, buddy.

Get used to it.

We.

So you, you mentioned that a couple days later you started your training.

Your dad was in general aviation.

So was he pretty excited, do you think?

This was kind of in the back of his mind to be like, hey, let me Get Marco here.

Eventually got there.

He was trying to kind of nudge you in that situation, or was he just kind of letting it come to you and see what, what came out of it?

He never nudged me in any way I would.

He was, he was definitely like, hey, this is a really cool career.

And I mean, I kind of knew it was a cool career because he used to have VHS tapes all over the house of Just Plains.

If people that remember what a VHS tape is.

I don't know how all the audience is here, but he used to have this VHS tape of a Cafe Pac 7 4.

I used to watch that religiously.

And so that was kind of like that initial.

Like, hey, you should go look at these kind of things.

Like, this is a really cool thing.

You can go see the world, go find these cool planes, this, that, the other.

So the, the nudge wasn't like, hey, you need to go do this.

This is the career path.

Because I kind of did my private pilot in high school and then did my instrument a little after high school.

And then I didn't really do anything in aviation for I went, I guess I went, became a CFI and then I took like a six, seven year break from it and just did, just worked with their company and you know, I wasn't even going to do aviation for six years.

I was just going to go run my own business.

Airline wasn't even a thing in my mind at that time or being a pilot in general.

So, yeah, I think the.

I don't think he ever had a push in it, which he was always good about.

You know, he just let things go as they were.

So, so when you say like airline wasn't on your mind, even being a pilot wasn't on your mind.

What was your goal then?

So you're starting your training.

Obviously you know, you wanted, you loved aerobatics, but starting your own business was the idea to, to make your own money and then fly for fun on the side and do aerobatics on the side rather than maybe have being an airline pilot as your source of income or flying as being your main source income.

I guess I should backstate that little, say a little bit.

So when I was in high school and I got my ratings, initially that was kind of an avenue.

It was like, okay, I do want to be a pilot.

And then I went to college and kind of carried on.

And then 2009, 2010 time, everything started to downturn.

Yeah.

Bad time to want to be a pilot.

Yeah, I know, exactly right.

People don't.

People now it's like back then it was like, you know, I think I was like 11.20 an hour for an instructor rating, like being an instructor.

And so I was like, I am not going to get paid.

This.

This is a waste of time.

I had all my ratings and my family business is seafood trade.

And so we kind of had a unique business in that avenue.

And so I was like, you know what?

Screw it.

Like I'm just gonna go and go and do that.

And.

Yeah.

So my whole plan, you know, when.

Up until about 2016, prior to that, from probably 2010 to 2016, wasn't even to be a pilot anymore.

It was just I was going to be a seafood fly on my own side.

I was, you know, doing aerobatics and then I was hauling seafood, tuna spotting with my own planes and.

Yeah.

So there was no idea what were you doing.

I had a Cessna 150 and basically just went offshore and coast of Maine and flew.

We would just go around looking for tuna in the ground.

And in Maine you can fish, rod and reel for tuna and then you can do what's harpooning.

So people sit on the front of a boat and they harpoon for tuna.

And I would be up there in the 150I owned and we would just.

Basically I would go out there a couple hours, like an hour ish.

Before, during a certain time of between tides and day.

And the tuna will come up to the surface to try and increase the metabolite metabolism.

And I'll go out and find them in certain areas that I know they're going to be fishing near.

Yeah.

And basically just guide them in.

So.

And then your whole job is to tell them boat links, you know, you know, turn starboard, port, whatever it is.

And so you'll say you're 10 boat links, nine both link, eight boat links.

And then you kind of have to keep an eye on the fish and the guy up on the bow and once he kind of pops his harpoon over, then you have.

That tells you that he sees the fish himself.

So once he sees it, you know, you just go quiet and.

And then at that point your whole focus is to see the.

To watch the fish because if they miss, the tuna will dive, but they will normally not be able to see them.

But you can see sometimes out there, 70ft I would assume underwater.

So you can see them die sometimes and then swim around and form back up.

Generally they're in like I call them pods, but I don't know what they technically call them, but they're Kind of like four to eight deep maybe.

I never saw anything bigger than that, but it was pretty cool.

That was a lot of fun.

I was like 20, 21, 22 at the time, eating subway sandwiches, swimming off the.

Flying off the coast of Maine, just flying like, you know, I was flying four hours every day.

Every day in the summer.

It's a good way to build something great.

Yeah, it was a great way.

And that's where I was in that time frame.

I had like 300 ish hours.

So I was in that whole.

I needed to build time, but I didn't want to be an instructor.

And so I had the ability to buy my own plane and ended up just going down the avenue with the seafood trade and.

Yeah.

Was this your own business or did you work for someone else doing this?

No, no, it was my own.

My own stuff.

Yeah.

So I was.

I was really fortunate.

Yeah.

I say I was actually spoiled, realistically.

So when we got to the point where I had to get flight time, my parents, you know, we had the business and the flight school went in, I think it was like, people are gonna be crazy about it now, but I think to get like that leap from instrument to commercial, so another 200, I think it was like $26,000 at that time.

I'm sure it costs a lot more now.

But we just kind of looked and was like, well, that's kind of a waste of money.

We don't get the money back.

So we're like, well, you know what?

We found Cessna 150 at low time on it, you know, wasn't pretty as inside, but it had a really cool paint scheme.

Outside, it was a whole Piedmont scheme.

So it was pretty neat.

And then bought that.

And then I just kind of built time that way.

And then when I started saying, hey, like, I'm just gonna do my own business flying, you know, I eventually took that over from them and then.

Yeah, and then I only.

I only did that for three summers, but I think I got, like, Gosh, I don't know.

Something.

I got like over a thousand hours over three summers doing that.

So is this something that was commonly done already?

Like, was this already, like, for years?

Oh, yeah.

So, like, flight schools do this, People up in Maine?

No, no, not flight schools.

It's normally.

Normally independent people.

So, yeah, normally it's like independents that do it or something like that.

Because it's not.

It's not like a.

It's not done a lot, and that's a lot.

There's not like a full Time thing for it.

And most of the people, because of if just how the fishing industry is, it's very like Nick tight.

And when somebody comes in tuna spots, you're basically giving somebody your fishing grounds.

So there's a big trust side.

And I was already buying and selling fish from these guys overseas and around the US So we'd already had this trust.

And so they were like, you know what, let's, let's do some tuna spotting and stuff like that.

So this is why I love doing this.

It's just cuz like when did you ever talk to someone?

I mean, it is funny though, I did talk to someone very early on the podcast.

I mean like five or six episodes in.

Justin Zeller, he was Carl's bad pilot.

We used to go back and forth all the time.

But he also flew off the coast and he was doing fish spotting and stuff like that camera, what kind of plane he did in.

And not to the extent that you did it where you were very involved in the fish business.

I don't really remember how he got involved.

Should probably go back and listen.

But it's so crazy just the way that people can build their time, the way that people can just enjoy flying.

Like you could have made a career out of that probably.

You could have started a little business.

You probably could have had people in Maine, you probably could have had people in the south done.

It's all over the place, right?

The Bahamas, whatever it may be to do this.

And it could have been a very good, lucrative business.

I mean, I don't know if lucrative is the right word, but it could have provided income for you, right?

It could have paid the bills.

It could have done a lot of things to fund the lifestyle that you would like when most people, when they see an airline pilot, they automatically think military or CFI or part 61, part 141, like those kind of flight schools.

Not necessarily thinking about fish spotting or tuna spotting, where the seafood you ate was probably from Marco finding a tuna up in the guy, which is wild to me.

The fact, I mean, talk about just like coordination too.

And what it almost sounded like when you're explaining it.

You sound like a NASCAR spotter.

Like, you sound like someone.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The cooks under like, all right, you got on your right.

You got two car legs ahead.

Yeah, launch the missiles.

No, yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

And it's a pump.

It's a.

I mean it's an adrenaline rush too.

Like when you see them hit the fish and then you see all the splashing you know they've got them.

You're like, yeah, we got one.

But then, you know, the issue with the two is you're talking on a VHF frequency.

And so every, every other week we were creating new coordinates so we'd have like alpha spot for spot one to one two.

Or you'd be like, all right, I'm going to fish Alpha 10 today, or I'm going to fish Charlie 3.

Because what would happen is people learn your coordinates, right?

You are offshore and you can see a plane circling for miles and miles away.

You'll hear it.

And you know if you circle tight, they know that there's a fish there.

So all these boats start coming to that area.

So you have to do these really big sweeping patterns just kind of to see where you're at.

Because once you find the fish, right, your instincts like, oh, I'm going to circle right here and find them.

But you can't do that.

You got to like, do these big passes to try and.

Because everybody can see out there.

Once you get out there, you'd be.

There's tons of boats out there.

But yeah, it's, yeah, it's a, it's a totally different like, avenue than what I was used to.

And I was just ga flying and doing a few aerobatics.

And I get out there and yeah, people are, people are trying to scramble your freak, your, your radio.

So when you try to make a call, they'll hold the call button.

So that way you, they, you, you can't, they can't hear you as you're doing it.

I mean, it's, it's incredible what some people do out there.

But again, you know, they're catching 200 to, I don't know, 600 pound tuna can be anywhere from a, you know, five, $6,000 payday to a 20 grand payday.

Right?

So, you know.

Yeah, for them it's a big thing.

Yeah, absolutely.

How high would you be flying and how far offshore would you be flying?

So anywhere from 4 or 500ft, upwards of a thousand, and then close up to like 40 miles, depending on the area.

We were, we were out at so deadliest time with us it was getting to the fishing grounds because Gulf of Maine, you're only worried about like, I guess you're not really worried about sharks or anything out there because water's so cold.

It's just hypothermia.

I mean, the, the, the water's still like in the 50s and 60s.

And then once you get out to the fishing grounds, I think it's in like the upper 60s or 70s.

