Inside the Mind of a Jet Owner: XplusLuxe on What Operators Get Wrong With Private Fliers

4,3,3,7,5 go ahead. I like that the root was for podcast. I'm gonna go over here. Yeah, that's for real. All right, we have a special guest on today. This is our first anonymous guest on the VIP seat podcast. So we are going to refer to this person as Mr. T, which stands for 10, the citation 10. You may be familiar with X plus lux on Instagram. So this is the principle behind that. But because of the sensitive nature of their career and what they do, we had to do this anonymously. So Mr. T, thanks for coming on the VIP seat podcast. Hey, Preston, Jesse, thank you for having me. I love the podcast. I love what you guys are doing and happy to have a chat. Awesome. What's so excited to have you here? I mean, we've been a big fans of your page for a long time. So for those who have not followed it, you must. It is a hilarious because you use a lot of like CGI and AF. And AI to create some pretty audacious post that we really love. But also you use love your airplanes and we just we love to see it. So Mr. T, talk to us about like how do you get into private aviation? Like, did you start flying yourself and then you started buying planes? Like what would you know, give us like the background there? Yeah, I mean, originally it was in 2021. I mean, this is really ironic. I hate, I used to hate flying and I pulled my first plane for tax reasons. And then I just got completely obsessed with the data and planes and the opportunities and the way they trade, the way they perform. And almost immediately I started engaging with the OEMs. And without sending self-engaging, I was teaching the OEMs stuff about their own machines from a data performance communications and so on perspective. So for example, I remember telling Textron that it was sort of understating the cost and range benefits of the CJ3+ vis-a-vis the Phantom 300E. And it's just so dark rich, the aviation industry. And there's such a porosity of analysis and data science in aviation. That's what really sucked me in. It was all about the statistics. And then the economics and then the intellectual challenge of making these machines, which are kind of endlessly fascinating, profitable. And then I also got sucked into the 135 dynamics. The 135 industry is really interesting as a as a hedge fund guy because my world is intensely regulated. We can't, you know, step sideways without coming across a multiplicity of constraints and regulations, whereas the 135 world is just the world west. It's more or less completely unregulated. So the way planes trade and the way 135's operate from a communication and owner management perspective is to put a euphemistically really interesting, quote unquote. And so, yeah, that's probably the backstory. And I kind of started. So I've got a Mustang and CJ3+, I traded an M2 off the Textron production line. I bet they didn't love that though. The M2 trade. Yeah, so they didn't. I love Textron and they're an amazing business. I think they have many opportunities to sort of many much latent sort of potential to improve their opportunities. But they. So I took delivery the plane. I didn't actually technically trade off the professional. They forced me to take delivery. And kind of double my deposit and traded that and then traded a soul for them and then start getting to the 10 plus game. And now the G280 game. Yes, so I'm a mess as you guys would see from the page. I'm a bit of a daughter, Jackie. I'm just completely obsessed with this. It's so interesting to me that you look at 135 is unregulated because as a former 135 operator, like we would tell you the opposite. But I guess, you know, compared to the finance world, we had it. We had a pretty good. No, I would say it's Frank. I would bipolar, put them all politically correct. So it's intensely regulated from a FAA perspective. So the machines themselves are intensely regulated. What I meant by being the world west is the way, you know, 135's sell their ways, their services, the way they interact with owners. And they can do whatever they want. They can double dip. They can charge innumerable hidden fees and they really are not consequences. So from I think I cost them a perspective. It's very very unregulated. I think the regulation of the machines is very good and very, very intensive. Arguably, aviation is the single most regulated industry in the planet from the perspective of the safety of the machine. Which I think is a great thing. While we're talking about speed and beautiful airplanes, I just want to give a shout out to our sponsor this week, ABJets. They just took delivery of another brand new challenger 3500 bringing their fleet to a total of three. These are brand new beautiful interiors, beautiful exterior, and they are awesome for even the most discerning passengers. So thanks to ABJets for sponsoring this week's episode of the podcast. So, okay, I want to double click on the dynamic of an owner and an operator because I think that that's something that we don't often get to hear a perspective on. Talk to us about managed you own a fleet and they are managed and maybe your relationships a little bit different. I think a lot of people just kind of say here's my plan hands off, let it pay for itself. I want to use the one I want to use it. But what's been your experience of working and we'll leave kind of specific companies out of it because that's not the business that we're in here on this podcast. But like talk to us about that relationship and the experiences that you've had up to this point with management companies. Yeah, I think again endlessly fascinating. I think this is information asymmetry between an owner and an operating 135 company. So the owners tend to be very smart and successful obviously by definition there's a selection bias whereby the owners have generated normally enough wealth to start buying Gets or Gets, singular. And the operators obviously have deep domain expertise and aviation and the owners are often the uninitiated right. So the owners are either new buyers or existing buyers and they may have also unusual preferences whereby they don't mind and paint significant fees away and then focused on the economics of the machine itself. And my experience has been that operators will try to arbitrage that a little bit and they'll try and exploit those information asymmetry. So I think generally owners are open to significant vulnerabilities, not understanding revenue, attribution, fuel surcharges, what the equitable fees which should be how MX control works. Even the procurement, I've seen many examples of operators convincing but operators, I mean the 135's convincing owners to buy machines that are just kind of completely inappropriate for their needs. So you see this time and time again, owners just sort of sleep walking into the wrong procurement decisions. And then I think the reason the 135 industries is a graveyard of broken relationships is because generally speaking, the owners are probably at the margin without saying disrespectful net net a little smarter than the 135's and they eventually caught on and they figure it out and they see through the BS and they start holding the operators to account and that's when you see the relationships fracture. So I actually think it's fascinating. I just see these time and time again hyper dysfunctional relationships between owners of 135's and this may go around the problems. My experience with I'm happy to name them, AJM is amazing. I think these guys at world class and they are always a major different I think to the the run of the middle operator and this looks a good operators out there lots of amazing operators. I think particularly the US market, the quality of 135's is very, very high. So there's tons of really good one for you. But AJM is just like next level. I've been shocked. That's interesting. I mean, I think what happens is it's such aircraft management is so hyper competitive and the margins are just so slim. So you have this constant fighting between all of them trying to get airplanes on certificate and they oversell they say, OK, yeah, we can we can make your airplane money when a lot of times they truly can't. And that's probably where this all starts. Are you giving up margin for that like, how do you think about how do you think about that? Are you saying I am fine giving up like small levels of or like some level of income for that transparency or professionalism like because I think that like a lot of like splits right like charter splits is always it's interesting. And then you know, last me, what's the standard split and I'm like 85 15 ish, but it's like that the spread on those numbers is like totally