This Aviation Industry Affects Everything | The Economy of Helicopters

There's a world in aviation that most people know nothing about, even though it surrounds us every single day.

For the majority of the public, you hear a helicopter fly over, you look up, you don't even begin to know how or why. And it's more critical to our society than you could ever imagine. I don't think there's a single thing within our economy that somewhere along the supply chain there wasn't a helicopter.

Today I talked with Halsey, a helicopter pilot and founder of two successful aircraft brokerages. By all accounts, Halsey is the embodiment of the American entrepreneur, but it didn't start out that way.

There's like kind of the stigma that I created in my own head of like not being intelligent. The idea of running a business, I think subconsciously I just assume that, like, oh, I can't do that. Sometimes it just takes a crazy idea and a figure it out attitude. I'm like, well, what if we just do it? He's like, Do you know how to do that? I'm like, I mean, I sold this one helicopter, but other than that, no, I don't really know how. We talked about managing clients and high-ticket sales. There's a lot of ego involved, and then you throw money into the mix. People start fighting over pennies, but that can kill a deal. The truth about a career as a helicopter pilot. Oh, you got paid, you know, with overtime included like 72-ish. That's like having to fly a single-engine helicopter into dark places. You get woken up at three in the morning, you're expected to have the helicopter running within seven minutes. And what makes it all worthwhile? I mean, first and foremost, helicopters are more fun.

My name is Mitchell. This is the AirPod. And now let's hear a little more about Halsey.

I am CEO founder of two brands. Uh, one is a helicopter-centered brokerage called Selicopter, and uh one is an airplane-focused brokerage, that's North American Aircraft Brokerage, N-A-A-B. And I'm also the uh podcast host for the helicopter podcast, which is part of the vertical magazine helicast platform. Um, so yeah, been uh professional, was a professional pilot, um, starting around the age of 21-ish. I was flying commercially or full-time, I should say, for hire as a flight instructor. And uh then now since I was about 30, uh I kind of stepped away from full-time flying uh to focus on my sales businesses.

Aaron Powell Corey was telling me about the uh the new fixed wing side. I want to I want to talk about that later, but congratulations on getting that started.

That's yeah, it's fun. We're really excited about it.

Yeah. What uh what led you to a career in aviation? How'd you get into it?

Yeah, so one one unique thing for me is I get to talk to so many different pilots being on my my podcast. And I always figured most people were like me, where like you came out of the womb and you were just to be a pilot. So some of my earliest memories are uh, you know, wanting to to be a pilot. I remember I would be in my backyard, I would get my dad's, you know, lumber and make a shape of an airplane, and I could sit back there for hours and just be an imagination world of of me flying airplanes. I remember at like the age of eight, I was very upset that my parents wouldn't buy me an ultralight, um, even though I did some thorough research even pre-internet days. Um so yeah, I just always had the bug. I always wanted to be a pilot. And again, I thought that was kind of like the common path. And then, you know, I've met a lot of folks on my podcast that, you know, got into flying kind of later in life, and you know, maybe they were working a job and construction, you know, they saw a helicopter doing some some work and they thought, oh man, I wonder how you do that. Um but for me, yeah, aviation, not specifically helicopters, but being a pilot uh was always always a thing. Joined the Civil Air Patrol, I think when I was like 13, still got to do some flying uh and assessed in 206 and and gliders with them. Started formal airplane flight training uh when I was 15, soloed a 1946 a Ronka champ on my 16th birthday. So we went out to uh Aurora, Oregon that morning. I soloed, my family was there to witness, and then that afternoon I went to the DMV and got my driver's license. So I I I always tell people I legally flew an airplane by myself before I could legally drive a car by myself.

Yeah, I think that's surprising for people who aren't in the aviation world knowing that people can start that early.

Yeah, it's wild.

Scares me to think. Especially when you see the way people drive. It's terrifying.

Yeah, and I I mean I always respected aviation, but I think when you're young, you truly are dumb. You know, you're just you don't have life experience and knowledge. And so I do look back at some of the things that I would do in an airplane back in the day by myself and and uh kind of gives me a knot in in my stomach. Nothing reckless or or or crazy, but you know, just not knowing what you don't know and not admitting what you don't know. You know. And I I got lost one time and got was running kind of low on fuel, kind of this whole big scary thing. I almost put myself into a spin, you know, practicing stalls, just all sorts of stuff. I look back and I'm like, geez, Louise, what was I doing?

Yeah. It's for me, it's the whole risk, understanding risk at that level. Like when you're young, especially for guys, it's like what you know, we don't fully develop the our brain until we're in our mid-20s. Yeah. You're getting in an airplane at 16. I think there's aspects of aviation that teach you how to better understand risk, but there's definitely things I did when I was younger that I would not come anywhere close to doing now.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I feel the same.

Yeah, it's it's funny what you were talking about with uh how you were kind of born into aviation. You thought everybody was that way. I was the same. Uh my grandpa flew B-25s in World War II, my dad was a private pilot, and like you, talking to so many people on this show, I find that there's two ends of the spectrum. Either people were born into it or they kind of stumbled upon it accidentally.

Yeah. Well, I'm and I'm actually unique too because I'll steal this. This is from my friend Eli Malloy. Eli the helly guy, you can look him up on Insta, a big following, cool guy. Um, but he calls it um, you know, I'm I'm a passionate, I'm you know, born wanting to be a pilot, but I'm a first, first generation pilot. So no one that I know of in my family had ever been a pilot. Um, you know, in fact, you know, I think my dad is like, you know, back in his drinking days was like a couple bloody marriage before he would even feel comfortable getting on an airplane, you know, situation. And so it wasn't in my my genetic gene pool per se. Uh so first gen, which I think actually can make things a little bit more complicated, especially before all of now podcasts and YouTube and all the resources that people have available, uh having to kind of navigate flying and learning how to fly in the industry without having anyone in your family that kind of knows can be difficult. Now that said, we had a lot of family friends that were pilots and, you know, were able to, you know, help kind of guide me. But um, yeah, I was like the black sheep. You know, my my brother's an amazing carpenter and my dad's uh, you know, contractor, and you know, I I'm like the weird one being the pilot. Yeah.