But getting out there is the most dangerous part because there's not a lot of boats once you get out to the fishing grounds.

I mean, all you gotta do is survive this plane crash.

So.

I love how you say that.

All you have to do is survive a plane crash and you'll be all right.

Oh.

Oh, thank you, Marco.

Yeah, yeah, good to know.

And then you got 10 minutes to survive hypothermia and hope that you.

Yeah, I know exactly right.

Oh, yeah, that's all I got.

I got my meatball sub, my subway.

I'm okay.

You turned out happy.

Did that ever creep through your mind?

I mean, like, when you think about it now, I'm sure there's times you're like, wow.

I mean, yeah, I had fun, but, like, I don't know if I'd ever want to fly a 150, 500ft, 40 miles off the water, you know, like that.

Just like all the time.

I would never do it again.

I always say I'm glad I was like 21, 22 at that time because Wife and kids now.

Oh, heck no.

Like, you won't.

Yeah, you won't catch me doing that again with that.

Did you have any kind of moments where you're like, the engine was starting to do and you're like, we need to go back, or like, oh, no.

I never had a moment with the engine.

The worst one I had was coming back in.

I didn't really.

It's like my third or fourth time in Maine.

The people that live up there know about, but they have, like crazy fog roll in.

I mean, it just rolls in out of nowhere.

So you could be on the fishing grounds and there's no fog.

And Maine.

The coast of Maine isn't so bad.

But then, like, as you're coming in, all of a sudden you're flying over all this fog and it rolls into there, like in, you know, less than an hour.

I can do it.

So, yeah, for.

For like a reference had.

I would normally would land in Kenny Bunkport.

And that's really the plane at.

But I had to go to.

Gosh, what is it?

I think it's.

I think it was Worcester.

It's kind of towards mass.

And that area was like the closest place I could get to where they.

Spell it like Worcester, but it's actually called Worcester.

Yeah, Worcester.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I flew part one up through.

I flew a single pilot freight in a PC 12 in a caravan.

That's how I build most.

We were doing one Trip from Palm beach up to Providence, Rhode island, and very similar to what you're talking about.

All of a sudden all this fog rolls in and everything's getting socked in.

We can't.

It's a 135 trip.

So, you know, the men's are, we cannot start the approach.

We can't even go on the approach.

And the only airport that had any kind of visibility was Worcester, so I had to divert to Worcester as well.

And when I got there, they're like, this is weird because usually we're the most fogged in out of everyone.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

They're like, I don't know how you got here.

It's like, well, it's clear here now, but yeah.

So it's kind of funny that both have stories about Worcester.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was just like the one fraction of the part.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I was living in Worcester, Ohio at the time, so that even threw me off even more.

When I saw how they spelled.

I was like, that's not how you spell it.

Like, I understand that you're different, but, like, it's cool.

So you're flying a 150.

You are.

You're helping people catch tuna.

You live in the main life.

Did you enjoy living up in the Northeast?

I gu.

Or up in the New England area?

I was really lucky.

I only did summer up there, so I always said if I had the off, if, you know, now if.

If I have the opportunity to have like a summer house up there, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Maine in the summer?

Yeah, Maine in the summer is like no other.

I mean, the.

The weather's beautiful, the.

The lakes are great, the water temperature is great.

It's just such a great area.

You can be on the coast, go swim, surf, and then hour and a half later, you can go hike it in the mountains.

So, yeah, I.

Man, yeah, it's such a.

Such a beautiful area.

Is that probably the top place?

Like, I mean, for me, it's Jackson, Wyoming.

I'd go there any day if I could afford it.

Kind of like you.

That's where I would go.

But is that your place that you would go to, be the main area?

Oh, man, I don't know.

You know, I don't really know.

I love where I live now.

Honestly, I hate this.

Hey, I know this guy's counts sign account or kind of sounds cheesy saying it, but.

Yeah, I mean, I love where I live now.

I mean, I don't think I would love to live there permanently because I Don't want to deal with the winners.

Yeah.

So that's like you get about two.

Months of good time up there.

Yeah, exactly.

Right.

Like so no, if anyone, if anyone's on Instagram, you can find, you know, George Dunn flew at the company.

We flew out.

Yeah, yeah, I know, right?

Their place in the winter.

Yeah.

You ever want to follow and see what main life is like, you can follow weekends.

You, you can follow George.

I want to see a Mainet.

Yeah, right.

He was up there.

He was up there in the hot tub.

It was like negative three degrees.

Like, dude, you're gonna freeze when you get back.

And he's like, ah, it's main life.

He just lived in the hot tub the rest of the night until it warmed up.

Yeah.

Came out of prune.

So what came next?

So you mentioned that you had a ton of hours.

You, I mean, not a ton, but you got a good thousand hours.

You started around 300.

So you had 1300 hours in this time frame of flying, of doing this.

What was going through your mind in a career?

Because it sounds like from the beginning you weren't sure and weren't really interested in the airline lifestyle.

But as we all know right now you are a major airline pilot.

So something changed.

But was that kind of the time?

So, yeah, so I was doing the kind of the self business and my mom and dad owned a seafood business.

So I kind of got into that very, very heavily involved in that.

And we, we were kind of specialized and with what we did and I just was like, you know what, I'm just gonna go full throttle with the business.

You know, they, I had a beautiful life growing up.

So, you know, and they, they've had a great life.

So I didn't see any reason that, yeah, career wise was there and I was enjoying what I was doing at the time and you know, my young 20s and stuff like that.

And so we set up, we would do live seafood hauling with tractor trailers and ship live seafood overseas to Belgium, Asia or Europe and Asia.

And I ended up taking that full on, head on.

And so I was able to sell the 150 and we bought a Cessna Cardo and I kept flying.

And I was truck driving mainly at the time, selling seafood, truck driving and then had a car know that we would go down to Florida and I was still going up to Maine, but wasn't doing tuna spotting with it.

I was doing other things and we're going to Florida.

We would set up these fish farms and stuff like that and then doing a bit of GA still on the side, and then cows full throttle with that.

That eventually led into hauling lobsters.

So we took kind of a contract locally over here through the military that were for lobsters.

And then some places down in Florida that needed lobsters.

And we grew pretty big with the trucks and trailers, so the time needed to be in Florida wasn't really helpful.

So the Cardinal wasn't cutting anymore for load and flight time.

So we ended up upgrading to a 210.

And then this was kind of circa 20, like 2013, kind of around that time frame, 2013, 2014.

And was doing that, doing that.

And then we kind of got hit with some regulations that really killed our exporting business and, you know, went from.

They probably killed 80 of our income on that side of the industry.

So.

And it was just primarily due to.

There was importing and exporting acts that got involved with the European Union and Asia.

And so it basically killed the.

The wild fish side of that we were doing out of America.

So.

And it exploded the farm race in Europe, which we had no.

We had no business in.

So it kind of just killed us a lot.

So.

And at the time, it wasn't so bad.

In the next, like, kind of year or two, I was still flying a lot of GA I still knew, had buzz that were kind of in the airlines.

And that was kind of sparking.

I was still going to Oshkosh in 2014, 2015.

Thing, I think is when they started doing the university 10 tent.

Not.

Not the university, the.

The career tent.

So I was there one year and kind of went there and was kind of seeing like, oh, okay, like that.

That's pretty neat, like what they're doing and stuff.

And I think kind of saw my wife now who we had started dating.

I was a stepdad with them.

And then that kind of really opened my eyes kind of in mid-20s.

Like, okay, I have this life and my parents have this life, but then I have airline and friends who had their life.

And they were near though my parents age.

And I was like, well, do I want this life to that age or do I want this life?

And so when the wife, you know, fiance and the kid and everything kind of came around, it was like, I don't think this is the best life for me.

The fish life.

Yeah.

You know, when that was like the hardest night of my life, I think I sat on that thing for like a month trying to.

Before I can muster up the courage to tell my dad, like, hey, I don't want to do this anymore.

I Love you.

But this is because, you know, it's his baby.

He built it from the ground up.

You know, he has, he has.

No, he's kind of left school in Holland and like in middle school and just built his own businesses and he loves this thing and it was kind of like, hey, your business is that good.

I don't even like it.

I don't want to do it.

So it's kind of telling your dad, like you don't even like his own stuff.

But man.

So I think I went and I drove down there like middle, like it was like 9:00 at night to their house, like, like 20 minutes away.

And yeah, I like sat in the room like, hey man, I don't wanna.

And then I just.

Bald crying, couldn't even say anything else.

I was just so, so like sad about it.

And he just gave me a big hug and he's like, I'm happy for you, man.

He's like, go on it full force.

He's like, you're gonna live a much better life.

And I'm.

And he is right at the end of the day, you know, I was.

We were awarded a lot more opportunities than they were growing up.

But yeah, so that's kind of how that whole transition phase was what I wanted when I was 18 was different than I wanted when I was 21.

And you know, as everybody, every, every relationship will say, like, when you meet somebody, they change you.

Sometimes it's really good, sometimes for the worst.

Mine was for the best.

And you know, that's what kind of pivoted in my mind to saying like, okay, now I need to see this avenue.

So that went kind of pushed me into like my first, I call it, I always call it my big boy job.

Because all the other jobs were just fun and I made them myself.

And I was finding little piston, little piston planes around, but you know, which is with transit was the first one.

So.

So as someone who has seen kind of like a different industry, a different way of making money, of having, like you said, you can make a good life, you can, you can do.

I've always been told, and I've always kind of thought that being a pilot eventually, right, like you and I are both very junior where we are short going life.

We're not around as much as we would want to be and as much as our family would like us to be.

But in the grand scheme of things, I've always kind of been under the idea that there's nothing else that you can do where you can make as much money as you can as an air, as a pilot and be home as much as.

Well, like I said, that's down the road.

Right.

Like, it's like when you see these, these older pilots that are working two or three trips a month and they're, and they're doing well and they're making a ton of money.