wild. Do you think about it in terms of like, Hey, I'm fine giving up another few percentage points for maybe, you know, that level of professionals or how do you think how do you think about that when picking. Yeah, I mean, it is, again, really interesting. I was actually talking to a 135 in a foreign country about this overnight. And I would be absolutely happy to sacrifice a bit of margin for superior transparency, information integrity, trying to remove the conflicts of interest. I mean, the agency conflicts between the 135 and the owner community are very, very significant if the relationship is not structured the right way. And just the kind of pre-natural reflex to want to take advantage of owners right around the world is kind of disappointing and problematic. And I think, again, this is not kind of casting expressions on anyone. My experience with US Operators has been amazing. So all the US Operators I've dealt with have been exceptional. But if I look around the world, and if I do look at specific examples in the US, I think the reflexes 100% to exploit the information asymmetry or the informational advantage that a 135 has of the owner. And the problem is these owners figured out. EGM is, I think, unusual in the level of quality control, professionalism, integrity, because they don't need to e-cap those small margins, you know, they're net jets, right? And their business model is absolutely extraordinary. I've never seen anything like it. So I think there's actually an opportunity. So my advice to 135 if you're listening is there is a huge opportunity for a high integrity, fully aligned, totally transparent 135. And that really focuses on putting their owner's best interests ahead of their own short-term economic advantages. If 135's could focus on that really low-hanging fruit, I think there's huge upside. It's kind of, there's an analogy with Baker Aviation who I'm really fond of as well. I think that business is absolutely exceptional. What Tim Livingston's done at Baker is just endlessly inspiring. But what he does is he says, "It's not going to be a while, lad. "Well, I'm not going to have a retail channel. "I'm not going to be a 135 that competes with the brokers. "I'm going to work for the brokers." And it's such an obvious strategy. And I'm super surprised more people don't do this. If I was a 135, this is 100% what I would do, because it's like banks. Banks, when they distribute products, have a load of time that the branch networks really compete with the brokers. I mean, the home line market, the main channel is through mortgage brokers. And you would be better off just servicing the brokers and doing away with the branch network most of the time. And the same is 100% true in the 135 game. The brokers are the kind of line share of the volume and servicing them first to second third. I think it's going to get you that volume. And the brokers get very frustrated by conflicts of interest with the internal retail channels. So I think in the 135 game, the other lesson that is really important is MX control. Like MX is just everything, first to second third. So with EJM, they generally require full time MX professional for each machine. It's expensive, but it pays massive dividends. And if I was a 135, I would really focus on MX execution. And again, Tim Lewis and the Baker, he's taken 25 to 30 year old citation tents that everyone online, including on my little Instagram page, claims it's caught in quite the fastest playing between service centers. But yet, I've run all the ideas, be down on that Baker 10 flip and they have the highest utilization rates, these 25 year old tens of any 135 machine in the world, high utilization rates in the fractional, which have a huge utilization advantage. And that's all we make. Tim Livingston is just a freaking MX genius. And so actually these 25 year old tens and the much reliable plans are cubely on the planet. So MX, I think is something that 135's continuously under-investing. And if I was saying, I have no interest for the sake of completeness, 'cause I'm off and ask this question, I have absolutely zero interest in city of my 135. I'm way, way, way too busy, but I think there's so many things you could do better if you were executing only the one fee for that mission. And that is alignment with just with the customers, MX control, not creating conflicts with the brokers, civil stores. - Yeah, that's one of those things. I don't know why there is this, and I started R 135 back in 2015. Yeah, 2015. And at the time, there was this conflict between again, like you said, the broker and the wholesale idea, people were like, oh well, if you only do wholesale, you're not a real operation and you're not really managing people. And I said, no, let's put the brokers first. They're the ones that have all these relationships. Why wouldn't we buy those first? And we became largely a wholesale fleet before we went into retail. And we looked at it as a cheaper customer acquisition cost. Let the brokers do the work and the expense of recruiting people, we just want to service the client. So yeah, I totally agree with that approach. - Yeah, I think there is a role for a retail channel within 135 fee, avoidance of any confusion. But I need to be very, very careful when you hear exactly. And I think if I'm a startup 135, I want to really focus like team has with Baiko on just alignment and minimizing the expense. - Yeah, I mean, scaling a large fleet that's similar components, similar teams, being more and more efficient. As a phenom 300 operator, I would argue with you if that I don't think this actually just does the most reliable aircraft out there. But we can back to, we can different that one. - But just to challenge you on that, how does team do 125 hours a month on average across these two teams? - We were running that on the phenom 300 at our peak, same. Well, maybe 115, 120. - But you compare your new phenom 300 versus a quarter of a century old 10, so. - Yeah, like scale and relationship, a lot of it can be the sales channels. Who is he flying for? A lot of our wholesale work was coming from really big operators that had the flow too. So yeah, but fair points, fair points. - I think the other, just to interject, I think the other challenge that a lot of 135's like suffer from is that their owners actually want to fly their own airplanes, and that's their primary mission. And then charter is seen as like a supplemental, would be nice to have. So you have like owner approvals is a great example, right? Like it's incredibly disruptive to have owner approvals across your fleet, right? And so I think that, and you get these 135's that have, portion is just, hey, run it as hard as you can. And then the other portion is, you have to get my approval 'cause really I want to fly it myself, and it's not really, you know, this is not a financial mechanism for me to make money. And so like, all of a sudden now you're like, okay, well, which tail is it? And can I say yes or no, right? Like, I don't know, one of our sponsors, you know, not to drop a sponsor plug, but ABJets owns their own fleet. So they're like, look, we have no owner approval, and that's the advantage. I think that, I think that's the biggest challenge. They're one of the bigger challenges for these small startups is like they just want tails on, and they get all of these different owner profiles. - Yeah, and when you're running your own. - Yeah, I think that's good. - Like you really have to separate the ONO, ONO operating fleets from the rest of the general fleets, 'cause ONOs have more incentive to just fly the pants off of those airplanes, yeah. - Yeah, I think guys that's super interesting because, I often think about this as well. Like I remember bumping into a G550 owner in a restaurant, and he's like, I would never let anyone else walk on my plane. And at the end of the day, my perspective is these assets should perform if possible, they should be profitable. And they're ultimately machines. And so like in the case of my 10 plus fleet, I have sort of unquestionably strong commitment to keep the cabins, which are world class, like, you know, they're all, I mean, they're off the charts. People who go through those 10 pluss to say they're the best prologists that they've ever seen in their lives. And that's been actually 135 feedback consistently. But if there's a scratch, I just get a fix immediately. I mean, one thing I don't understand for the life of me, how can you spend 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 million bucks on a plane and just treat it like shit? Like these boring patient theories that have beat up, crappy carpet, all the woodworks busted up. You know, there's, you know, the headliners