I I like being able to provide a resource to people like that too. I think that's why the podcast stuff is so important. Yeah, it's so cool. I agree. Because even as much as as I knew about it growing up, there's still so many little niches in the industry that I never knew existed until I started doing more of it. Yeah. Um what what got you into helicopters? Yeah, so hey, real quick. I have a goal of reaching a thousand subscribers on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify. So if you don't mind just dropping a subscribe, it would help me out a ton. Now back to the episode.

I guess the short bit of it is I I went to one year at Embry Riddle, um, down Daytona Beach with the goal uh of being uh uh in the military flying fighter jets, specifically the Navy. As part of the Navy ROCC program. Did pretty well, actually. Uh, you know, to me, like that whole military lifestyle um is fairly easy, you know, yes sir, no, sir. Uh, you know, PT. It all worked, you know. Um I was able to put in the effort and time and so I excelled at at the actual program. Um, but had some issues uh with standardized testing. So my SAT and my ACT scores weren't quite high enough to qualify for a ground contract, or excuse me, a flight contract in the military. So I was given an alternative option of testing, um, which also uh didn't quite meet the uh the right standard. I'm just not a great test taker. And you know, I think intellect is measured many, many ways. And, you know, uh I would consider myself a smart person, and I've learned that over the years. It's taken me a long time to to realize that, because these tests used to make me feel kind of st stupid, really. But um so there was some waivers that uh the ROTC folks thought they could kind of work through and I would still have a a potential of a flight contract. But there was also timing. Uh they weren't they weren't even if even if I passed the test or got the the minimums that you're supposed to get, uh they weren't handing out a lot of flight contracts. And so even my peers at that point were offered scholarships, so full embryoidal tuition, including flight training, probably would have been a good deal. I should have probably taken it. Um but it was all under the notion of a ground contract. Um even even for my buddies that uh, you know, met the qualifications through testing. And so I just I kind of looked at it like, man, I don't have a strong testing score. I got good grades, so that was gonna probably help propel me. Um and it's a ground contract. So if I take them up on this scholarship, it's not free, right? You have to provide your service after college. And I forget what the commitment was, you know, six years or something like that. And I just thought, man, it would be really weird to do all this flight training and go through all this pathway of being a pilot and then doing something else for six years outside of aviation. Uh so I made the decision to uh drop out of the ROTC uh before making that commitment. The plan was to go fly airlines. Um, still need a college degree at that point to do that. So I looked at a school in Utah. Uh Ember Riddle was great, just not uh not a big, uh very one type of person, uh, which is dudes, a lot of dudes. And uh I'm a young guy at the time, and I thought, man, I wonder if I could find a in-between, like a school where I can learn how to fly. Maybe it's not in Florida, maybe it's near a mountain, and maybe there's other like, you know, the opposite gender. Um so I identified a school in Utah and was all ready to go. Got all my FAFSA stuff worked out, student loan all worked out. I was gonna go in, you know, August or September, whatever. Uh, and for my birthday in June, my parents bought me a demo flight for a helicopter at Hillsborough Aviation. Um and yeah, took a took a flight uh in the helicopter and um it was awesome. And uh I think four days after that I had a student loan uh through Sally May for helicopter flights uh flight school. Uh had a job at Hillsborough Aviation as a line guy, and I uh uh told uh Westminster College there in Utah, thanks, but no thanks, I'm gonna go this path.

Yeah. That's that's funny. Uh I went to Embry Riddle to Daytona campus, and I was I was there, I think my first year was 2011, and even then it was like 12% female.

So I was there understand that 2007. I was McKay, I think it was called McKay. Was my dorm, you know what I'm talking about? It was a room around the corner there, but yeah, that's cool. You went there. Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's uh gotten a little more even since then.

But yeah, I mean it would be awesome if more, you know, if more women would would enter into the industry. And I think podcasts, you know, YouTube, Instagram, I think that there's a lot of people doing really cool things. Uh my friend Annie, she does a lot of our marketing. Uh she owns a company called Avian Creative. She's a badass pilot too, you know, pilot Annie. She puts out super cool content. And I think when little girls can see someone that looks like them doing that, then it just kind of maybe enables them to picking a path that they haven't thought of before. Yeah. And so, you know, it's like I think sometimes we go to the extreme of like this idea of representation, but I do think in aviation specifically, it's always been very male represented, um, you know, and not very diverse in that, right? And so being able to have, you know, men and women participating and and being out there and then also different races and things like that, I think it's a really important because, you know, we need we need a a more diverse uh pilot pool. And I think, you know, there's pilot shortages or mechanic shortages. So if we're able to draw from, you know, different different races and different genders and and whatnot, then I think we're gonna have you know more success as an industry.

Yeah. The the last guest I had on, she was a uh NASA engineer and then went to test pilot school. Um and she shares a lot of her stuff online for the exact same reasons. She didn't have anybody to to really look up to in that world, and she wanted people to see that that's an option. So yeah, I'd I agree with you on that too. Yeah.

I think social media has its its down downfalls for sure. Um but I think one of the the benefits of it is, you know, people being able to post content or YouTube as well of them doing what they're doing, right? And so in this case, like uh you know, my my friend Lee Coates, you know, she flies around her candy cane, you know, Bell 505 and does a lot of cool things and she's really articulate, she's makes great decisions, she's informative. You know, I'm guessing someone like her has a dramatic impact on the level of interest of getting women into aviation, probably more than she probably realizes. So I think that that's a really positive side of it.

Yeah. Um, from the the pilot side, and that we'll go back to kind of pilot history and and how you worked your way through then. But um, after that, you said that you are working on a couple businesses now. I would say a large number of pilots are kind of pilots their whole career. So what made you decide to step away from the cockpit and go into the the business side of aviation?