Would you agree with that?

As someone who has seen, you know, another way that someone can make a living.

Were you gone more in the fishing side of things or do you think you'll.

Sure.

Eventually you'll be home more being an airline pilot?

Way home.

I'm home way more now.

Yeah.

If people, if no one's ever ran a business or started a business, entrepreneurship stocks in the beginning, like you, these guys think it's all glory and fame.

That's like, they are some of the hardest working people ever met.

Because it's a constant grind.

Right?

You decide your life, you decide your outcome.

And it's such a big burden too, because you're not, not worried about yourself if you've got.

We had 10 employees, right.

You're worried about their, their life, their kids, their outcome, everything else.

And so, yeah, I mean, the life now is much more relaxing.

You know, in the beginning, my dad, my dad couldn't believe.

What do you mean you don't have to go to work?

You have five days off.

You have five days off.

You can work.

Yeah, you can't.

Well, like, you can work because as an entrepreneur, like you're working every day like that.

There's always something you can do.

The fact that you can just get off the flight, get to the house, shut the door, shut the phone off, throw the bag away for whatever, five, four or five days, and then show up the next day and be like, all right, I'm ready to go.

And act like nothing happened.

I mean, it's literally what you're doing.

You're acting like nothing happened for the week.

And, and you know, it's just, yeah, it's just a mind blowing concept to him to be able to just go to work and come home and not do anything.

That's what I love about it.

Now it's just as like with a family, you know, it's just nice to.

When you get done, your time's done and your time's dedicated family.

You know, as, as the, when we were on the visit, it was never like that.

You.

I could be at dinner and get a call in 30 minutes, I'm out the door driving a truck from North Carolina to New York Toronto, Florida, Texas.

I mean, you could, it was just, just, you know, you're always, you're always doing something at 4am you're on the phone with somebody overseas trying to figure out a pricing on fish.

Like there's always something going on.

It's always an emergency, right?

Yeah, always.

There always is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And nothing happens.

Quick and then.

Yeah, yeah.

With I guess one thing before we move on from the fishing.

Just because it's so interesting.

Interesting to me as someone that's been in that business, you know, there's two ways to look at this.

One, do you ever eat airport sushi?

Like, because you know where stuff comes from, you know, like, all right, this manufacturer is definitely getting this from them.

Or this is happening from here.

It's like, do you, do you ever eat airport sushi at all?

Or you're like, absolutely not now, you.

Know, I sushi, I am, I am not picky with food.

The only thing I just don't eat is tilapia.

And I hate saying it because that is like 90% of our business is like tilapia.

That's what we do.

But yeah, yeah, I, I just don't like tilapia.

I set up too many farms and watch them, raise them and, and it's just not something that as a word of wise, I would just stay away from tilapia.

That's hilarious as that's.

Yeah.

I mean, most stuff is most seafood, like your bluefin, your yellowfin tuna, I mean it's all wild caught.

I mean, even if it's farm raised, like this pen.

Farm raised.

So they raise it in pens offshore.

So it's still kind of like the same.

It's still in a natural habitat.

But like your salmon, your artificial crab, like that's no different than eating, no offense, chick fil a chicken, it's the same stuff.

So.

Yeah.

So you don't have any issue with like eating crab in Phoenix, Arizona or eating like, I mean, you're not gonna.

See me going to a sushi joint in Iowa.

What do we need to avoid here?

I don't eat fish.

Yeah, yeah.

That's what I'm saying.

For east of the Mississippi, I'll start eating sushi for west of the Mississippi.

Then maybe I'll think about rethink it.

Until you get to like Seattle where they're probably flying it.

Yeah.

Then I'll be okay then.

Yeah, yeah.

Then once we get past near the Rockies, we can start going back to Sweden.

It's like you're in Memphis.

Are you going to eat the freshly caught fish in the Mississippi River?

Probably not.

You know, catfish.

Yeah.

You do catfish, right?

Yeah, there you go.

Good point.

But yeah, so you, you're kind of deciding and realizing that, you know, whether your, your wife now was telling you, hey, like, you have these hours, you have the ability to go do something that's pretty cool and can afford us a good life that we want to live.

What time frame was that, like in the grand scheme of things?

Just so we know, because you mentioned 2008, 2010, terrible time, whole industry.

I mean, when I started training in 2010, I had multiple people come up to me and be like, do not be a pilot.

Do not do this, do literally anything.

And I was like, okay, this is the first thing I found that I liked after I realized I'm not going to like, I don't really want to do anything else.

So here we go.

What was the timeline for you right now?

Yeah, so it would have been 2015.

Like that was like around 2015 was kind of like, okay, I'm going to go be pilot, you know, full time.

So the only thing I didn't have was a multi engine.

Had everything else, just didn't have a multi engine.

And so again, when locked out like three days, whatever it was that you do that with.

And then, and then of course I was gonna try and fly for Mountain Air cargo and then.

Really?

Yeah, I was gonna apply for Mountain Air car because like, well, I need, I need, I was like, I need to get like, you know, just some flying and that kind of stuff.

And then this is right when everybody started doing like, oh, you don't need an ATP, you just need condition.

I was like, wait, what?

Like additional times, like, what is that?

And so, so I went interviewed at PSA Piedmont and, and ExpressJet and they're all the same thing.

Like, you don't need an ATP, we'll pay for your ATP.

You just gotta have 25 hours of multi and all this stuff.

So I was like, ah, okay.

Like so.

So I just went and knocked out my 25 hours of multi and then got conditionals from all three of those and ended up going trans dates because it had at the time had the Raleigh base.

So I was like, sweet, go to Raleigh.

Little did I know that's not how it works when you go to training.

So get hired.

And I'm like, oh, sweet, do the seniority skip.

You got hired and you could postpone your class for six months or I think it was, or three months.

So postpone getting the training like, oh, everybody that started when you originally did your class was in Raleigh.

Now everybody's going to Denver.

Oh no.

Yeah, exactly.

So originally got based in Denver for like one month and then luckily I only had to do.

It was my OE month.

So I never actually had to like do the.

I had something to go out there, but it wasn't the true reserve out there.

And then I was in St.

Louis and then, then I got to Raleigh and then they shut Raleigh down like one month after I was in smokes.

You're like, so then I had to go to Chicago and it was like, oh my God.

So what's your now wife or then wife or what was she thinking through this?

Because she was like, hey, pushing.

She wasn't necessarily pushing you but like, hey, let's go this route.

But she's like, wow, trout blows.

What did we get ourselves into?

Or you know, kind of see the end picture.

It's funny because like she, she's so laid back.

You know, if you take the, the fish days to this day it's like everything's just elevated.

So like she's, she and you know, she enjoys life.

She just gets to hang out with the, you know, with the kids every day.

She enjoys being a stay home mom and that's how it's always been with, with her and I kind of since we've had the kids.

And she just, she was just like, you kind of have to figure it out.

We knew it was gonna suck but then we're like.

I was like, oh man, this really sucks.

Like I was, it was, it would get, it would get to me before it would get to her.

Like she'll be quiet.

She won't open her mouth.

She'll wait for me to do it and if I open it then, then she knows it's concerning like at that point.

And it was like two years in the trance days and then I was like, I came home and it was like I kept getting junior manned and I was, it was the way they were Junior Manning.

I couldn't get home that night on the normal flight.

So I was taking a FedEx flight back and then I was getting into raleigh at like 4am and I left two hours from raleigh.

So I'm driving two hours from raleigh back to the house.

But then because of I got junior man, it was taking a day of time off.

So Jenna, I was always had like a day or two off and this went on for like months.

And so there's like no end in sight and I'm trying To think like, okay, like, do I upgrade?

But then I have to go back to Denver and then, like, do I find another job?

Like, what do I do?

What do I do?

And I just got home one.

One morning and I, like, I got home as she was getting up to take one of the kids to daycare, and I was like, I can't do this anymore.

I was like, I am so, like, just so drained from it.

And.

Yeah.

So then at that point I was like, just kind of trusting my gut self, and I was like, all right, I gotta find something different.

So.

So then, I mean, flying jobs or just like anything?

Flying jobs?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I knew I was staying in flying.

Like, it wasn't like going to do a whole nother thing.

It was just like, like, I gotta find a different company or go somewhere, stuff like that.

So at the time, I had like, the 121 I needed.

And at this time, everybody was trying to get pic time.

So I was looking at Atlas for a little bit.

I was like, oh, cool.

I go fly seven four and.

But then I kind of saw their schedule and I was like, ah, that's not gonna work.

Work, you know, not gonna work for us.

So.

Right.

So then I was.

I was doing three weeks in the road.

Yeah, yeah, I know.

Here's cologne.

Have fun.

So then I end up going to a slide of Piper Meridian kind of on the side, and one of the companies I was working for, they had just started up, and so they were just looking for guys.

And he kind of knew me from a.

You know, earlier, and he was like, well, come work for me and I'll make you captain the.

The xl.

Xls.

I was like, sweet, dude.

Like, work for me.

Higher pay pic.

And it was 20, 30 minutes from my house, home base.

I was like, I'm all in.

So then I went to the 135 world.

So I've left the 121 and went 135.

And then I spent like a year there.

And I was like, this is the bee's knees.

I'm not doing 121 ever again.

I commute five minutes out where my house is, work eight on six off schedule.

My schedule all year.

Like, I was like, this greatest gig ever.

Yeah.

And then I was kind of like, oh, I need to.

The 135s can sometimes be different, cannot be.

I'm not gonna call it not the safest, but they're just the way they do things.

You know, there's protections you want in life for anybody.

Like ASAPS and stuff like that, that AQP training, everybody has bad days and, and you know, just having those protections is great.

So then having that at the region, I was like, well, now I kind of want to try to find that.

So, you know, that's when I looked at going to one of the big fractionals or something like that.

Because I wasn't interested in the airlines at that point.

I was like, nah, I'm never doing airlines.

Just stay, just stay.