and the side walls are all stained. So like my approach with my 135 carters has always been guys. If we have to engage in cab X, I want my interior to be perfect all the time. And I don't mind if they're adults in the interiors or occasionally, you know, you get a group in there that, you know, may make mistakes. And, you know, there's kind of consequences. Obviously, they'll have to remediate whatever, you know, they break. But they are machines. And so we just get our machines fixed with the OEM, with text from all with golf, shamel, dunk, and they kept perfect all the time. So I'm really fasted years and I have total OCD on my interiors. I'm fact, you mean, if I'm on the machine, myself, I'm backing me in the car. But the pilots know that if there's a single scratch anywhere and needs to be immediately remediated. But I don't have this, I don't require any unreproved one my way. So I don't really understand that either, because like, you know, any in the day, like what control are you really exercising? Is the guy that you approve, you know, the people you approve 60, 70, 80% of the time, are they really going to treat it with, you know, demonstrably security care to the folks you're rejecting? And what's the, what's the evidentiary basis for the rejections? So I have no problem. If the 135's comfortable with the customer, comfortable with the customer, and I'm a volume junkie, I want machines flown every single day, 46 hours a day. But the quality of the interior is, this is a paradox, again, I just don't understand. How can you buy a probegette and spend 10s of millions of dollars on an interior luxury? - No, that's it. - As an owner, forgetting the machines that are like 135, I mean, as an owner, it's really-- - I really want to know, because not only are you crazy about the interiors, but your ex-teriors are gorgeous as well. One of the planes says boss bitch on it. I'm just amazing. How much are you spending on your modifications if you're willing to share some of that because I think they're really cool planes? - Yeah, I mean, the machines are like, you know, remarkable machines in terms of the capabilities. And I think why I have a like a, why I plan with a stroke commodity and why I go as an interior. I mean, one of my first impressions when I first engaged in corporate aviation on a personal basis was this that underwhelming sense when you walked into the interior you spent a fortune on, you know, using a corporate jet to move from A to B. And then you just let down by this, by the atmospherics, this is like, you know, this doesn't feel like it's a very special experience. So with our machines, I want the zeitgeist, the atmospheric internally to be completely different and shared it. And the every single person who goes on those machines almost with the exceptions is I've never been on the planet like this before. So that's an unquestionably strong commitment quality and execution. It means the cost of the refurb's is very, very high. So for a super midget, we're spending as much as four to five hundred thousand US on the paint. Now, paints really interesting as well. Like, you know, you can go to a penapply of different paint providers and you'll get a wide divergence in paint costs but really pay penalty to get monkeys. So they're a crazy paint crisis out there that we use a combination of Duncan, Westa and Textron and they're all fabulous. I think the paint designs require a huge amount of creativity and ingenuity. So we spend a lot of time with designers sweating the detail of the designs. I like to think each machine has its own personality. So we generally brand the inside of the engines. We can't really see them on this yet. So, you know, squinting hard, but the first time the silver and the super silver with the paint over Westa, we had big dog on the engines. I think, Preston, you can't hold it at that once. And that attracts a huge amount of attention and definitely help with the sales model. The first 10 plus was boss speech. The second 10 plus was boss speech to the Renault for a four. And so, four to five hundred cards say on the paint, on the interiors, wow, you, like once you account for styling, CP DLC, if you need it, which is just kind of a global communications capacity because these machines we do take all around the world all the time. So, style and CP DLC plus basically a brand new interior, you're looking at anywhere from one and a half to two and a half million US. And you can do a lot more cheaply, but again, you just compromise in quality. I do like the OEMs. Some of the OEMs are a little crazy on cost. I mean, I think I can say this that way. I like my GoldStream incredible business, like their machines are amazing, but GoldStream's interesting because they just don't discount. Like, they don't really discount for anyone. And that's one of the reasons you don't really see GoldStreams in the fractional flights. The G280 is unambiguous. I think the best super mid that exists. It flies further and faster than the Challenger 3500 and the Longitude and actually the Prital 600. Even though the 600 claims have longer range, Mark 0.8 the G280 flies further. But it burns way less fuel. The G280, normally people will appreciate this at Mark 0.8 burns about 230 to 240 gallons now. That's sovereign burn rates. But it's crazy fuel efficient, even though it has the same engine, the same annual engine as the Challenger 3500 and the Longitude. It actually has slightly more thrust, but it's actually the wing. The wing is a shrunk G650 wing. And so anyway, they just don't discount. And if so a factor, you don't see many G280s in charter or fractional flights. And make it do that. In financial markets, we have an equivalent to G280, which is Bloomberg. Now, a Bloomberg terminal costs you $35,000 US. I have like 20 to 30 of them. And Bloomberg doesn't discount for anything because they are an op-lust. And kind of G280 is a little 101, I would say. So how do you think about like IRR, right? So like you're putting $2 million into this. Do you have like a target entry price and then a target exit price? Like how do you think about like the depreciation curves and you're putting a lot of time on these things? Like what's kind of your mental model for that? Yeah, I mean, I basically assume we hold the assets of the materials. So it's like a 15 year model and that we parted out. So we assume no real realization of end, but basically the machines worthless at the end of the period. It's really about that upfront. The IRR is going to be heavily determined by that upfront capital commitment. And this speaks to procurement, like buying a plane. Oh my God. I mean, I love like we trade about $1 billion a day and in global financial markets. And it really reminds me of a PAKOTC financial markets, the aviation market. There's so much dispersion. You can see the same machine traded 8.6 million and then 10.6 million in like one month. And then the buy has a so heterogeneous, like they all have different incentives. Now, I'm virtue seedly. I want the best machine. I've got a massive tax deduction. I just want to spend as much money as-- I want to generate that deduction because I've got a massive liability that I need to defray. I'm a pilot and I'm in love with 1,000,000 or the 7X. But a lot of it's non-rational. And I would actually say one of the reasons-- coming back to the DAI, I think it's so interesting that this will occur in any real data analysis in corporate aviation. And I think it's without saying-- I'm probably going to know a few people saying this. But the industry is run by pilots or sales executives. And they tend not to be financial analysts. And so when I look at fleet procurement decisions, it's super interesting to me that I think people systematically buy the raw machines systematically. Like from the biggest players, down to the smallest players. And they're making decisions that are kind of pilot influence, that are sales-- like Charles Salesbroker or a sales professional influence. And they're not necessarily looking at math in the economics. So coming back to ARA, up front being really hyper-discipline on the pricing of the asset is crucial to the ARA. And then for me, running a whole to maturity model where you want to team living since the old fresh, the shit out of the machine, put as many hours as possible, preferably sooner rather than later. And then that ARA would determine what you can afford in terms of your capex. Death's also interesting. Is it non-recourse? Is it full recourse? What's the LTV? Who are you baking with? What are the covenants? So I think it's really important that your unleavened ARA is very compelling. So your unleavened ARA pre-dead needs to be super compelling. And then