Yeah, so kind of parallel to my passion of uh aviation, I was always uh a passionate entrepreneur, even at a young age, lemonade sands, bookselling, you know, whatever I could do, lawn mowing lawns. You know, I had I had this idea of like I liked working and I liked working uh trying to create something. Even as like a little kid, I didn't really understand, like I didn't know what an entrepreneur was per se, but I just had a drive to to do that through some of the stuff that I mentioned, like my shitty test-taking abilities. I was also on an IEP, which is like an individual education plan from second grade all the way through twelfth grade, which is you know, like I had some learning disabilities and you know, whatever. And so there's like kind of the stigma that I created in my own head of like not being intelligent. And um, and I was lucky, I was good at sports, so like high school kind of wasn't too awkward or horrible for me, you know. Um, but I was, you know, I had to go to different classes essentially when I was in high school. There was a bit of like a segregation of like smart versus not smart. Then I was kind of in the in the non-smart category. Um but I always knew I wanted to fly. Uh but like the idea of running a business and being a businessman, like I think subconsciously I just assume that, like, oh, I can't do that, you know. Uh but I can fly. I'm learning how to fly now in high school, and you know, it's it's flying a machine. Like it's not that hard, you know. And so I I chose that path and and I was super excited too. I wanted to be a pilot. I love, you know, flying airplanes, I love flying helicopters. You know, it's it's the best, right? You know, that's kind of why we all uh love it and enjoy it. And you know, you you you do the career at one point kind of early on in my in my career of flying helicopters, I ended up in Texas and I was flying for this gal. At first as her like, you know, kind of corporate CFI. You know, I would, you know, teach her how to fly, but also take her places, you know, in her own helicopter in R 44. And then her husband ended up getting sick, and she was like, hey, look, if you want to keep getting paid, I'm not gonna be flying. You gotta get the helicopter working, you know. I'm like, oh, come on, you know. And so um I started a business started doing part 91, you know, nonstop commercial air tours in the helicopter. And that was a really interesting experience. It was really hard. I had some support from her. She was a successful businesswoman herself. Um, so she gave me a lot of guidance and a lot of mentorship, but really I was on an island, you know, and I was having to figure out, you know, creating a website and marketing and using social media to help with marketing and PL and collecting payment and hiring uh, you know, for ground crew and figuring out, you know, negotiating better fuel rates at specific airports, finding places to do the tours, you know, and then flying the tours. So I was kind of doing it all and we did that for a year and a half, two years, uh kind of successfully, you know, as successful as you can be with one helicopter that's consistently breaking all the time. Um and so I think that that kind of re-energized this idea of like, huh. I kind of like this idea of being being an owner, you know, doing something for myself. And um I ended up helping her sell her helicopter, which was a bit of the light bulb of maybe my next venture. It wasn't immediate though. Um I ended up working at Maverick Helicopters after that. And the whole time I was flying at Maverick, all I could think about was like, man, how do I own a place like Maverick? You know, like this is cool doing this, but like how do I I want to own a business like this, you know, or something. Sure. Um and I was like more passionate. So to kind of just my passion shifted from loving to fly to like business. And so I started doing things like through Amazon, like FBA fulfillment by Amazon, trying all like these little odd businesses that never worked um because I wasn't really passionate or super knowledgeable about the area in which I was focusing on. And left Maverick, uh, was talking to a buddy of mine in in Texas who runs a maintenance shop. And uh I was gonna go fly air medical in Texas, and I was like kind of trying to get a pulse from him on like how many of his clients, specifically Robinson helicopter owners, would ask him to sell their aircraft. And he's like, Oh yeah, people ask all the time, you know, what do you do? It's like, oh, I refer him to this person or that person. I'm like, well, what if we just do it? You know? He's like, Do you know how to do that? I'm like, I mean, I sold this one helicopter, but other than that, no, I don't really know how. Um and so yeah, did some research, learned that I didn't need any type of official certification or or training, you know, and we started a company at that time called Aircraft Brokerage of Texas, ABT. It's actually still the the name of the business, but now that's more of a holding company, and then we have two DBAs kind of running from that. And yeah, just started dar just started selling. And I was flying as a full-time air medical pilot at the time. And was also doing door-to-door sales for um roofing, you know, in Texas at hails, and so you could uh, you know, go door-to door and sell roofs after a hail storm. So got really good at like d direct sales, you know, and and feeling comfortable door knocking. And was trying to figure out how I could like bring that into helicopter sales, because that seemed like a a long-term better investment of what I was excited of uh selling. And um yeah, I kind of got to the point where I was working three jobs, but I was putting, you know, attention as much as I could, you know, doing three different things. And um COVID happened and I was like kind of made the decision for me. Like I didn't want to fly air medical, uh, I didn't love the job. I could talk about that, but and I didn't see myself selling roofs forever at door-to-door sales was hard during COVID. So just started selling full time. Yeah. And um and yeah, the rest is history, as they say. Cool.

It's funny when you talked about the um aircraft brokerage thing, how you don't need licenses. I think one that would surprise a lot of people, but one of my buddies, uh probably five years ago, was talking to me about it. He owns a few aircraft in the a service, aircraft service business. But he's like, you know how you become an aircraft broker? I'm like, no. He's like, you print out a business card that says aircraft broker. Exactly.

Oh now the now the caveat to that is is that I recognize pretty fast that um that it was an underrepresented industry of rules and regulation, the lack thereof, right? No structure, there was no consistency. And so my mom, who's in real estate, I really queried her a lot of like, you know, what does a real estate transaction look like? Because I feel like, man, these have to be very similar. And through that, uh initially launched a 72-step proprietary process of listing and selling a helicopter. It's now 87 steps. And what that is, is it's like creating consistency, right? Like we want our clients to feel like every time that they work with us that there's a consistent process in place. That's being transparent with our fees, it's uh being transparent with our listing strategy, it's uh being really knowledgeable about, you know. How do we list? How do we negotiate? How do we run escrow? How do we close? How do we add protections? What do we do? Right. It has all that. So, you know, the gap that I, you know, exploit it was that it was underrepresented, kind of felt like the Wild West. And I figured if I could kind of create our own proprietary process of doing it and mirror it off real estate, then we can create a product that's, you know, we can duplicate, we can scale, we can bring people in, we can train them on that. And so yeah, I mean, it is as simple. You know, I had a guy recently call, he's and he was like a pilot interested in brokering. And he said he was doing some brokering and he was kind of like pushing me, like, well, you're, you know, oh, you're a broker too, you know? Uh kind of that same thing of like, you don't need anything to be a broker. And it's like, yeah, sure, anyone can do it. But I, you know, I encourage you to do so and see how fast you fail, right? Um, there's so much nuance and there's been so much learning along the way, and and so much of what we do has been built off making mistakes, of course, and then refining our process and defining ourselves, defining our process. So the caveat is, yeah, anyone can do it, but like to do it right, to do it professionally, to do it ethically, you you know, it's it's a real business for sure.