So you were 100 turned off in the airlines?

Yeah, yeah.

After that I was like, never again.

Yeah, forget that.

That regional experience.

I was like, dude, this is not for me.

Even though that you knew eventually it would get better if you ever got to that point, you're still like, there's no way.

I think I was too young and too blind to see that at the time.

I think I was too young and immature to see that.

So at the time I was, I think I was just too narrow to be like, this is all it's ever going to be.

Because at that time none of my friends were moving.

Like everybody was just staring at the regions.

It's so hard to go get a job anywhere.

Yeah.

You know, and so it was like, you need a degree, you need a thousand hours pic, you need to know XYZ person, yada yada.

And I was like, you know, I just kind of see, I didn't see the end of the wall.

And I was like, you know, like, this isn't just this, this company and this area is for me, you know, maybe a different regional might have been.

But at that time that was not, that wasn't for me.

So then you, you decide fractional might be the life for you.

Now really in my mind there's 2 fractionals.

Right.

Like there would be net jets and there's flexjet.

Like those are really the only two that I personally would ever consider to work at.

We're not to speak on which ones we did decide to work at, which ones we didn't.

But was that kind of your game plan as well or were you looking at kind of any model of fractional?

No, I was.

Well, I mean it's going to be the think of the way.

But you know, I was, I was honestly just focused on union asap aqp, like that was it.

You know, I think if anybody's trying to make it a long term game as well as do GA on the side, I think that's like two big avenues.

There is ga and that's that generally if you're just doing your career, you know, you don't really need to have all that stuff.

But if you do do ga on the side, like it is nice to have that backing to know that when you're at work that all that protection's there.

There's people that are gonna be your voice when sometimes you're not the wisest person to say voice.

You know, we're not all lawyers and that's why hire lawyers.

But you know, I didn't want to have to go to somebody and say, hey, I want to pay raise.

Yeah.

Like that's just not me.

I'm just not that kind of person.

You just show up and fly, right?

Yeah, yeah.

I was like, I just want to fly.

And like, hey man, I can't pay anything.

I'm like, well, I need to get paid.

But you know, we'll talk about next week.

I'll keep flying until you decide to pay.

Yeah, yeah.

So yeah, no, I guess that was.

Kind of the whole thing.

I didn't have to worry about it.

So, yeah, so that was those like, kind of the big focuses was just like if I have asap, aqp, all that kind of stuff.

I know that, you know, in the span of a 40 year career, if I go to show up at the simulator one day and I have a bad day, it's not going to kill me.

It's not going to be in the world just going to have the bad day, come back a couple weeks later, redo it.

So.

Which is something that not a lot of people really think about the beginning, right?

I mean, obviously some people are aware of what that means, but being having foca, having asap, having aqp, which is really only airlines and very, very certain companies, I think there only is actually one other company company that has it outside of the 121 world could be different now, but it was, it's something that's just great to have because like you said, the best pilots have bad days, right?

I mean that you and I have failed any training in that, that aspect of training.

But it's just sometimes things happen and it's nice to know that, all right, well, you're not gonna get fired, you're gonna get placed on special tracking, which you just do a little bit extra training, you come back, you train on it, you do it and then you come back in six months instead of a year and you just continue on with your life and it's there.

And it's not something that people really want to judge you for or People are going to look down on you for.

It's just.

All right, let's get some extra training.

Let's get you right.

Yeah.

Which is good to know.

So, yeah.

So you are applying, you get the job.

I think you were a couple months after me.

Yeah, it was 2019.

Yeah, I was beginning of 2019, so.

Almost a full year after in 2018.

And then what's ironic is where we are now, you were just a couple months behind me there.

Well, yeah, yeah, I hear.

Yeah.

So I'm Marco.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.

It's funny because like, if you think about it, we never met in person for like three years.

Yeah, we texted all the time because.

We'Re going through the same stuff essentially.

Yeah, all the same stuff.

I mean, we texted for like two years, never meeting each other, sending gifts, joking on Neil because we flew with him together.

We were both on the Latitude, just so people know.

And then like ironically, we meet up three years later and quote unquote, we, we're like two hours from each other.

So like, that's the other cool, funny thing about it.

We're not that far.

Same state.

It's probably one road.

Take us right there.

Yeah, I, I decided to go from the latitude, skip the upgrades and go to the global because I wanted to try international and you're on vacation and I just so happened to get a pop up trip to, I think was it Cologne or.

It was Munich.

Munich.

We had a pop up trip in Munich and that's where we meet up at for the first time in person is beers at a beer tent at like what was like 10am?

10Am drinking beers in Germany at 10am I mean you can't beat it, right?

Like that's the drinkers and bratwurst, baby.

Yeah.

What else are you gonna do?

I remember because I was so tired.

I think we got there the day before and I was jet lagged.

And you're like, whoa, dude, you look tired.

I think I have the picture.

I can pull it up and post it.

Oh yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure.

Holy smokes, bro.

Get some sleep.

I was like, yeah, yeah.

It was hilarious.

Yeah, that was wild.

That was really cool that happened.

And that's one of the cool things about aviation and one of the things, whenever I go somewhere, I'm always either if I have someone on Find my friends, I'll look at their location or I'll just like text them like, hey, are you in Munich?

And I mean it hasn't happened a ton of times, but Every once in a while I'll be like, yeah, I'm here too.

And it's like, oh, cool.

It's like, this is awesome.

So it's cool that that can happen.

Yeah.

I mean, let's do the whole social media inside of it because that's how I initially met you was too the social media side of it, because you were doing the podcast and it was like the only, like aviation podcast I was listening to.

I mean, at the time, I think there wasn't really many.

No, they were kind of the only one.

Yeah.

I mean, so that was the only thing I was listening to because you just had again, stories from every walk of life that you could like listen to.

Like, oh, that's kind of like.

Well, that's kind of like what I'm going through.

Yeah, right.

Oh, maybe like, oh, that's what they did.

And so.

Yeah.

And then of course, when, you know, we found out we're all working together and stuff like that, I'm like, yeah, okay.

And then like just went from there.

Yeah.

Which is.

I appreciate you listening.

Thank you.

I want this to one episode though, so don't, don't get hyped up.

That's all that matters.

That's all that matters.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I got one listener.

Yeah.

That's all I need, man.

That's all I need.

Justin here.

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That's allworthairline.com pilotopilot and now back to today's episode.

I want to talk a little bit about your transition from a 121 regional lifestyle to the 91k lifestyle.

Yeah, I think it's going to be pretty similar to me because when I was in the fractional for the first two years, it was the greatest place I've ever been in my life.

Right.

Would you agree?

And I was, I've never been happier.

I never thought about going anywhere else.

I was, this is what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life.

When I flew with some crabby captains, I just didn't understand it.

I Was like, we have seven days on, we have seven days off.

We're supposed to work as hard as we want to work for those seven days.

And on my seven days off, I just relax and don't do anything thing.

Yeah.

Are you very similar with that?

Yeah, no, it was spot on.

Yeah, I came from that 1:35.

I was 8, 6.

And I was like, man, I'm work that 7 and 7.

I'm gonna get a whole like extra day off and this, that, the other.

And then it was like sweet, like, I'm gonna know my schedule all year.

I'll have like a true seven days on a true seven days off.

Like.

And that's how it was.

And you know, I always tell people like the coolest thing about that schedule was every time we went on vacation somewhere was never on an actual vacation fit did.

It was just on one of my.

Weeks off because 21 days.

But not even that.

You didn't need that.

You just had seven days off.

Oh, you're just talking about that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I would just.

On a seven days off, dummy ticket, wherever the wife and kids are going.

And you'd go on vacation somewhere like that.

So that was the coolest thing like at that time about was what was like the huge eye opener for me was it's just a lot of work in seven days.

And then you understand why these people are over.

Some of you guys apply with a burnout after four or five days because it's just it.

They're long days.

You're doing a lot.

And you know, when you're in your 20s, you kind of.

You don't know what you want in your 30s.

And like I said, life changes, everything happens.

That's kind of where the ballpark was for me, was I go to the fractional.

I have my.

I had a stepson before then I have my first kid.

So I don't really think in much of it because he's a year and two years old.

There's not much communication going on there.

And then in the latter part of my time there, it was, you know, FaceTime.

It's always FaceTime.

It's always FaceTimes.

And then I'd be home and then, you know, you'd enjoy the time home and.

And I just know to myself like day four, I was like, I was, I was just ready, just ready to be done.

Day four and day five, it's like you're pissed off day because you're just like.

And then day six comes around, you're getting all excited again.

Because you're just focused on where my, where my, where my airline is home from, where am I?

And then you see where your airline and home from.

You're like ah, that's a two leg airline.

I live in North Carolina, why am I in California?

So yeah, so I did that and like I kind of got, I got, I would say roped into that mentality.

And so when I, when I upgraded I ended up having like three months off because it was kind of a delay that was like the biggest eye opening part of my life.

Because my kid did not care, he didn't care what jet I flew, he didn't care where I went.

They didn't care about anything.

All they saw was dad was home to go swim, dad was home to go pick him up and drop him off, us to hang out with them, have chocolate milk on the couch.

Just stupid things.

And so my wife and I, you know I had friends that were at the major I was at and, and I was just kind of like inquire with them about it and things like that.

Luckily I had people that were really like their 10 year, 20 plus years there and I had some people that were a couple years there and the guy actually that introduced my wife and I works as a major so he was like one of the bigger helps with it because he's been there a few years.

But you know with, with the basin system and the call outs all changing, you know, the long call outs weren't really a thing back then and now they are.

And I was just like, well I can do a three day trip, be home after three days.

I mean even if I go out and do a three day trip, come home for a day and have to go back out, do a three day trip, well guess what, I was still home three of those nights to do something.

Yeah, so that was kind of like the big eye opening thing.

Like no matter what as a pilot you're missing stuff, you're always going to miss stuff, you're missing birthdays, you're missing holidays.