you continue the ARA as a function of your leverage. And then the ARA is also heavily-- I mean, the single biggest factor in the ARA is probably you're revving your power on your volume power. And that then talks to your 135th partner. And do you vertically interact? Do you get the license yourself and try to run your own fleet? As you were mentioning, Jesse, do you buy your own fleet or do you go capitalize and manage other people's planes? But for me, I really do like partnering with the likes of EGM and a previously HANA great relationship with FRIV, those guys were amazing too. And I think working with a very good sales organization, that can drive volume and can drive really good revenue for our is super, super valuable. So what I would say is-- I mean, the other-- the argument to ARA, the other thing that's interesting about the opportunity is if you look at supply of new machines, OEMs today are producing less machines than they did back in 2007. So there's actually a structural shortage of machines. And then you're seeing these non-linearities in demand post-COVID. And then you're also seeing non-linearities in demand for 135 supplementary leave driven by fractional penetration, like net js of six s for xj at six s. Bond is obviously going to be able to get in change. And that's super interesting in the know of itself. Because if you think about a fractional, you're selling six shares to us when you use the plane, suddenly you're short of plane. So if the fractional have success, that drives 135th success. The other thing that is, I think, really intellectually interesting is just the value we impute to time. And I think that's changing over time skis upon I think time arbitrage is becoming hyper important. It's only in my business time is everything, times my edge. So I want to travel as quickly as possible. I need to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. But the other thing is I need to be as productive as possible when I'm in the machine. So there is, like, all this magnitude difference between styling at 500 mbps per second with the block three antenna. The new block five antenna is going to be 1,000. This is the high performance time antenna. It's going to be 1,000 mbps. I'm working one on my G280 and say, go, go, go, go. They claim up to 60 mbps. But the testing at Galila, I think on average runs, the testing I've seen, I'm trying to find out on this is about 36 mbps. And then I was using Ka band across the pond yesterday. And that was just horrific. Like, you can't do Wi-Fi calls, you can't do video conference calls. So, so productivity and time arbitrage is for corporate aviation in a world where we're digitizing, where in AI is just transforming everything. Time is becoming much more valuable. And if you can get a time advantage, you can get a massive commercial competitive advantage. - I was trying to do a post the other day. And I sent this to Preston before I put it out. I was trying to explain to people, I'm an MBA. So I was going to do the standard supply. And to me, on curb, you know, wire aircraft, I use increasing so substantially. It's, you know, shortage of airplanes, reduced capacity to war, defense, a whole bunch of other things. But it just started to look like a spaghetti chart because there's so many factors right now that are just pushing prices up, up, up, up, up all the time, whether it's COVID, taxes, bonus appreciation, all the different factors that are coming into play now. But that's interesting to hear your perspective on and start like, what about the price increase? Do you think that's going to push people away? Well, this is fascinating. Like if you look at inflation in the US, call PC, inflation, which is the phase preferred measure, historically technology was deflationing for the last, for as long as the free bus would be basically alive, tech has reduced inflation, it's been deflationing. And for the first time in history, tech is now inflationing, so it's pushing the US inflation higher. Now, Stalin gives a great example that, like, you know, the antenna was 150,000 US, and you know, actually, you know, Elon's turned around and said 200,000 US just for the antenna. Forget the install. Now the install is getting close to 400,000 US. If I speak to my friends at Goldstrain, I have a feeling feeling that might push a little higher. Hopefully not because I'm good at negotiating price. But then on the global plans, like we all, you know, spent 300 grand on install these antennas using global plans at 10k a month, and Elon's coming around and said 20k a month. So that's pure tech inflation. I think you write GSE, like, I tell you, like, these supply chains, they're not getting cheaper. And I think inflation, if you think about Russia Ukraine, if you think about Iran, if you think you actually mentioned this, and this is quite profound and I think underestimated, the global red militarization is really sucking supply chains away from the corporate OEMs, and that's increasing costs. So inflation, you know, look at the challenge of 3500 US, probably not better than me. But I think challenge of 3500 prices, going from like, low 20s, they're going to be pushing cost 30 now. Soon, if not already, I think they're high 20s right now. But that's crazy. I think, I actually quite a new Falcon 2000, I think now costs more for 40, just for Falcon 2000. Can you have to wait for forever to get that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then coming back to the time, like, I think another topic that's super interesting to me, you know, you could get your views on this is just speed. So we went through this kind of work, ESG world, where speed was not all that were important. It was flat walls, fat caverns. We all want to be in SUVs in the air. And then suddenly the, the gulsions of globals are now competing purely on speed. It's all about 0.95 or 0.95, which are BS numbers because their, their MMO is not cruise speed numbers. And when you actually look at the data, I'll have the global 7500 flows, this applies systematically slower than a G650. If you look at the ideas speed data from, you know, on point A to point B speed. But it is interesting how the cross is at turning back to speed and manufacturers are revisiting speed. So I think that's consistent with the community imputing high values to time. And this has been a real conversation, which reminds me of our sponsor this week, real jet, real jet is a charter brokerage. And the next iteration of private aviation from Kenny Dictor and Robert Whitters. And I would guess I would have to imagine that they probably fly their customers on the X plus Lux because their customers are discerning and they vet their operators. So that is one of the big things that not a lot of brokers do is vet their operators. And so real jet is big on that, big on safety, big on relationships. So thanks to real jet for sponsoring this week's episode of the podcast. What do you think about supersonic? I mean, I think it's really interesting. I actually think if I was no EM, I'd be focusing on a high transsonic. I think there's a real case for max 0.95 cruise speeds. So near supersonic, you know, you're a busy appendage away from being supersonic without the collateral cost of moving through Mach 1. Yeah, so I think that the next OEM war is like high, high max 0.9 numbers. And you see that play out with the global 1000 and the G700 and G800, the trading of the records in the last week between those two OEMs. So yeah, I don't have a strong view on whether we'll see scale supersonic flight. I mean, makes sense, given the well, the concord achieved so long ago, it makes sense that that's an executable mission for somebody. And that could be quite disruptive and interesting. But I think coming back to information asymmetries, I think really high speed with really, really low fuel burn is the Holy Grail. So if you look at the global 1000, the reason the global 70, 500 and the global 1000 are never flown fast, they burn too much fuel. Whereas if you look at the citation 10 plus, we can fly at 0.9 mark and burn at 47,000 feet with burning at close to either 0.89 to 0.90 mark at 47,000 feet with burning about 700 to 750 pounds aside, similar to a sovereign. And at 49,000 feet, the citation 10 plus is burning so that bang on sovereign numbers and significantly less than a long but you. So I remember talking to Tecchron recently and I said, hey, how do you think about the 10 plus? And would you ever reconsider starting production? Again, they said, well, if we could get a more fuel-fishing engine, and I'm like, but guys, the 10 plus said 47 to 49 burns less fuel than a long but you, and even a 45,000 feet, actually, the fuel burns very similar long but