Yeah, especially in an industry like helicopter aviation. It's so much more niche than other areas, in my opinion, and uh old school in a way too. I think a lot of the operators are are very old school in the way that they do business. So um, if you come in just could because you printed out the pr the business card that says it, they're probably not going to take you too seriously.

Yeah. And I mean that took a long time, right? We had to we had to uh earn our keep, you know, essentially. And, you know, now we're at a point where, you know, our brand recognition is good. The podcast has been a great tool for me to connect with the industry. Uh and we're just really knowledgeable. I I attain it to like the farmers insurance commercials, like we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two. That's how I feel. I don't think there's anything in a transaction that I haven't seen. And that's really nice because, you know, you kind of almost see the future a little bit. Like I can I can read a transaction and see where it's going to have some roadblocks, you know, and we can prep for that, we can prepare for it. Uh, and then if something negative does happen during a transaction, likely that same thing has happened before, and we can kind of work off past experience and knowledge to really understand how we can get through that.

Yeah. What are the biggest hangups that you see on transactions?

Um, emotions, right? Um, you know, I think, you know, I think I've heard people say that, you know, uh it's not a good transaction until, you know, buyer and seller are throwing rocks at each other. You know. And we try to shelter that the best we can, let them throw the rocks at us, right? Uh let us kind of be a punching bag every once in a while, but also be the voice of reason, right? There's a lot of ego involved in things, and and then you throw money into the mix and there's a lot of you know big dogging and people start fighting over, you know, pennies, right? Uh it's funny, you know, you look at a five million dollar transaction and and these two guys are arguing about 500 bucks on an escrow account, you know, but that can kill a deal, right? Um and so you have to navigate the personality. So knowing your client, knowing, knowing your non-client as well. I think that's what makes us unique, is that I'm paid to represent typically one side of the transaction, but it takes a lot of hand holding and guidance and answering a lot of questions to also help that buyer make that decision and and and buying the aircraft. So managing people uh I think can be very tricky. So you have to be very tactful, you have to be very calm, collected, you know, when when when temperatures are high, you have to be, you know, remain low and and you know, kind of be a voice of reason. Um that's a big part of it. The pre-purchase inspection, specific to helicopters, does not have a standardized process. So everyone pre-buys a little bit differently. And uh a lot of used buyers have an expectation that they're buying a new aircraft. And that's not that's not the expectation. You know, the expectation is that you're buying a used airworthy aircraft in most cases. And sure, you can go and and find something that needs to be fixed, then that's something that we can talk about, negotiate. Uh, but if you're gonna come in and do a pre-buy and then try to use that as a weapon to further negotiate, that can be very difficult for us to navigate. So we have to be very tactful. Uh it starts with really good purchase agreements, right? We have an in-house council that handles all of our legal, essentially, because we want to make sure that these parties are are not just playing by their rules, but the rules that they agreed to, right? So we we we want good agreements, we use those agreements to our leverage point. So that's a the pre-buy is like the bane, like the Achilles heel of my business. Um we don't lose a lot of deals, but I would say the deals that are lost are because that you know an aircraft is rejected. Sometimes for legitimate reasons. Um things come up on a pre-buy that you weren't aware of when you listed the aircraft, some major things and and and the and the purchaser has you know full right and and we respect that decision. There's other times where it's like, you know, there's a blemish on the paint, and you know, you're rejecting the aircraft, and it's like, well, that's not really the spirit of why we're doing this. But um, so navigating that, but we usually get through it, and that's that's complicated. Then there's all there's everything else in between. There's weird title work. You know, again, it's a wild west. So a lot of these helicopters transact, you know, 15, 20 years ago, no proper filing was done. I we bought a helicopter for a client recently, last week, close. You know, part of the issue with that aircraft is we had to work through the fact that the engine was still registered on the international registry to a lender that no longer existed. Right. So how do you navigate that, right? So it's just things like that that are really nuanced and weird that can come up. So it's about being organized, it's about having good agreements, it's about managing expectations and being a punching bag sometimes, but also just being a voice of reason. Yeah.

I think that goes back to when you're talking about learning to fly and not knowing what you don't know. So many of those things I would have never thought, you know, the power plant is registered to a lender that doesn't exist. Like that wouldn't even be in my realm of thought process on that.

I mean, the airframe was discharged properly in 2011, but the, you know, the power plant wasn't. So what do you do? Right. Yeah. So you you get creative and you go, you know, uh sometimes that that particular process, I actually did some LinkedIn investigating and was able to find someone who I think I could message, and then that person was able to connect with our escrow agent and we were able to work it out. But yeah, it's weird, right? It's weird, uh, it's a weird nuance.

Yeah. Um, I know you weren't really as involved in the helicopter selling side pre-pandemic, but did you see a change in how people looked at pre-owned aircraft uh in the years following the pandemic? Because I know on the fixed wing side, like it got really weird with used aircraft prices, and you know, used ones were selling for more than new ones, and you couldn't get new ones. And um, I just don't know how that affected like the buyers uh how they wanted to go after those aircraft and their expectations on those aircraft.