Like that is a guarantee in life.

And I'm super lucky that my wife and I have this great understanding.

Like we don't get wrapped up on days, holidays, Christmas is the big one we love, but birthdays, stuff like that.

You know, I missed my son's birthday last week but you know we celebrated a few days before and so you know, I think as they get older they understand that.

But it was also pilot like you said.

And I think one thing to kind of preface with this is, is just to make sure everyone knows that the company that we did work out last, there's no like shade toward it or anything.

It's just.

It didn't work out for our lifestyle anymore.

Like exactly where I loved working there more than anything.

And it wasn't necessarily anything.

They um, you can make great money there if you want to work very hard for that money.

Which is how that business is set up where when you go to the airlines, there's some more games you can play.

You become senior, you have the ability to fly less and work less and you don't get the last minute trip to Aspen because you're the last, you're the only person that can do it at the airline related a bid.

Right.

And then you kind of do your own thing.

Yeah, it's not even just.

I don't know if money is always involved no matter what in life because that's what sometimes brings happiness no matter what anybody says.

But the, it's the, the quality of life while you're on the road.

The, the airline just provide that top notch style.

When you get seniority, you get the ability to have that.

There's so many guys I fly with now just do day turns, show up at 9 back home by like 6pm like that's all they do is a day turn.

Then when your kids go out of the house, you can go on the overnight to no, literally or whatever.

One dude I flew with, he's home by like 2pm every day but he starts at like 5am but his wife and kids are asleep kids.

So he's back home and the kids get dropped, get off school almost, stuff like that.

So like the, the whole thing with, with the fracture side is like it's a cool gig.

Like you go to cool places, you.

Get to do like great airplanes.

You get to fly awesome airplanes, advance, super safe, all that avenue.

But once you get on the road, you have no control over anything anymore.

You're just there to show up day one.

And some people like that, that's cool like and all that stuff.

But the, the whole avenue is.

I guess it can be difficult.

You know you can.

Well you're gonna show at 8pm we're gonna fly through the middle of night to the, to somewhere.

And the middle night you get a message like hey, actually we're gonna, we're gonna go and divert you pop into the ground, 11 hour clock, swap.

Damn.

Now you're trying to go out and fly the next day and do stuff.

And like, you know, everybody has a fatigue policy and stuff.

Like that.

But at an airline you've controlled that whole month prior at a fractional, you don't know that's happening until 10 hours prior.

And so will change.

Pardon?

Except.

And everything can still change.

Yeah.

And everything can still change.

Right.

And you could get that.

And all of a sudden they give you 20 hours off.

Right.

And then you're like, okay, well what am I supposed to do now?

Like, you know, things like that.

So and so that was kind of like, that's like the whole, there's two, the whole two big sides of it.

It's just there's when you get, when you get to the actual point, there's just so much more life control on and off between the two.

But again, you're still, you know, with the airlines you're still commuting.

You know, I drive two hours, I still do one leg commute, stuff like that.

But like now I've gotten enough seniority where I do a four day everything's or whatever I do all my stuff is commutable day in, day out.

So it's a true go in, true come home.

Which is.

That's super nice.

Now it's not my case because I have to go the night before and a lot of times my trip and then I had to come back the morning before.

I do want to ask.

So you and I, very similar case.

Like we, we were hired.

The expectations.

Expectations were that, you know, things are going to move very fast and then kind of things paused, made us be on Short Call and not in the base of our choice for longer than we thought.

Yeah, it's not great, right?

No one's gonna lie to you and say being junior and being Short Call is fun.

What's fun about that is that hopefully it ends fast and you get to move on and do something else in your life.

Unless you live in base like that.

Yeah, base.

Short Call by all means could be the big greatest thing in the world.

But living in Raleigh and having to go to New York for me is not necessarily my favorite thing.

It's just, it's another dis.

Especially when you go in on a day that you're not working.

Right.

It's just like it really like I'm missing time with my kid to do this.

But you got to think about in six months or a year, this isn't going to be a thing for you anymore.

No.

Is that right?

Knowing that what we're going through right now and what we just came from.

Do you ever like regret it?

Do you ever think like, oh, wow.

Like it was kind of nice that, you know, I never commuted on my off time.

They always got me home on day seven most of the time.

If not, they paid me a ton of money and I never had to worry about going anywhere the day before I started.

Do you ever think about that?

So living the past is very bad.

So I don't, I don't think about it.

That sense I think about, I definitely compare.

I mean even though comparisons is thief and joy, but no matter what you compare, every human does it.

So but for me, they took my base, my home base away.

I would have had to go to Raleigh.

And when I first started I was doing Raleigh and still driving two hours.

So I was still getting up at 3 in the morning, 2 in the morning to then go catch a 5am flight to then go fly all day.

Whereas like now if I do do a 3am wake up to go to go to work, to go do reserve, I can just hit pass all and decide like, hey, if you really need me, you can need me.

But if you don't, then I'm gonna go ahead and go back and take a nap and then like, right.

Set myself up for it to be refreshed and be better, you know, Be set up.

Yeah, you didn't have that ability there, so.

No, I mean I don't, I don't look at it like that.

I mean, I think I, I think like saying like, oh, well, when was that?

That, that's makes me like miss it definitely.

Does it?

I mean commuting right from five minutes down my row, that was, that was nice.

But then what ended up happening is tickets got too expensive and commuting got to a too, too much of a problem for them.

So then it became this point of, well, actually we're just going to send you to Raleigh.

So then at that point it didn't matter anymore.

I didn't have it on base.

I was allowed to get a rental car at 4 in the morning and drive to Raleigh.

So I didn't, I didn't, I didn't gain anything.

Like in that, I think in that way, I don't think I, it didn't gain anything.

Yeah, no.

And I remember, I can't remember if it was after I applied or maybe I think I got the interview where I am now and I think I text you right away.

It's like, hey dude, are you.

Oh, me too man.

Like planning or anything, but it's like, hey man, I just did my interview, I just got my CJO and you're Like, I got an interview next month.

And I was like, no.

Literally.

Yeah.

Why didn't we talk about this more?

I know, but it was.

Well, I think the whole thing is nobody wants to say anything, right?

Like, that's.

That's the whole thing.

Whole premise.

And it was like when the classes were going on, right?

It was the same thing.

I was really supposed to be in March, and then I was supposed to be in April, and then I was supposed to be in May.

And then they're like, actually, we're not gonna do.

And then it was July.

No, we're not gonna do any summer classes.

You're gonna be in September.

And then I was like, ah, no.

Like, I don't know if I can sit here for that long.

Like, I already had senioritis.

And.

Yeah.

Everything was like, I'm just ready to get out.

You got the CJo.

You're right.

I know, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so then.

And, I mean, I had mine, and then I.

And then they were like, actually, I don't think we're gonna do anything, so you're gonna be next year.

And I was like, oh, my God, no.

And then you text me and we're like, hey, man, I heard they're, like, doing a bunch of classes at the end of May.

I got bumped up or whatever, and I was like.

I was like, get on the waitlist.

Whatever you can do every day.

I.

I called the.

The lady that was doing my recruiting stuff through.

I called her every day for nine days until then.

She, like, when I picked up the phone, I would call her, like, 10am and she was always super nice about it.

Then I call her, and it's on that ninth day.

She's like, actually, you know what?

I've got two classes for you.

And I was like, okay, sweet.

I'm gonna take this class.

You're like, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Huge difference.

Especially when they didn't do any classes for the whole.

I mean, like, you would just be in class right now.

No, yeah, yeah, exactly.

I just.

I would just be.

I mean, seniority wise, there's still a couple hundred below me.

But, I mean, what.

But what happened in my life last year that I got to have.

There's no way I would have had that if I didn't start in that.

That one class.

You know, I was able to get my air show rating.

You know, we had another kid.

I got to spend a lot of, like, a lot of another month or two with him.

You know, we just.

It was just like, such a great Year, Absolutely.

For that.

Absolutely.

Man.

It's.

Yeah, it's been great for me.

I mean, like, we talked about commuting, being junior.

Short call can kind of be a burden the way you look at it.

But I mean, the flying itself has been great.

We were.

I literally called you the other day and we're like, 24 hours in the Cayman Islands.

I was like, I just got off.

24.

24 hours in Barbados.

You're like, we only did one leg.

I only did one leg out there and one leg back and a two day trip, then four days of reserve.

And I was like, I can get used to this.

This is.

I remember you texting me on your first OE and you're like, dude, it's 12 o'clock and I'm done.

Never happened.

I remember the first time I had 16 hours off and I was like, legit.

Like, like, oh my gosh, this is amazing.

I've never had like on without having to fatigue or out all the stars aligning.

I've never had 16 hours off.

And I just, I honestly was like, this is too much.

Like, I need to go, you know, I was like, all right, I'm bored.

Let's go back.

But now it's 24 hours and you're sitting there and you're like, you know, this trip could be like a 30 hour overnight.

I think I could use another six hours.

But it's been great.

Before we go.

I know it's been about an hour.

I want to talk about aerobatic.

Yeah.

And I also want to talk about a crazy story that you keep on hinting at with me.

And then you said, oh, I'll tell you when you're on the podcast.

Tell you four years we're on the podcast.

I know, right?

Share it.

So I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna try to explain what happened.

I'm just gonna give it to you.

Yeah.

I'll just rat it out.

Yeah.

And rattle it out, man.

Because.

But I heard it's pretty wild.

Yeah.

So like I said, is air show pilot.

Always kind of of been one that wanted to be one.

And so I got into aerobatics, started a Citabria, then went to a decathlon renting one.

And then.

And then when I made like my first like big boy aircraft purchase, I bought a pits S1S.

And so this is for people who, if you have an accident on your record, doesn't hinder you at all.

It's not a big deal.

Like, just be truthful and honest with what happened.

Mine was pretty horrendous.

I had to parachute out of an aircraft.