you, so this kind of speaks to, I think, the REM is not necessarily always understanding their own product. But the reason that 10 plus is so fuel-fishing is that that's 37,5 or 37 degrees, sorry, swept wing. So the machine is designed to be hyper-arid dynamic with that hardball-restaurant shape and it's also true that G280 wins with the same weight and same engine as a long but you'd in the challenge to be 500, the G280 is burning 25% less fuel, potentially. And I think this is what G280 does really well. So the G280 is reaching the G650 flies much faster than the global 7500 is I think it's a much better design. So the global 8,000 pilots have told me they can't fly above mark 0.9 because they started buffeting. So the plane starts vibrating at about 0.9 and in fact multiple global 8,000 pilots have said they don't ever see cruise speeds if they, they floor it, they can't get above 0.9, 1 to 0.9, 2 and obviously the LED and climbs 0.9, but that's done in a dive. That's just like a maximum operating limit in a dive. It's not telling you about cruise speed. So I think speed coupled with sugarloaf fuel burn is the whole ground. That's where I would focus on. So you're your page and you poke fun a lot. Like you did STC's with like, basically as you're within some other stuff. Have you done any actual modifications that have increased speed on your fleet or is it just kind of all for fun? Yeah, so we're actually working with Rolls-Royce on an engineering study to what some people might refer to as unlock the Fadex. So the the 10 plus engines, nobody, Rolls-Royce has never told anyone what the true thrust limits are. But most people would say somewhere the current thrust on my 10 plus is about 7,000 and 34 pounds aside on each engine. But the actual engine itself is believed to be capable of as much as 9 to 10,000 pounds aside. So the engines are heavily deraded and I believe the 10 plus was created with a lot of latent thrust capacity. So I've gone to Rolls-Royce and I don't believe anyone's ever done this before. And I've asked them to do, well I've asked them, hey, what would it take to do an STC to basically do a thrust bump to allow even higher cruise speeds? And they said this we could do an engineering study for you and that's what we're doing. So we're working on an engineering study. I don't think it's imminent. I think it'll take a year or so. But the engineering study is going to look at what would be if we bump the thrust 5 to 10 percent, what would be the client benefits, the cruise benefits, and how would the engine cope with that change? And then we need to go to Textron, to means Textron, to allow us to to make those thrust changes. There is a precedent for this. So between zero numbers, the first citation 10s had some called the C engine and then after zero number 173, they had the C1 engine and there was a service bulletin release that allowed you to bump the thrust on the C engine, to turn it into a C1 engine. So I've actually sent Textron, can't we do a service bulletin based thrust bump to the 10 plus engines given they have so much latent capacity. So other than that, you can get efficiency gains with paint. I have also been talking about, I don't know if you guys have heard of that this, but there's some called Shark Skin Coating that a bunch of firms are working on. Wolf Answer has tried this on his planes. There's a company actually in the Antipodes called Mako, which is working with the US military and they have a Shark Skin Coating that you can put on the plane and you get about a a four to five percent speed increase, which is quite significant. And so I have been talking to Mako as well about applying a Shark Skin Coating to the boss pitches. It's sure that they are. I will just say call the record just on this speed, this speed, yes. So you know, Gulf Stream says 935, Bombardius says 9.5 in terms of mark numbers, but what I've done, which no one, I don't believe anyone had ever done this, is I went to the ADS speed data. And and just took every single flight since 2019. So millions of hours of flight data. And I could put, well, what's your average block speed for all G650s, all global 75% from A to B? And that's like the definitive benchmark. That's the definitive sort of data on how fast these planes actually flow. One of the interesting things about that now, as an example is, you know, Embraer claims the fin and 300 days faster than the CJ4. But when you look at the CJ4 flight data using ADSP, which is the data transmitted by the planes themselves, every second or few seconds, the ADSP data shows the CJ4 is consistently flowing, very consistently flowing, every year a little bit faster than the FEM300s. Yeah, small, like, you know, between five and 15 knots of average ground speed. And that's where we're able to demonstrate the 10 pluses flown faster A to B than the, you know, any other plan of the planet, including now the global 8000. So I'm now tracking global 8000 data. And we can show life-fuly kind of 1,000 to say 2,000 normal mass sectors. And the average sector for a global 8000 is about 1,500 normal models. So in the average sector for a global 8000, we fly a little faster. And that's what you really care about is A to B speed. It's not about a diethyst. It's about half-foss, you know, can you feel the speed? You're decent speed and you're cruise speed. Half-fossil, you're actually going to fly the machine. Well, and that's something, I mean, even I, honestly, hadn't really thought about this. I mean, for someone choosing an aircraft for, you know, operational purposes, there's a huge difference between A published numbers and what the reality is, you know, how much fuel are you trying? If you're 135-operity, you want to save as much fuel as possible. So your, you know, your cruise settings are going to be totally different than say a private owner who's just like, get me there as fast as possible. I don't care. But I mean, that's like, you're tracking the real operational numbers and not, you know, what it can do. Yeah, that's where the devil is in the detail. Like the G450 is not example. I think it's, it's max cruise speed is 8889, but it's so few, it's got big, real-source engines and it's crazy fuel inefficient. So in the G450 fleet, they fly the M8 zero, right? Because anything above that is just punitive. Again, the 10 pluses as a, and the 10, the biggest tens are these magical machines. You fly the balls, the wall, all the time. So the 10 pluses and the tens are actually flown, redlined the whole time. You don't, you don't leave any thrust, but you fly high. The, the misnomer with the tens was people thought they were, you know, unreliable and they were fuel hobs. Because if you fly a 10 at 35 to 41, it's a massive fuel hole, right? So you burn 30% more fuel at 41 than you do at 47 to 49. And you're not doing at 41, you're doing 9192, at 47 to 49, you're doing, you know, 8809 zero. And, and so yeah, it's, it's kind of, I think really interesting as an owner and a potential buyer, I think buyers have got to think through, you know, these, these things because, you know, another example is the Phantom 300 doesn't actually fly that fast at 45,000 feet. The, the Phantom 300 is not that much quicker than a CJ3 plus the 45,000 feet. It's peak speed that 80 mm is really in the 30s when it's burning crazy amounts of fuel. And it actually struggles to get to 45,000 feet. The CJ3 plus and the CJ4 actually get to 45,000 feet much faster than the Phantom 300. So, so these, these are really important nuances. And I will, I got to call this out because I'm the safety girl on the show. You also do have to stop that airplane at some point. So just make sure you're high energy liandings. (laughs) - So you're right. - So that's speed. What, say what? - What, what did you say? - No, the, the safety girl in me has to say, don't forget that when airplanes go fast, they also have to stop on their runway. So your, your high energy liandings are also critical to understand what these machines. - Yeah, that's actually a really important point because the tens will have very fast. And you don't want to put your cycles on tens. You know, tens need to, that's another thing that Baker does well. So he prices, he's short sectors very expensively. So if you look at Baker's sector legs, Tim's average sector length is about 900 nautical miles. Much, much higher than most people in the market. Because he's so smart about pricing. So the, the 10 is not designed to do those one hour legs. It's really a three to five hour machine. That's where it's kind of optimized for fuel efficiency. And you're 100% right because it lands fast. You know, and you've got lots of wheel tire, you know, gear, wheel of tire changes, you