Yeah. So I mean, I think first and foremost, COVID introduced a lot of aircraft to the market in the very beginning, right? Kind of pure pandemonium. We're going to the grocery store, there's no toilet paper, there's no food, people are freaking out, right? So, you know, a lot of uh wealthy individuals, business owners that had been using helicopters either for personal use or some type of corporate use, that's the first thing that goes, right? Like if the world's about to end and you want to hold your acorns in tight, you gotta you gotta sell the helicopter. So it's actually kind of good timing that you know, I decided to go full time at that point because there's a lot of people that were willing to sell and they wanted to sell fast. That's you know, in my business, that's the kind of seller that you want, right? It's a it's an easier deal to get to the finish line. Um, so there's like this initial push of just aircraft flooding the market. I think on the airplane side specifically, we were all scared to be close to each other, right? So social distancing and this idea of being on an airline where you're, you know, sitting seat to seat with someone and you know the I think the I don't think it's really true, but this idea of recirculating air and oh COVID's gross, you know, um, that really saw a boom in like private charter, right? And then people were like, well, if I'm just gonna pay, you know, 200,000 a year at a private charter, maybe there's a point where I should just own it, get it managed, and then charter it when I'm not using it. So I think that there was an explosion of private aircraft use on the on the airplane side. Um, and then all while supply chain and big issues with infrastructure, um, companies not being able to be fully staffed because of social distancing, all these different supply chain constraints that ended up increasing, you know, lead times from, you know, say four to six months to lead times that are now typical that we see is like close to two years for say a new helicopter. And that's been the biggest shift. And so when you have a super long lead time for a new aircraft, that just only increases the value of the used market. Now, in the last, say, like five years, that's been kind of an up and down, you know, pricing. Pricing was, you know, skyrocketed for a long time. And then we saw a pretty dramatic drop. And I feel like now this last year, we've just been kind of now starting to see these prices getting a little bit crazy again. I think that drop happened uh when rates went up, right? So the other part of COVID is we were having historically low interest rates across all industries, including, you know, aviation. Historically, six to eight percent is something that you can expect on an aviation uh, you know, loan. We were seeing, you know, sub 4%, you know, 3.5%. I mean, it's almost like free money at that point. And so we were seeing an explosion of buying, and people weren't being super price sensitive, and they could wait two years for a new Bell 407 GX, or they could get mine, pay a little bit higher than they need to, but man, it's great lending. Who cares? You know. So when interest rates kind of readjusted and started to go up again, that really slowed down the buying, that softened prices. We're still at a higher interest point, you know, than we than we were. And I don't think we'll ever get as low as we were, but we are now seeing uh at least what seems to be here in our you know, economy of, say, North America, United States, Canada, pricing going up. The conflict right now in Iran is definitely constraining a lot of other countries. You know, you look at places like New Zealand where we have an office, you know, they rely so much on the on the oil that's coming out of that strait that they're you know, they're paying$12 a liter to fill up their car, you know, let alone now the Jet A prices or Avgas prices. So, you know, we might start to see a flood of aircraft coming from, you know, international markets due to this conflict in Iran. Uh we see some inflated gas prices here, but we're not feeling it like a lot of other countries. So I'm curious to see what happens. Really, I talk too much. I'm sorry.

I'm just No, you're good. Yeah. The stories are great. Keep it going. For helicopter ownership, uh, I think at least in my world, I kind of understand who's uh a client for you know buying GA aircraft, private aircraft, jets, that kind of thing. Who's buying helicopters mainly?

Yeah, that's a good question. So um we kind of have two different buyer profiles. You have a um a wealthy individual that um has always wanted to fly a helicopter. They're now in a position where they can not only fly a helicopter, but they can, you know, own a helicopter. There's some great entry-level helicopters that are fairly affordable and can help you kind of build your time and experience so you can underwrite better insurance for, say, a larger turbine helicopter in the future. So there's there's a nice pathway, you know, with Robinson Aircraft Specific that allows people to kind of get their feet wet with helicopter ownership. So a lot of private folks, we work with a ton of private individuals. Uh, and then we work with a lot of operators, right? Corey and I uh connected through, you know, his his previous employer, right? We we helped them essentially, you know, um diversify their fleet, manage their fleet, sell different fleet uh uh options at times. We help them with leasing. So we work with a lot of operators as well that are using these helicopters to, you know, generate revenue for their business. Um I don't know the exact breakdown right now. We're probably at like a 60, 40, 60 percent we work with private individuals, 40% we're working with with operators. We would like to actually be working with more operators that provides us more consistency, larger fleet opportunities, and things like that. But yeah, a lot of a lot of private individuals for sure.

What drives that purchasing decision for them? What what uh what do you mean? So I've talked to a lot of private jet brokers on on the podcast. And for them, um, you know, they're looking at individuals that are maybe going from charter to jet card or jet card to ownership. Same with with businesses. They're kind of weighing, all right, this is how much we're spending, these are the places we need to be, this is what we can run the equipment for. Um I I don't know, but I would imagine helicopter charter probably much less common than uh fixed wing. But how do these companies come to the decision that, like, okay, we're gonna buy a helicopter asset?

Aaron Powell Yeah. So a lot of these companies uh use helicopters as tools, right? So this could be an air medical company that uses helicopters for air medical and you know, uh air ambulance operations, uh a lot of construction work, right? So uh power pole planting and polling lines and firefighting. You have your big utility companies, right? I I know Corey has a a background in that, right? So using helicopters and now drones, of course, to you know, survey uh pipelines, power lines. Uh so doing all that. So those those are the operators that, you know, essentially that are that are helicopter-specific operators. They use a helicopter as a tool, could be for tours, flight training. There isn't too many, at least to my knowledge. Uh you know, there's some outfits in in in New York and and maybe Washington, D.C. and LA that, you know, have you know 135 charter operations for helicopters. But, you know, by and large, uh that's a pretty small market. Helicopters are so expensive. So um, you know, to be able to consistently be just having a business that would only be sold charter, I think would be very difficult. Uh, because it's just as an expensive ask for someone. And and and you know, helicopters aren't very practical for charter in the sense of like typically you're wanting to go from A to B as quickly and efficiently as you can. And helicopters just aren't super quick. So areas like in New York where you can land, you know, directly downtown, go directly to the airport, or land at your property in the Hamptons or something like that, okay, that makes a little bit more sense. But you know, by and large, you know, the operators that we're working with, they're using the helicopter as a tool for air medical, for utility, construction, firefighting.