So the control stick on a pits is a center stick and the weld at the bottom that holds all the aileron usage ended up snapping in flight after a few rolls.

And yeah, so it was about 2000ft ish where it happened.

And by the time I got out, it was like 800ft.

Went to the water, was out there for like 20ish minutes in the.

Under.

Under canopy.

Well, I went out under canopy, they would call it.

But, you know, luck for me, there was nothing bad that happened to me.

It kind of cut my earlobes from where the kind of canvas hat came off.

And then I had some really bad bruising and like a little cut in my arm.

But yeah, it was just went to the water.

Eventually the.

The boats came out and got me out and then kind of had that.

You know, I thought that was like the end of my career.

Like, I just started with trans States and I was like, man, they're like, I am gonna be.

This is gonna be my life.

And it was super cool.

Every time I applied, you know, it was like, has anything ever happened what ended up being like, one of the worst parts of my life has turned out to be the best.

Tell me about a time win story.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think the whole, that whole story with the parachute, stuff like that ended up turning into this, like, I would say beautiful, but it was just this great educational point about, you know, perseverance and, you know, kind of coming back because, you know, now I have my air show rating.

And at that time, I didn't think I was ever going to be able to fly air shows again or be able to be an air show pilot because I had wrecked the plane.

And as well as I didn't think at that time, I was like, I just ruined my chances for being a full, you know, full major airline pilot or being a pilot in a career.

And yeah, so it's all.

It's on YouTube.

You can search it up.

There's accidents on YouTube.

Yeah, I mean, it's like Bystander got a video of me jumping out and stuff like that.

So, yeah, It's.

It's on YouTube and stuff like that.

So.

Dang, dude.

November 27832.

You can look it up there or you can just search my name and my YouTube account should come up.

You know, you kind of scroll down through it, it'll be on there.

But.

But yeah, it's a, it's a neat thing.

It was, it was just such a life changing event that, you know, which is kind of where you talk about like the reserve stuff of being like, oh, crap, this like kind of sucks right now.

Dude.

Life, life happens.

And your time will come when your time will come for something.

And yeah, I mean, we're all, we're all in a blessed place to be no matter what's going on.

So when you, when you were flying, you know, you're pulling GS, you're, you're doing whatever movie you're doing, and all of a sudden you turn to the right or you turn to the left after you pull back or push down, whatever you were doing.

And all of a sudden, you know, the stick just like comes in your lap, like, and you look.

Disbelief.

Yeah, you're complete disbelief.

Because that's never something that you would think would happen, right.

In a million years of you having to crash an airplane.

It's probably not.

Because jumping, jumping from a plane is what disbelief is.

Like crashing a plane is different because that becomes a reality.

Like we're trained for.

You train for it from your private pilot.

Right?

Engine failures, runaway trends, times.

When did you ever train about jumping out of a plane?

I mean, I've never done aerobatics.

Right.

Like we put.

Yeah, exactly.

You don't really think about that.

But like we, you know, the only guys that do it are military.

Like, they're trained to do that.

I'm a civilian guy.

Like I, I wear a parachute, I hop in my plane, I go do my aerobatics.

And we have that mentality like, yo, something will happen.

This is how you get out.

But committing to the point of being like, all right, I am pulling the canopy open, I am unlatching myself, I'm standing on my seat and I'm jumping out of this plane.

And then I'm gonna pull a D ring.

Like that is a.

And yeah, there's always this age old argument where you can train, you can train, you can train.

There's just some things you can't train for.

And you can do all the skydiving you want.

You can do all that stuff, you know, in my opinion.

But your personal fight or flight mode is going to get you out.

There's nothing that's gonna.

The trainer will put you in the right path.

But the answer to say, like, I'm gonna leave this plane, hope that I don't smack my head on something, hope they don't get clipped by something.

You know, there's flying wires back there that can slice you in half in a second.

And the plane's moving at 180 something miles an hour.

Yeah.

So there's stuff that can just kill you in a second.

So you're.

You're playing with luck and luck and luck.

And if you watch the video.

Yeah, why not?

You got a lot going against you in that moment.

Yeah, I know.

If.

When whoever watched the video, seeing the video, there's two seconds from when the canopy opens to where the plane hits the water.

So two seconds of hesitation would have been dead.

I was gonna ask.

I mean, obviously there's a startle effect like we all have seen.

Yeah.

1549, you know, Teterboro or not Teterboro, LGA landing, the river.

Everyone's saying, why.

Why couldn't you just go to Teterboro?

And they could do it in the sim when they had no startle effect, but when they had to sit there for 10 seconds or 50, whatever the timeline was, maybe it was like 30 seconds.

They couldn't make it to Tetra.

Bro.

You probability you didn't have 30 seconds.

You had less than 30 seconds between when the.

Bro.

When this.

When it snapped and when the plane hit the water.

Yeah.

You had no time to.

You had no affordable time for the startle effect.

Do you remember at all, like, dis.

Obviously you said disbelief, like, oh, my gosh, this is happening me.

Was it just immediate, you know, seatbelt off, canopy out, jump d ring in your mind, or did you know 10 minutes for that all to happen in your mind?

Yeah, I mean.

I mean, everything was less than, like, I think, like a minute.

I mean, it sure is less than a minute.

It doesn't take long.

But the.

I was just saying, like, everyone learns about it, and I probably like invulnerability.

Right.

You get up and fly every time.

You think, like, well, then you feel like something happened to me, like, this is gonna happen to me.

And, you know, when you're flying a lot of aerobatics, you're doing a lot of flying.

That.

That does play into you.

Like, it's your job to always have that kind of back you to say, like, this is what's gonna happen when this goes on.

And for me, it was.

The stall effect was just like it snaps and then it still kind of moves.

And the plane's kind of like slowly rolling like this.

And I'm like, what's going on?

So there's this false sensation of the stick moving.

But then the biggest killer was when it snapped.

It jammed the elevator, so I couldn't move the elevator.

So then of Course, you know, most people's natural reaction, right?

If it's like you get car wreck, you turn your stereo down for some reason, like everyone's.

Now traction has pulled throttle back for some reason.

Is that.

So I started pulling the throttle back.

I'm like, huh?

And then I'm playing with it a bit for a couple seconds, and then at that point, the plane just kind of noses over and starts kind of diving down because it can't hold it any longer.

And the biggest, like, telltale was you get startled, then you come back into the zone that you're in.

And when I hit the rudders and the plane could completely move at that point, I was like, okay, it's not a spin.

I'm not in a spin.

I have no idea what's going on, and I don't have time to react.

But what I do have is a parachute and aircraft insurance, and that's what that's there for.

Yeah.

You know, so.

And luckily, you know, we do aerobatics.

I do it over the smack dab in the middle of an airport, either over a farmland or over the water.

It's one of those three.

So, you know, thankfully, because of how a lot of air battle boxes and stuff, they're not overpopulated areas, so we don't have to have that back in the mind that's like, oh, we might hit somebody on the ground, Right?

Yeah, it's.

It was super.

Yeah.

Just a disbelief in the beginning.

But, you know, like I said, we all train, right?

We all train to.

To get.

To bring.

To have the ability to bring ourselves back into the moment, then focus on what's supposed to happen at hand.

So.

Well, that's one.

What was going through your mind when you hit the water?

Like, when.

When you hit the water, you came back up and you're just like, all right, I'm alive.

Yeah.

Was it just a boat?

Was it just, like, so happy that, like, all right, I'm alive.

This all worked out, like.

No, it definitely wasn't.

Yeah, I was not happy about it.

Came back up.

Yeah.

I came down and, like, started throwing up because I swallowed so much water going into the.

Yeah.

In there.

And I was trying to get up and there's all the paracord around you and stuff.

Stuff.

And where I.

Where I live and it happened.

That's Newburn, North Carolina.

The water you can see about, like, that far.

That's about it.

And underwater, you can barely see because it's all black, blackish water.

Solid or murky water.

It came back up And I just started between throwing up and screaming because I'm just.

Just like.

I mean, people definitely saw it.

You're not gonna miss a plane going into the water.

Like, it's definitely thing.

But of course, in your mind, you're like, nobody.

Somebody said this.

Like, somebody help me.

So just screaming at the top of my lungs, like, help, Help.

And then I'm trying to find something I can float on because I can't get my parachute off.

You know, the parachute unclipped up here, but it was so tight down there, I couldn't get it off.

And so now I'm like, I gotta find something to grab onto because I was worried about, shoot, dragging me under.

Luckily, the.

The water there doesn't move, so it wouldn't.

It never.

It would have never dragged me under.

But at the time, you don't think of that.

You're just like, well, I'm in the water.

Parachute's gonna kill me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So then, like, I'm swimming and swimming and kind of waiting, and I find a piece of fabric.

And I'm like, oh, sweet.

There's a piece of fabric.

And you think like, well, a plane crash.

Like, there's gonna be parts everywhere.

Well, my plane went straight into the water and obliterated into, like, a thousand.

I mean, well, not tens of thousands of pieces of wood.

So there's.

I think, like, the biggest piece of wood I have is, like, that big.

Sweet.

Yeah.

I mean, there's nothing.

So I grab the fabric, and it's just a piece of fabric.

I have nothing to think.

So I have to swim, like, kind of wade.

And then I start seeing fuel everywhere.

And I'm like, oh, my God, like, now this thing's gonna catch fire.

But then I'm like, you know, you're thinking all these worst case scenario.

Like, I just jumped out of a plane.

I survived.

And then you're like, well, crap, now I'm gonna drown.

Oh, no.

Now I'm gonna catch fire, right?

Like, nobody's gonna see me.

Then it's October.

You're like, oh, my God, now I'm gonna die of hypothermia.

Like, so.

No.

So then I start screaming.

And then eventually I saw a.

I saw.

Yeah.

And then eventually you saw the fire trucks, everything coming down to the waterfront.