know, kind of. - Well, and we've seen runway excursions, you know, it's like you really need to be right under numbers, solid approach with an airplane that fast. That's the only kind of like safety caveat. I'll put out there is that airplanes are, that are faster good, but they're also a little trickier sometimes. - Yeah, I think the 10, this is another releasing point. The runway excursions on the tens, interesting. Because they land very fast. And particularly the old tens, a hard land than the 10 pluses. And so unless you really experienced, when I'm hiring pilots, I'm more or less in insist that they 750 taught. And they have like a minimum, I do the 500 hours in the machine because they are tricky to fly. - Tee, so there's 31, 10 pluses that are out there. How are you thinking about fleet composition? Are you wanting to expand or you trying to double your fleet? I mean, there's one for sale right now. Like is that your constraint? Or is that why you start thinking about the 280? Like how are you thinking about fleet composition? - Yeah, again, I think this is so interesting for buyers and for 135's, because I think it makes really poor decisions generally on fleet composition. The 10 pluses, like I picked up my first for about 8.6. So if you can pick up a 10 plus in the eights, I think it's good value. But the problem with the 10 plus fleet is, as you say, there's 31. So parts, there's some idiosyncratic parts and the 10 pluses that are not in the tens. So parts availability is a constraint. It's not, you know, definitely your first, second, third, fourth, fifth choice for 135, scale fleet. The G280 on the other hand is, I think the G280 is a super interesting product. So here's the thing about the G280. It's shorter than a longer chewed at a challenge of 3,500, but you probably don't know this. But it's cabin, it's usable cabin is 8% bigger than the challenge of 3,500. 22% bigger than the longer chewed. And 13% bigger than the prior 600. So it actually has a bigger cabin than all those guys. And it doesn't have a drop four, another myth. It has a raceful and it's only a few inches. So I think the G280, if you can find a sheep, is an awesome machine for a fleet, but the problem is finding the sheep is hard. And for me, you know, the intellectual stimulation is kind of most of what drives me in terms of my involvement in this. And so I need to find machines that kind of have a competitive advantage. I don't want machines, I want different machines to everybody else, just in terms of capability, but also interior exterior, et cetera. So this is nothing like guys that don't understand the 135's, everyone, it's all same time. It's all homogeneity. I don't want to name names, but the new fractional players out there, same machines. So you're differentiating with a flight attendant, really, it makes no sense to me. I kind of like what Ken Rick has done with the order 3,300, whether the laminar flow stuff really stacks up, I can empirical question, like once you start working, start like terminals on there, and all the flight antennas, the laminar flow benefits are going to deflate, but that's a very large machine. So most of the fuel gains they're talking about are going to come through white, not the laminar flow, but I think it's very smart. I like what he's done with his deliveries and his interiors. I like what he's done with everything. So I think differentiation's key. Now the car I meant that is obviously consistency. And so people, I think it's okay to be same-sane or have a more homogeneous product suite if your quality is off the charts, and that's what it just does. I mean, that's just amazing. Quality is just world class. And the execution and the quality of their pilots, the quality control is just like nothing I've ever seen before. And but I think the opportunity for 135's is to differentiate. This is what fry've done really interesting. If you look at fry, their deliveries are awesome. They've got an unbelievable sales model, and their machines are different. They have the Southern pluses, very few Southern plus 135's. They've got the Longchutes. The Longchutes are an amazing machine. Awesome, awesome machine, but really fry for the only guys outside of Netsch that run that kind of Longchute fleet. And then they did have the CJ3 pluses. So the short answer question is, I don't know what my fleet composition looks like. I want to have fun. I want completely unique product, and I want a totally different share of product. It's very experienced. I want to be able to say I get you there for me to be faster than the ones on the planet, and it's really fun and experientially distinct. I'm kind of hoping, I'm trying to convince the tech strong to build new machines. So I'm hoping somebody's going to come out with some awesome new product in the future, like high transonic speed supermids. Like if I was an OEM, I'd be coming out with a Mark 0.85 Latchet. I think somebody's going to do that. I think it's super exciting. - Have you looked at Cybergett at all? I think that that's one of the things that they're trying to solve for. It's like really fast Latchets. - What's your space? I think you're going to see an OEM come out with a PC-24, a fan 300 kilo. And then what else would I do? I mean, no one does fast supermids. It's ridiculous. All these 828384bF, like where's the 90's? Superb, aside from obviously the 10s and 10 pluss. So that's a no brainer. Like somebody needs to pull their finger out and really just builds up 90 plus supermids. And then I love what Bombardier and Galsham are now doing in the kind of, the Galsham guys are interesting 'cause they really do cruise at 9091. So they're the real deal in terms of speed. I do like what Bombardier is doing in terms of the marketing, although I mean people will think I'm a Bombardier I'm absolutely not like a huge admiration for that company, but they were not the first to break Mark 1. Yeah, again, the 750s broke 9.1 repeated, sorry, Mark 1 in the 1990s. So at Tech Strong there's a Mark 1 conference room and a philosophy of international there's a plot saying that the citation tab was a display and to break Mark 1. So yeah, I think I would like a new product for some of you. I think the problem right now as these OEMs are very comfortable, they've got nice, very long book order, is it any price that they want? So it'll be interesting to see does that spur any innovation or does that make everybody fat happy and sit back? What would you guys have in your flights? I mean, so the hard part I think, so I wrote an article talking about like how everybody is like the great fleet like consolidation, phenom 300, challenger 300. And if you look at anybody's scaling right now, that's what they've got. And I think that there's kind of this group thing. Personally, I think there's a group thing that is flooding to those because it's like, oh, uptime, reliability, oh, we know that these things book, we know that they're profitable. Customer popularity. Customer popularity, but I think that it's driving the prices, the prices are insane right now, both of those aircraft. So it's like, I don't think in a charter fleet, you can actually, I don't think you can make money at with prices of where they're at. When you're buying $10 million, $10,000 an hour, challenger 300s, right? Like, 'cause you're not that far off to get into a charter fleet, I don't see how you can make money on that. So. - So what do you think, so Preston, what do you think about what Tim's done with FlexJet, like buying 30 challenges 300s? He's also got a global express. I reckon he's going to continue buying machines. He must have been like crazy, good deal. He actually, I think also time that deal really well. Like the market was quite a lot weaker than it is right now, but what do you think about history? Do you just see your whole person? I'm 300, still 300. - Yeah, I mean, I think that's the question today. Like, when I was buying 300s, I think our first one was eight. Like, this is a totally different world of prices and economics quite frankly. It's not only airplane cost, crew cost, starling, everything else that's going up. I mean, that's the problem today. And if you're, it depends on what your goals are. If you're operating a mixed fleet of charter, you just get the best airplane you can get your hands on. If you want to scale and have, you know, 20, 30 airplanes, you have to think about what airplanes are actually feasible at that size and scale, you know, citation tens and a good price makes sense. If you can do that, if you can scoop up a fleet of phenom 300s at a reasonable price, great. But that's the problem today. It's just the prices are so insane. I'm not seeing a lot of opportunity for charter