Sure. And then when it comes to cost of ownership, um, you mentioned helicopters are expensive. Uh I spent a little time around them so I can understand that that piece of it. Um, compared to like a fixed-wing ownership cost, you know, maintenance, operating cost, all that stuff, how do helicopters compare?

Yeah, so it's not always, you know, it depends, right? Because we're, you know, it depends on the make, the model. There's a lot of a lot of, but I would say that I guess the overarching common denominator would be that helicopters are going to be significantly more expensive. So your hourly operating expense for airframe and engine are going to be higher. Engine might be comparable because a lot of the engines are the same engines that you see on airplanes. Airframe is where it really becomes a little bit more of a costly endeavor because you have so many different parts that consist of a helicopter airframe. Lots of moving parts, lots of stress and fatigue. So this idea of like unscheduled maintenance, right? Like when things just break before their component TBO or things like that. Higher incidence in helicopters for sure, because there's just more parts, there's more components. You know, you look at a tracking sheet for even a say a 407, a relatively simple single engine helicopter, you know, it's a 20-page document, you know, with you know, 200 plus different components all tracking on different schedules. Um so engine pretty similar. You know, you're looking at your your hot section overhaul, your your full overhaul with your three and four wheels, your engine components like HMUs, you know, a lot of the similar stuff that you would be seeing in airplanes. So, you know, engine costs be relatively uh comparable. Insurance, pfft, not even close, right? Um, I it's funny, I now that I'm doing airplanes, right? Like um we just helped uh with an epic transaction, an epic airplane, call it a near$4 million air aircraft, and and the buyer was kind of complaining out loud to us on his insurance costs. And and I don't remember it was like$32,000 or something. And I'm like, yeah, that's incredibly good, right? Like if you buy an R44 for$300,000, you're lucky to insure it for$40 or$50,000, right? Um so you know, you look at say a turbine helicopter that costs a couple million dollars, you could easily be up into a six-figure insurance premium very quickly. And so uh obviously insurance companies have have have their uh you know, bean counters and their risk analysis helicopters historically more dangerous, more accidents, higher payouts. Uh so the premium, the premiums uh you know greatly exceed. So maintenance is more expensive, insurance is is more expensive. They're not really efficient, so one would argue that fuel is going to be more expensive. You're using more fuel for the distance that you're traveling. So uh all the factors put together, by and large, helicopters are going to be a significantly higher hourly operating expense, both on fixed costs and variable costs.

Um you talked a little earlier about how it's a difficult industry to get into, especially as a broker or salesperson. Um, you know, you're dealing with an asset that's very expensive. One, the market's relatively small compared to other areas of aviation. What have you found was kind of your secret sauce to being successful in an industry that's so difficult to operate in?

Well, I think a little bit of luck, like I said, when we entered full time, it was you know a big exodus with COVID. So a lot of people were selling. Um I was able to draw from my door knocking days uh and translated that into I can't door knock, but I'll cold call. Um there's there's a couple of different programs that uh provide you a database of of people that own and operate you know helicopters in this case, so a lot of cold calling. I always tried to be and and and you know this is really the truth of it. It's like my philosophy on sales is like I'm a pilot first, right? So how hard can it be for me to pick up the phone and talk to another pilot? Like we're all passionate about it. I feel like I can bullshit enough with a pilot to have good conversation. Um, and my philosophy is about building relationships. I it's probably cliche, good customer service, you know, create, you know, it's like what you would hope that all businesses are doing. I don't think they do they do that, but it's really the core of our our DNA. Um, I tell my sales team all the time, right? Like if your clients are inviting you to exotic places or family weddings or cool, like you've you've you did it. You made a friend, right? So that's the way that I always approach it. I picked up the phone. You have to have high output, right? So you gotta make, you know, 500 calls to get a deal. And you gotta be good at collecting those and you gotta have this resilient. I was resilient enough to just never give up on myself. Um so you know, in the beginning, it's just like knocking doors and and doing everything you can to to be out there and talk to people like a human and and just have those pilot-to-pilot conversations. And then if you can kind of get past that first hump, you know, every year that you do it, you just gain a little more credibility, especially if you're doing it the right way. Uh we've built a sales team at this point that does a lot of our direct marketing efforts. We don't direct market for just to pick up the phone and call. We love to present our aircraft to people. Hey, we're selling this aircraft, you own this type of aircraft, we figure you might be interested in it. So we have this idea of where we can hopefully direct market sell you the machine that we're that we're trying to sell, but now we're making a relationship with a new owner as well. So that's been uh you know an effective tool. The podcast. Um so yeah, I think it's you know, it boils down to like hard work, right? Like, um I think in anything in life, you can look at someone that uh that you're perceiving to be successful and you're seeing like the aftermath of of it, right? They're they're wealthy, they're They're making good money, they have a nice house, you know, and it's like, oh, that person's lucky. You know, it's like what what you don't see is the the blood, sweat, and tears that goes into it, right? And I'm not even close to that level of wealth, right? I'm doing better than I could as a pilot per se. But, you know, it's just been a lot of hard work, a lot of stress, sleepless nights, hard decisions, great support for my family, my wife, you know, my biggest cheerleader. Um, and just maybe having this blind faith that you could be successful and just not not allowing failure to to be an option.

Yeah, I think that's a good lesson in any part of life. I'd I'm kind of big into the fitness community and I see so many people like, oh, you know, good genetics or it took steroids or whatever. It's like, yeah, maybe. I mean, that gives them a leg up for sure, but they still work their ass off at the gym or whatever they're doing.

Yeah, 100%, right? There's still we always want what we don't have, but we don't want to put the effort into getting there.

Yeah.