And then at that point, I was like, all right, I just gotta kind of wait here for 20 minutes.

So thankfully, I went to a swim camp when I was a kid.

So there you go.

I had my band to tell me I could swim for 10 minutes.

But I was an overachiever, and I did it for 20 minutes out there.

So.

Dang, dude.

With a parachute attached to you.

I was trying to, you know, there's nothing.

Yeah, there's no drag.

Like, the parachute didn't do anything.

That was, like, my whole concern.

But once I realized, like, the parachute literally was not moving, then I was like, ah, okay.

Like, then stolen factor kind of.

Kind of gets out.

But then, of course, then the pain comes in.

Like, my legs hurt so bad.

And then, like, I can feel.

Like, I could feel the.

The slits in my ears from where they.

They had cut.

So that's.

After all that kind of, like, pumpness went away.

Then I was like, oh, my God.

The only thing I asked.

Never went to the hospital.

Never anything.

I just asked for a Tylenol, and that was it when I got out.

And nobody would give me a Tylenol because they wouldn't give me one unless I got admitted to the hospital.

You're like, come on, guys.

Yeah, I know.

So, like, a really good friend of mine, he's a police officer.

He's a police officer here in the local town, but he.

We're best buds now, but he.

He was a guy that went to his.

Back to his car.

I'll give you a Tylenol, man.

Got me one.

So you didn't go to the hospital at all?

No, honestly, I.

I was.

I was flying two days later, so I had to go to my brother's wedding.

And that was My brother's big thing, was like, thanks for not dying two days before my wedding.

But y.

No.

Oh, like three days later.

Yeah, like, three days later.

So, yeah, we.

Yeah, I flew like, three days later after that.

That was, like, a big thing.

Just, I.

I made the mental decision, like, just to go back up and fly as quick as I could.

So.

So, yeah.

So, I mean, another kind of similarity in our paths is.

I also.

Well, you're much more dramatic than mine, to be honest with you.

I wasn't.

I wasn't.

I mean, I was actually.

Yeah, there's.

Yours is definitely more.

You were stranded, though.

Well, he's like.

You were kind of, like, stranded.

Yeah, it was exactly.

I had somebody come get to me.

In the mountains of West Virginia.

I think, all in all, it took search and rescue.

Probably took five or six hours before a police officer or fire trucks got to us.

Yeah.

So, I mean, like, if we didn't have.

And it was cold, too.

Like, it was very cold.

If it wasn't for kind of.

I mean, I don't have any better way to explain it than the mountain man of West Virginia that was driving by, who came out full beard.

Honestly, full beard.

To the point where I was like, if I enter this house, they might, like, eat me.

Like, I don't like how I was.

Oh, yeah, the eyes.

Like, I don't know.

I mean, obviously I'm joking, right?

Like, I'm super thankful.

It was.

It was.

Yeah.

But, yeah, you can laugh about it now.

That's the whole part of it.

You have to laugh about it because it's just so dramatic.

No, no, the whole thing is when.

You tell stories, like, trying to have my first phone call to, like, my wife or my dad, and no one answered phone, so I was just leaving voicemails.

I was like, hey, it's Justin.

I had a plane incident.

Like, I'm in the middle of West Virginia.

Like, I'm okay.

I want everyone knowing I'm okay.

Like, I'm not injured at all, but, like, I.

I don't know how I'm gonna get out of here.

My wife, she was working downtown, like, right where I was at as a bartender.

And, you know, she even heard all these fire trucks and everything about.

She didn't think anything of it, right?

And then she gets a call, like, 30 minutes later, like, hey, so I just need you to come pick me up.

I.

My plane had to go in the river, so she just thought, like, I had, like, floated this thing in and, like, lollygagged it in there, and it.

Was sitting, which in its own way is very scary.

But, no, you decided to not do that route.

No.

And then, like, she comes out.

I've got one shoe on.

There's all these people trying to interview me.

I still have, like, my parachute over my backpack.

Trying to drag it because it was so heavy.

I couldn't.

It was so hard to fold.

I couldn't even carry it.

I had to, like, drag it on the floor behind me.

And it was just like.

And she's like, oh, my God, what's happened to you?

And I was like, I went in the water.

I told you.

Yeah, yeah, I told you.

But of course, you know, like, on the phone, like, the first thing is, like, if you're calling your wife, you're like, no, everything's okay.

Yeah, it's all good.

Yes, I'll be home for five for dinner.

We're doing steaks, though.

Yeah, I'm still doing steaks.

What's funny about how you just explained that, you know, you're dragging a parachute made me think of not Men in Black.

Independence Day with Will Smith when he's dragging the alien behind, like in the parachute.

Yeah, yeah.

But yeah, it's.

So we talked about.

You mentioned that if you have an accident, if you have an incident.

I was lucky that the FAA came out.

They looked at the airplane.

We.

We landed.

It was me and my buddy.

I'm not gonna say his name.

I don't know if he really wants to be attached to it at all.

But there's nothing wrong with.

Was actually 10 years ago, two days ago.

So 10 years.

Every single day on the day that it happened, we always text each other and we always like, say, hey, happy we almost died day.

Like all that.

We're bonded for life trauma buddies.

But we were talking about it and I mean, elation when we land.

Right.

But we didn't.

FAA came out, they said there's literally nowhere else you could have landed.

It's not an investigation, it's not an incident, it's not an accident.

There's zero things that we're going to look into for your paperwork, for anything.

Great job.

That's all I did did.

Which is.

That's how mine is.

Mine's not on my record or anything.

But the whole pop.

The whole thing about me was the.

With the way social media and technology is these days, like somebody can do a Google search or pull you up.

So I was like, you know what?

I'd rather me be the person to tell the story than them ask me.

And again, like, if they're trying to find something and they pulls you up and then they're like, well, why didn't he tell us about it?

Now you instant look suspicious.

So even though it's not your fault, but if you have nothing hidden, nothing to hide.

Yep.

That's the same thing with.

With when you fail a checkride.

Right.

It's the same thing.

Checkride.

It's just they're not necessarily worried about you failing that checkride.

They want to see how you respond with adversity, how you respond to anything, because your whole career is gonna be adversity in the plane, everything.

Yeah.

But I wanted to agree with you.

The whole reason I started talking about mine as well is because it was like if I didn't get back in an airplane relatively soon, I would have never flown again.

Yeah.

Like the doubt.

Even the first time I got an airplane.

You know, like, I remember I flew home on probably like a 145 or CRJ 200, whatever.

It was even like any power adjustment that was like not Very smooth.

I was like, oh, my gosh.

Like, I had to get over the fear of something like that happening again.

I mean, statistically, it doesn't really matter.

Like, just because I had one doesn't mean you can't have another.

But the idea of just that, that can happen.

You got to get out of your mind.

You got to trust what you're flying, and you got to trust yourself.

Yeah.

I mean, the first.

When I.

When that happened, it happened doing three.

A little on rolls back to back and stopping the stick.

When I bought my next aerobatic plane, which is.

Ended up being about three years later, the very first aerobatic maneuver I did.

Was that exchange figure just like, to test it out.

Be like, all right, let's see if.

Just be like, yo, get out of your system.

Yeah, I could.

You know, because I was like, it could happen again.

And I still think about every time I fly her back, like, I still think like, yo, these controls can explode at some point.

Right?

But yeah, I mean, now I'm more settled.

Settled with it.

Everything like that.

Yeah.

That was the first thing I did just to be like, get it out of your system.

It's in the past.

Just move on.

Was your wife ever like, you're never flying again?

You're done, you're going back?

Nah.

Yeah, I mean, she never.

She never was like, you're never flying again.

You're never gonna do that again.

She knows.

It's like, that is my psychiatrist.

Aerobatics is my psychiatrist.

You know, we have.

I live five minutes from where I practice at.

If, you know, I thought.

I know.

We don't.

I normally can't handle more than like 15 minutes in the plane because we do like, upwards of nine to like, negative six GS.

And the way the plane flies now, it's kind of a lot.

But yeah, I mean, I'm not saying, like, that's who I want to be the fight with in life, but I just don't know myself about it.

Yeah, yeah, that's just.

It's my therapy.

It's.

It's just my way of like.

Like vent.

Venting, you know, my.

I guess venting my emotions sometimes.

And then it's also my way of just expressing myself, which is, you know, which is what I enjoy with it.

So.

I mean, Senior, I've seen your videos on Instagram.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, everyone laughs about that.

And it's just my normal face.

Yeah, I don't know what it is.

I'm seeing your normal face right now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So as my wife always comments is.

It's just me taking, taking a crap.

My wife tells.

She always bashes on me on the stuff about it.

That's how it should be, man.

No, it should be.

Yeah, yeah.

She humbles me, brings me back.

Someone's got to humble you.

I know how big your head can get.

Yeah.

As someone who's continuing the aerobatic scene, as someone who is continuing the major airline life, talk a little bit about successes you've had on the aerobatic side.

We've talked pretty far about how, you know, you've reached the pinnacle, your pinnacle of your career in the airline side.

Only thing different is becoming a captain.

Flying widebody, you know, that's kind of like as high as you can go.

But talk about what you're doing on the aerobatics, talk about successes you've had where you're at right now.

And if people ever want to see you in air show or if they want to be like, is that Marco?

How can they find you?

Yeah.

So, you know, I would say the most successful thing I've had to date was being a member of the United States advanced aerobatic team.

Because that was a.

Basically two years of just, just going after it.

You know, I went, I was at a fortunate to attend a team, one of the team camps, previous team camps, and I got done with it and you know, I had a, we had a coach there named Rob Holland who was coaching and another guy who invited me again, the power of social media.

And another one of your people that you interviewed, Alana Guayo from.

He did an interview with him a long time ago, a couple years ago.

So he, he kind of got me there and I was like, man, this is fun.

Like there's like a mental side to this.

There's like this constitute of perfection.

And so that was like two years of just, just going after it, going after it.