companies to make money, it looks owned and operated fleets, unless you've got an older fleet that you've purchased from somebody else as a bulk order or your fraction. - But even, I think the fact is- - But even Jesse, even then Jesse, I don't know if the ones that are buying these big-used fleets are doing all that hot. I mean, I think Tim was interesting 'cause he was able to buy so many of them at once that he, I agree with you. I think he got them for a song. And you're getting them from a large operator, right? Like people who've done this from net jets, they'll go buy a bunch of on-course or the excels that are still kind of floating around there in the market. So I think that that's an interesting, it's an interesting get. I think the challenge is that you don't know what those planes do at 20,000 hours. Like I don't think that I don't- Just off the top of my head, I don't know if we have any 20,000 hour challenge or 300. So it's like, you're taking a bit of a gamble on what's gonna happen here on kind of the maintenance cycles and that's the challenge is like- - And your life limited parts are a big one. Once you get into that number of hours, there are certain parts on these engines that are airplane killers. If it's a million, two million dollars per side to fix something, that means that's the purpose. - 100%. And you know, a lot of these guys in the morning, engineering insurance, you look at the silver and other holes, that's naturally killer. You can't get learners with sorbrons. So I think the calculus for someone like Tim is, if they are are sufficiently high in the first three to five years, you don't really care about what happens in- - Yeah, if you get paid back really quick, then you've de-risked the question. - It is interesting. I think, you know, I was just thinking how like, netchets want silver chains now to 135, because of the whole 10 experience when they had the 75-10s, and they saw that flea then created a kind of co-deriv competitors, and yet FlexJet have done exactly the same thing. But I think my guess is Tim's done a deal with FlexJet, where it's highly synergistic. As we're not gonna compete against each other, we'll work together, we'll collaborate. So he becomes a strategic partner to those guys. Again, he's very, very good at aligning with the industry, rather than creating conflicts with the industry. I think he almost, I think about churches, business, and he's now referring to himself as what label rather than Baker, it's like what label aviation or something like that, 'cause he doesn't wanna have a brand. - Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's like, he intentionally doesn't wanna brand, which is, which aligns the kind of what we were talking about earlier, right? It's like, be the wholesale fleet operator, don't compete on the retail side. I think going back to your question of like, what would I, what would I comprise a fleet of? I mean, it's hard because if you go outside if everybody else is doing, then you run into, well, am I being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, or am I doing this because it actually makes sense? I think that prices are at a point right now that like you said, you have to pick off perfect buys. You can't just kind of walk in and say, "I'll buy something." And then I think of the flip side is like, then you kind of go to like buying new, right? Because then you're, you're de-risking a little bit of the market asymmetry, like, yes, there's flexibility and new pricing, but not all that much. And like, ABJets again, go back to our sponsor, they're buying new, Vista's buying new. Those are the charts, you know, kind of the charts. - What's the, what's the price of that? - New challenge or 3500s. So they've got, they've got three or four, and they're getting a fifth one. - And they're just into your ears too, really well. - Yeah. - And are they fractalized or are they just owned? - They are owned, wholly owned and operated. So they're not fractalized. 'Cause that's the thing, right? Is that the reason that these new planes can get in is because fractional is the best capital efficient play ever. That's ever been created. - And so-- - So who do you think is the other? - Yeah, so I think that that's, I think that's the big challenge. - I think you-- - I think you have to think about when you're selling wholesale at least too, is that the fractional programs have determined the wholesale market. So a lot of times, you know, how owners get upgraded to certain airplanes will determine what you, as a wholesale provider, can provide to the flex jets. Like when we had the phenom 300, it was perfect. 'Cause it fit everybody's profile, you know, they had sold out all these cards already, they had sold out all these fractional programs. We were able to slot into those easily. If it was a light jet, everyone got upgraded to phenom 300. We could even be sub-sometimes for mid-size if they got downgraded. So those are the other pieces you have to think about when determining, you know, what cooperation is, and where to fit in. - Yeah, I think that's a genius point, because that is the arbitrage as well if you can get a fleet that can provide supplementary lift seamlessly to some of the big fractional guys. - Yeah. - You've brought it, and I think that's why potentially team with these challenges are 300s. If he supplementary lift for flex jet, happy days for team, for team ant flex jet. I think, for me, the models that are interesting, I mean, the G450s are really interesting. They're at awkward point. There's a lot of obsolescence and maintenance issues with G450s, but he or she who crushes MX, if you can crack the card on MX on a G450, then that's an interesting machine. I think the global 5000s, if you look at price points like G450s, relatively speaking, it's cheap. The global 5000s, like the pre 2011, global 5000s also look pretty cheap. Global Express, global XRS is actually interesting as well. But it's all about MX, all roads lead to MX, and I think 99.9% of the market does it inexterably. And I'm actually even surprised, I mean, even the big fractional, I mean, now I'm saucy in MX, if you think about it, right? I love the time. So, yeah, if you can build world class in MX, - Yeah. - Without blinds, you know, just continuous with one, when the team that is obsessed on these listening and these can be nice to me. But that-- - It is a sponsor, they're showing now. - Yeah, he's one of the few guys out there that is crushing in MX, like his MX, 24/7 IOG, is kind of a next level approach that I think others should look at. Yeah. - Well, I think, like you said, there's a ton of data, and this industry is not using that data. We actually, we're working on a new series that's coming out soon, where we're gonna start to hopefully teach some people about. that, but maintenance data, the information's there, the industry is not really using it as they should right now. Yeah, I mean, the dollar I like is Wynx. I use that a lot. I actually have got those guys to change their deficits, so they want reporting speeds, and I go into report speeds. And yeah, I mean, that's the one thing about, as you say, I'll tell you, like, a little interesting anecdote, and I'd be kind of curious if to, I mean, you guys might know much more about this than the main terms of folkwapet. But in a perfect world, I'd get real-time downloads of my machine performance every single sector. And that's what I've recently been doing, so I've been getting real-time data feeds from my machines every single sector, and then I'll pump it through AI, and then I can see precisely what, not only the performance is like in terms of speed, but also the fuel burns like. And I can say to my pilots, "Hey guys, why are we burning X-100 gallons an hour on this three-hour flight when you should be doing 50 gallons an hour less, like what happened?" And that trans, you know, the truth is 33, dollar is so powerful, and using that data with my pilots has been super motivating, so they compete with that data. So we'll have a chat and we'll feed all the performance stats in terms of efficiency to the chat real-time, and then it becomes a point of pride and actually kind of I motivate them on a KPI basis to kind of optimize performance as well. So like their bonus is determined by this. And I don't know how many people do that. Well, because this is a source of contention, you know, because you incentivize speed performance, let's say. Are you then incentivizing, carrying less fuel on board, which can cause safety problems? That's the culture battle that plays out in these organizations is between, we have all this data. Let's use it to improve your performance. And the pilots go, you're overseeing