And, you know, I think that a lot of people are comfortable working nine to five and, you know, they collect their salary, they get their 401k match, and there's nothing wrong with that. To me, that's not it doesn't sound fun, right? Um, I kind of, you know, I like I don't like to use the word drama, but you know, being an entrepreneur can be dramatic at times, right? And so I kind of crave that. And um, you know, you don't know how much you're gonna make. Uh, you know, it's always you could, you know, it's endless, right? And so that's what really drives me. And I'm great. I it's I have a great support system, you know. And um, I'm just very lucky and I'm I'm glad that I that I just stuck with it and now I'm here and I feel like I'm at a really good spot.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Um as you got into the fix-wing side and you started dealing in more of those transactions, what was the most surprising thing coming from helicopters other than cheap insurance, I guess?

Yeah, cheap insurance. Um there's a simplicity to airplanes, which I really like. Airplanes are just more simple, but almost that outweighs it is the complexity of all the makes and the models, right? There's so many variants. So what we had to do, and what we're still doing, is identifying, you know, what what are the aircraft that we want to sell, right? So we've kind of identified this idea that we don't really want to sell the smaller GA. Um, you know, it's a lot of work and and you just can't make a ton of money. We built our helicopter business on selling a lot of the small GA, and then we were able to build up. But I wasn't super excited to do that same thing on the airplane side. I figured because we had the transactional experience uh and the knowledge to run transactions, like we should really at least be like in a million-dollar kind of benchmark for the aircraft that we want to move. Um these days that might still be small GA. Yeah, I know you're right. Or like, you know, a Sirius, right? I would be interested in a Sirius aircraft, you know,$500,000 to$800,000. That's a range where we can start to make a little bit more money and and still be competitive with our commissions. So yeah, we've kind of targeted like, you know, the uh the PA46, you know, as a as a uh make model variants that we that we like to sell. Uh Sirius is an aircraft that we're really interested in. Very competitive market. We haven't sold a Sirius yet, right? Um we really like the single engine turboprop. TBM, um, Epic. I live in Bend, Oregon. You know, I'm able to go to the Epic factory and bring those guys coffee and build those relationships. Nice. Um, it's a cool airplane, you know, composite airframe, 34,000 feet, 330 knots, you know, far outperforms the the PC-12 and the TBM, um, you know, fun fun aircraft to sell, just not that many of them, right? So trying to carve out our market there. Um, so yeah, just all it makes in models was it's been difficult to identify really our key target, so that's been a big difference. Uh I like some of the standard processes that we're seeing uh in the fixed ring world compared to helicopters. I think it's uh has to do with airplanes are just more mobile. So instead of say just doing a pre-buy, and and like I said earlier, every pre-buy guy does it differently on a helicopter. And typically the standard is they travel to the aircraft, they do the pre-buy on site. Well, airplanes, you fly to the nearest service center, you put it through its next phase inspection or whatever it might be. If anything airworthy pops up, it's coming from a service center, seller has to get it fixed, makes the negotiations really easy, buyer's happy he's getting a nice, good, airworthy aircraft. So pre-buys seem a little less scary on the airplane side. Uh it's a it's a better process, and I appreciate that. Um and then it's just a competitive market. There's a lot more brokers that are brokering airplanes uh than in helicopters. And so uh we've done okay. We've we've moved uh you know several aircraft and it and it it equates to you know hundreds of thousands of dollars now. So I'm glad that we've done it. But it's still very difficult to gain any type of traction or market share. We're kind of deal-to-deal right now, which is sustainable in airplanes because you just make more money, right? Uh an Epic is a good example. That's a that's a fairly inexpensive airplane, you know, at say three and a half, four million dollars, whereas that would be a very expensive helicopter, right? And so, um, you know, we moved uh a a CJ last year for, you know, nearly$12 million. You know, that's what we want to do, right? We want to get into that world, but it's just hard. It's very competitive. There's lots going on. So we're just navigating that. That's been a big um, I don't think we gave that side of it enough attention. I don't I think we thought we were a little bit awesomer than we are. And uh it's definitely been harder to gain that market market traction, but it's it's it's slowly occurring.

Aaron Powell Going back a little bit to the pilot world. Um you said that you had originally wanted to go to the the airlines, you took your flight in helicopter and I guess fell in love with it at that point. Uh what do you think is different between helicopter and fixed-wing aviation from like a professional pilot standpoint?

Yeah. I mean, first and foremost, helicopters are more fun, right? Like if you want to have fun flying an aircraft, um helicopters are more fun. They really uh become an extension of your body, and you know, all the control coordination that it takes to fly helicopters is just very fun. Um take the fun side out of it, I would say that the helicopter industry is not that fun um as as navigating it, working in it, being paid in it. Um I was a full-time helicopter pilot, I would look at some of my uh my friends that went went similar path or start at the same time, but they were on the airplane side. And, you know, they were now flying for Delta or United or Alaska, maybe as a right seater, or maybe even in some cases, you know, flying as a captain already. And, you know, they're in their young 30s and they're making good money and their schedule's not too bad. Whereas I think my last year at Air Medical, I got paid, you know, with overtime included like 72-ish, you know, uh for the year. And that's like having to fly a single-engine helicopter into dark places. You know, you get woken up at three in the morning, you're expected to have the helicopter running within seven minutes. You know, and so to me, I'm like, man, uh the risk versus reward started to really not make sense. That was also a deciding factor to get out of it. So, you know, the industry is um, I feel is really good at dangling a lot of carrots, right? Hey, just stick with us and we'll, you know, we'll put you in the turbine helicopter. We're we're still not gonna pay you. But, you know, and um it's almost like these companies think that it's like this privilege and this right that they're letting you fly their helicopters. So instead of compensating you, they're compensating you not with money, but they're compensating you with the right to fly their aircraft. And that's always kind of been the mentality. And so, yeah, pilot pay, I think, is uh considerably lower than our our fixed-wing brother and sisters, uh, which is really frustrating. Uh the schedule oftentimes is very difficult. If you're flying the utility world, you're gone for long periods of time. You know, we call it AIDS in in helicopters, aviation-induced divorce syndrome. A lot of my helicopter buddies are divorced. Um, a lot of my helicopter buddies drink a lot. Um, maybe that's a pilot thing too. I don't know. Um I was a pretty heavy drinker myself. I I don't drink anymore. Um, but I think it's just, you know, it's a hard life. There's a lot of stress. You're away from your family a lot, you're not getting paid very well. Um so yeah, it's it's it's a hard industry to navigate. I love helicopters. Uh, I love the people that make up the industry. I was just at Verticon recently and it was, you know, I love going there. I just love being around all these other helicopter dorks. Um but I don't think that the industry has evolved to make it a great place to be a part of all the time, if that makes sense.