And it's, it's a sport at the end of the day, you know, you have to, you don't have to be the fittest person because I'm not.

But you have to be fit.

You have to be mentally there.

There's a whole bunch of training involved, you know, there's notes and, and yeah, so that was like the pinnacle, I feel like of making the team.

I got to compete at a world championships in advance.

But although that was really cool and like that's a super staple to make the USA team, you have to be one of the best in the United States to even have the Opportunity to then go to the world championships.

Once you make the team, you're guaranteed to be able to go to the championships.

So you know I got, I got fifth in the country with the plane.

It was the only four cylinder aircraft I had a fifty thousand dollar plane.

I was competing against planes that were one hundred and eighty to half a million dollars.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

So you know it was just, it was showing like it was a perfect example of it's the pilot, not the plane a lot of the time.

And then kind of going on from that.

You know, I still do competition aerobatics.

You know.

This year we're getting really ramped up with it.

Again it's the unlimited which is the pinnacle of the, the U.S.

career competition.

So that's the highest category you can compete in.

So you know I upgraded my plane to.

It's called a Sukhoi SU31.

And so for this year it's kind of the same thing.

It's just try to make the team.

You know, you got to be one of the best top eight in the country to make the team.

And then you're competing against people who again are just.

Everybody has the same goal.

It's to be one of the best in the US and then thankfully we have the ability.

In 2026 the World Aerobatic Championships is going to be in Batavia, New York.

So if anybody is around, the dates aren't announced yet I don't think but it's probably gonna be like late July, August.

But basically it's you know, the top countries from around the world.

I think we only have like 15 to 16 countries representing around the world come compete and yeah, so that, that with alongside the air show stuff, you know, last year I was able to finally get my, my what we call the SAC car to save an airbag competency.

And that's been a childhood dream since I was like 12.

So.

So it's kind of just.

That's always been the goal in aviation and to finally achieve it.

You know, there's the goals in life that you have career wise, which is the, you know, like the major alliance stuff is cool.

But what's also nice since that career has allowed me to then achieve other dreams of mine which has been this, this aerobatic side of things.

Yeah.

And the coolest thing about it is to keep doing it because I don't have to stop it because of my work, you know, still able to come hometown with family, compete, go to events, go do all this stuff.

So yeah, it's like now with the, with the air trust stuff, you know, this year's will be my, my first year as inertial pilot.

So Sky High Expo currently is my first air show booking which is in Lewisburg, North Carolina, just, just outside of Fayetteville.

Oh, nice.

So it's a three day fly in, so it'll be two days of performance.

So it'll be on my website, which is just marcobaoairshows.com and.

Yeah, and so I'm looking forward to booking a couple more.

So that's the first one.

We have another one scheduled for September, but that one's 1st of September.

We have another one in the middle of September, one later in November and then possibly one in May that we're just trying to finalize right now.

Love it, dude.

Yeah.

As one of my last questions, just because I'm sure people want to know, you know, some people might be in a similar boat where like originally you fell in love with aerobatics.

That's all you wanted.

Yeah, like you didn't want to go the major airline route.

Is there money solely in that?

Is it just like select few that can make it or is it a way that you could go without having any other job and having a pretty good lifestyle?

Or would you say it's, it's pretty difficult.

I think again, you're falling on the entrepreneurship side.

Right.

Like you, you are your own person.

So you have to decide.

You know, there's the Sean D.

Tuckers, there's Michael Gulians, Rob Hollands, you know, Uncle Goliad is sponsored by Cirrus, Bose, Watt, all these big companies.

But he didn't get there because he just said, hey, I have a plan and I can do this.

He's right.

Been doing this since he's 20 years old.

Grinding it out, doing it.

You know, Rob's the same way.

He's a full time air show pilot, but he's also A Whatever.

It's seven time World Freestyle Championship pilot, 13 time US National Championship pilot.

So for people that want to do it, it's not that it's not possible, but you just have to be dedicated.

You can't just show up next week and be like, all right, I'm gonna do this.

Here it is.

You know, for me it's, it's been a dream from 12.

And then I did it for a bit, then I couldn't do it and then, then coming back at it.

And the biggest side of it, you know, is, is safety with, with the air show stuff because you can perform for up to a hundred thousand people at a time.

And it just takes one mistake, one wrong energy vector and you're into a crowd.

And you know, that's why we train all the time.

You know, I generally fly every week I'm home.

Even if it's not an actual air shower scene or it's a competition routine, it's just some type of, type of flying that is revolved in that sense.

And the better, the more, the, the more time you spend in it, the easier it does get.

But at the end of the day, you're still trying to, There's a grind to it because it's not just, it's not just being a pilot anymore.

You've got to be personable, you got to know how to handle veterans, you got to know how to handle kids, you got to know how to.

Your personality.

Promoters, sponsors.

It's this whole avenue that encompasses one and you know, like we've seen with anything, sponsors come and go.

You know, sponsors aren't there forever.

You know, sponsors will be there a couple years and they drop.

They have different marketing departments.

So it's a nice, it's, it's nice to have sponsors but you have to have the stuff yourself.

So do it.

Absolutely.

I, I enjoy that I don't have to do it as a full time career, but there's people that do do it as full time career.

So there's definitely, you know, there's definitely money into it, there's definitely money to be made, stuff like times.

But you know, again, it's a grind.

And these guys that do it, hats off to them, they, they deserve every bit of it.

They deserve every bit of the stardom and the fade of fame that they get when they go to things.

But.

Absolutely.

But there's tons of airline pilots that, that are, there's tons of airline and big name pilots that fly from major companies that do full time or they do airtime, air show schedule and they do it.

You know, there's, I mean, I know, gosh, FedEx, American, Delta, United.

That's awesome.

Yeah, so there's, there's a bunch of it.

So it can be done, you know, and I said that that's my plan, is to be able to live both lives and we'll see how it goes and where that takes us.

It's got to be really hard to know you're in this competition, you want to win.

Like you mentioned earlier, it's all about like energy management.

Right?

You in the plane, you know your limits, you know what you can push what you can't push.

But it's got to be so hard to make the decision to pull out of something just because, you know, like, it's so close to your limits.

But you know that if you, if you complete it, you know, you could win or you could do this, or you could do the best in the moment.

Like, how hard is that decision to make to.

To be like, all right, well, that's a, that's out of my safety margin.

I need to stop.

Is that like, as hard of a decision as I think it is, or is it just one of those.

You're like, oh, nope, that's just it.

Like, I'm not putting myself in a position to.

For my life or other people on the ground.

I think it's just, that's a maturity thing.

Everybody, like I said, everybody wants to win, but being able to say no, that's where you value your flying abilities and how you want to be remembered versus other people.

People.

We see it all the time where people just kind of push through things and keep going.

And it's not just not the limit side of, can be a physical attribute too, of just saying, like, hey, today I didn't drink enough water.

Right?

So might not be a lot of the times the ability doesn't come from them not being able to handle the plane, that this ability comes from the how they prepared themselves for that specific flight that time.

You know, maybe it's.

Maybe you're in the middle of Kansas and it's too hot and you didn't drink enough water that morning or maybe the day prior.

Now you're trying to catch up.

Well, you can't catch up once you're dehydrated.

So, you know, it's got to be professional, right?

You're a percentage.

Yeah, perfect example, right?

You're.

You're being professional, right.

Knowing when to quit is knowing when to quit.

And that just comes with experience.

You don't learn that over a day, over a couple hours.

And as we know in aviation experiences is.

Is hard earned.

So generally you get experience from bad things happening or from close calls.

And yeah, so I, I think the, A lot of where you kind of go back with the knowing when to bail out, that's just experience where you're at in life, stuff like that.

I think people who are in there, some people who are younger are more hot rods and people that are older.

Right.

I mean, I know I was more of a hot rod pilot when I was younger because I was just young and now I got wife and kids and stuff like that.

You slow down a bit, you think about life a lot more.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, Marco, that's all I got for you, man.

I know you're sitting again.

By noon, it's 11:59.

We're right on the dot, man.

There you go.

It was great talking with you.

If anyone wants to find you mention your website already.

Social YouTube, go ahead and drop that real quick and then we'll get out.

Yeah, you totally watch on, but it's there that some of the videos I have from the old days and then.

Then the website I mentioned, www.airshows.com and then Instagram is M.

Bowser, so it's my last name with the SCR on the end.

And that is.

That's really it.

That's what I use.

You can follow Facebook, Marco Bell.

And that's all.

Had a great time, man.

Finally.

Love talking to you.

Yeah, it'll be great.

I'll text you, like, 10 minutes.

I'll have to come to an air show sometime and be like, that's my buddy.

Look at him.

No, exactly.

It'll be right down the road.

Only if you do well, though.

If you start doing bad and be like, oh, okay, let's delete that.

I'll have a big pilot to pilot on the plane and I'll just.

Yeah, no, I'm just kidding.

Make it work, dude.

All right.

I appreciate you.

I wish you the best, and hopefully you and I will get the base of our choice soon.

But I hope you're having a good day.

We'll see.

Have a good day, man.

We'll see you.

All right, see you, AV Nation.

That's a wrap on episode three.

330.

It is wild to say 330.

When I was counting down my last episodes to see what number we're on and I said 330 in my mind, it just kind of hit me.

You know, we've been doing this for a while.

You guys have been listening to my voice.

You've been seeing my career progress.

I would love to see how your career has progressed.

So if you've gotten any value out of the podcast or anything, please email me.

Let me know what you were doing when you started the podcast and where you are now.

So email me at justinpilot, the Pilot hq.

That way I kind of hear your stories and maybe we can connect into a podcast.

So send me those stories.

I would love to see how the podcast has helped or what you've gotten out of this podcast.

Over 330 episodes.

That's an Airbus 330.

That's insane.

That's crazy.

I don't want to bore you anymore with my voice.

I hope you guys are having a great day and a great week.

And as always, happy flying.

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