everything that I'm doing, and I'm supposed to be the PIC and the one who's in charge of the flight, so you have to have the right culture. I think if there's trust and understanding that safety always comes first and you're using the data for safety purposes and for efficiency purposes, it can work, but to have that relationship is a little contentionous. How many, how many one-fifty fathers do you think track real-time data? Five. Like if you just kind of get out of it, I think it's the big ones. I've heard of, I've interviewed hundreds of pilots and I've never heard a pilot said to me that anyone really does it in that way. I would say anyone with 10 or more should, if they're not doing it, they're insane. But I think if you have 10 or more airplanes, you probably have some form of FDM, I would hope if not, you're crazy. But I mean, I guess real time and then relaying that to the pilots to actually incentivize, if it has the big difference, right, is like you can watch and monitor and make decisions at an executive level, but you know, actually feeding that data back out into the holders of that information. I think that that's the, that's kind of a tricky part. You've seen this play out and there's lawsuits that go back and forth on, well, the company was incentivizing me to have less fuel on board. And so that's the fight that comes into play is that, okay. It should be a safety tool. We're just talking about like optimizing performance. We're not talking about, they should be zero kind of safety trade-offs. So you can, you can, you can guard around that and just say like this, you know, safety is first second third order priority, but subject to the safety constraints, we want to fly the machine efficiently. Because as I said, there's a huge difference between flying at 41 or 45 or 47 and just purely on fuel. And the speed, the speed sacrifices to minimize, you're talking about like literally cost of course, in a 10, the difference that flying at 45 versus 47 is like a couple of minutes. But the fuel burn difference is quite many. I agree that it should be done. Question is, can you have that relationship with your pilot pool to do it? And that's that that's trickier. But it does feel so much to you. I feel the whole industry feels from my managers now. So I was super antiquated like in every other industry, it's a very star of the real time to motivate people like we, people looking at real-time KPIs, we're trying to, you've rub as much information for each purposes as conceivably possible. Whereas aviation, it's kind of, it's an affirmation to, it's very old school. Very much, very much so. So Mr. T, one last question before we let you go. So in your day job, you look at companies and kind of like from a macro level, right? So we talked a lot on a micro level about airplanes and things like that. It's been awesome. Can you take a zoom out and tell us your opinion about like, can charter companies go public, be profitable, have long term? Like, what is your view on kind of the full landscape of the business aviation space, kind of maybe publicly or pseudo public private markets? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a, it's a massively interesting and exciting industry. Particularly, I mean, one point I'd make is the US market with 50 states and that geographic dispersion, you can't be a fortune for a company unless you're doing fractional chartering, for your employee because you can't prosecute business efficiently without having access to that, that lift. And then just the post-COVID kind of normally a step change into demand has created massive upside. I mean, the fact that, again, I don't mean to work as little about this, but the fact that I, a guy that was an engineer on a nuclear submarine, who created a battery business, could walk into the 135 space a few years ago at Baker and just turn it on its head, just shows you how much latent potential there is. I think what I see across the industry, guys, is a huge amount of homogeneity in terms of quote-unquote business practices. And I think the wrong people are generally running these businesses, these ex pilots. I mean, the pilots, you know, pilots are amazing. They're super passionate. I love my pilots. They're awesome, like, I'm personal friends, pretty much with all my pilots. But it's very hard for them to divorce the cockpit experience from the kind of the economic imperatives. So I think this is why net jets is interesting, the way they've prosecuted that and iterated and involved the business model over time, to something that's been incredibly successful, I think, is a roadmap. And the fact that the bond guys have raised all that money from KKR, I mean, KKR is not stupid, right? The fact, you know, they've pummeled hundreds of millions of dollars into bond as a greenfields, clean-slite business model. Yeah, I think you see this space. I would predict that we're going to see revolutionary change. I think teams are big, giving you a big catalyst, educating them. And it all comes back to NX. It actually, NX is everything. And so for me, yes, you can probably list these businesses. Do you want to publicly list these businesses? Oftentimes not. I mean, you know, in a most really smart businesses, when I stay private as long as they possibly can. So I don't think that the litmus test is success is whether you can IPO the business. I think a lot of poorly prepared aviation businesses have been IPO'd. And I think one of these businesses have fatal force, whether it's fleet decisions, management, MX, the way they're kind of prosecuting themselves models. But I just see so many gaps in opportunities and holes for monetization. So I think you guys are working in the right space. The other thing that's interesting is like not standing. You know, some of these remarks seem a little bit disparaging about the leaders in the industry. Everyone's really smart. I will definitely see. People in aviation are generally very, very smart. I think the behavioral biases and the heuristics of the problem is not the capability set. You know, generally, and it's a big generalization. The parts definitely have heuristical biases. And so all they want to see are the business. And I think that's problematic. And then the sales brokers, you know, the sales guys running these one three farms also have massive heuristical biases, which creates intrinsic, like inherent business model problems. They tend to really understate key execution or the underweight key execution risks. So if I wasn't doing what I'm doing today, I would be 100% focused on monetizing opportunities in corporate aviation because it's inefficient. It's opaque. It's rich with information, asymmetries. People are making mistakes left for a antenna. And I think smart money will, I mean, again, net jet success is kind of getting credit lots of positives, fellowvers or externalities with, with B-FREFLEX jet or through bond or other fractional guys. We're in fractional, man. That is a good business. That's particularly where you can get, man, the fractional scale economies. Once you start scaling the fractional and you get purchasing power, man, that is a killer business. Yeah. Well, Mr. T, this has been an incredibly insightful and interesting conversation about private and business aviation. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think Jesse did too. So X plus, X plus lux on Instagram is the best place to find you. And everybody should go follow that on Instagram. And if they want to book, let's say there's a charter broker out there. Who should they be calling to book your 10 plus fleet or your newly coming GT80? You're different. and thank you guys for the opportunity to engage. You guys are super impressive. And I would say to everyone who's listening, you're in the right place. And the aviation industry again, is a talent rich space, like everyone working that space, I think has a lot of opportunity and potential. And I'm just kind of, I feel really privileged to have exposure to these amazing human beings every day. So it's really cool. These machines are kind of life-changing as well, just the way we're moving people, we are from A to B every day. It's super exciting. So the world is on the party as well. Party's a beast. - Well, that has been another awesome episode of the VIP seat podcast. Thanks to Mr. T for coming on for this episode. I thought it was very insightful and an interesting perspective that we don't often get to hear, which is not someone in the industry, but someone who knows a lot about the industry. Subscribe to the newsletter at thevipseat.com. Thanks to ABJets and to RealJet for sponsoring this week's episode of the podcast. And we will see you all next week. (upbeat music)