How do you think it does change or does it need to change to keep getting pilots? Because like you mentioned, the the pay side, especially, I think is what stands out to me. Post-COVID, you know, airline salaries have just continued to go up and up and up. And I remember when I was at Embry Riddle, it was like almost not even that enticing when you first got to the airlines because you were making, you know, yeah.

It's hard to find, yeah, you gotta fly commuters for six years or whatever.

Yeah, but now uh I mean there's signing bonuses and you're starting at a regional making a hundred K. Yeah. It's you know, it's hard to make that argument for the helicopter side. How do you think it continues to attract pilots? Because helicopters are cool.

You know, they're fun to fly, right? And that's that's the siren, right? Like that's the noise that you hear pulling you. And that's what gets you into it. And then once you're into it, you know, you you can get burned out fairly quickly just by the industry and the complexity of it and how you're treat it. Um, I don't know how it works in the airlines. Uh one of the weird things with helicopters is they promote a lot within, right? So you have a lot of chief pilots and directors of ma um operation and other, you know, say executive roles within helicopter operations and they're pilots. Um, and not saying that that's not possible, right? I I'm a pilot now, an executive of a small business, albeit, but still an executive and and somewhat successful. But in my experience, I worked for a lot of really difficult managers because they were crap managers because they're not, they weren't wanting to be managers. They're pilots, right? And they got roped into being a chief pilot or this or that. So a lot of negative culture uh in some of the companies I've worked for. So I think, you know, you should hire, you know, professionals and make sure that the right people are leading your pilot squad. I think pay is always gonna be the biggest factor, right? If you want to attract good people, then you have to make it competitive with pay. The other hard part is just proximity to fun places, right? If if you're gonna go fly air medical, likely you're gonna be in the middle of nowhere, right? That's that's what air medical is all about, providing access to communities that would take, you know, an hour and a half or two hours to go in an ambulance to a big trauma center. You know, so you're providing that critical care access for these rural communities. Well, that's where you have to live now. Yeah, right. And that's difficult. Um so there's just a lot of stuff. I, you know, uh I'm not sure if it if it changes a ton. You know, I think the the biggest changes that we're gonna see is, you know, our our helicopter pilots are gonna continue to even be in seats, right? I mean, uh all the autonomy that's now coming out, the big OEMs, including Robinson and Sikorsky and Airbus that are investing a ton of money uh into, you know, essentially turning these existing certified aircraft into autonomous, you know, flying aircraft or remotely piloted aircraft, even, you know, I think that that's going to be the bigger shift in helicopter aviation. I don't really ever see it changing. You know, salaries have gone up a little bit, right? But also so has inflation and cost of living. So I don't think it's really even outpaced inflation in many points. So it's a tough industry. I'm no expert on how to make it better. Um, but yeah, pay would be a good start. Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's tough for operators too. You see um the power utility side, especially when they have these incidents that result in fatalities, some of the changes they make, you know, they start having to operate twin-engine aircraft. So they're having to incur the expense of buying a more expensive aircraft, and they're mandating two pilots in the cockpit, so they're paying two salaries for every flight instead of one. Um so it's like, can you even increase the individual's salary when you're adding all that expense on top of it?

Yeah. Yeah. Helicopters are more expensive. I think that there's a lot of um, you know, look at Europe. I think Europe is a prime example of not operating helicopters efficiently, you know, and letting bureaucracy get in the way of productivity and and profit. Um, you know, twin engine actually being a, you know, I'm I'm not an advocate necessarily for twin-engine helicopters. Uh, you know, I think if if you look at the statistic d you know, the data and the statistic, the statistics, you know, helicopter engines, specifically turbine helicopter engines, are not failing that often, right? What's killing helicopter pilots is the same thing. They're they're flying into clouds when they shouldn't be. Uh they're flying into the side of hills uh that they couldn't see because they're in the cloud, uh, they're hitting wires, they're running out of fuel. You know, these are the things that continue to kill pilots. And so I think that there should be a a greater emphasis on training for things like inadvertent entry into IMC. Uh, I think that that could be a much more cost-effective way for an operator to be more safe than say get a twin-engine helicopter.

I have seen, in my own personal viewpoint, kind of a renaissance in helicopter aviation recently. And I think a lot of that stems from maybe the social media aspects too. You see really notable people like uh Diesel Dave, uh Heavy D Sparks. Um, he had a Blackhawk, just sold it, got another one. Um, and then Cletus McFarland's got an MD500 that he posts a lot about. My parents actually live in a flying community. And I remember when I was a kid, there was almost never any helicopters, and now it's like every fourth of July, there's four of them up there. Um, you know, private individuals flying them up. What do you think? One, I guess, do you see the same kind of resurgence in helicopter popularity? And two, what do you think is driving that, if so?

Well, I think that people like Cletus and and uh Heavy D, you know, they have big followings, right? So again, people that maybe thought helicopters were cool but didn't know there's a a pathway into owning and operating a helicopter, you know, they see the these guys doing it on on YouTube and social media. So I think from a private owner's perspective, definitely, you know, YouTube and and social media has a direct impact on on people just being like, oh, I didn't even think that was a thing, right? And now they're they're seeing people do it. Not necessarily meaning that you should go buy a Blackhawk or or even say like an MD 500 like uh Garrett or or Cletus has. Um you know, that's definitely driving a lot of private owner popularity. Um again, like Pilot Lee, you know, Lee Coates who was talking about in her and her 505. I think that she's also, you know, driving people to buy aircraft. There's a lot of other wealthy individuals flying around in really nice 130s and and A stars that get people pumped up on buying you know aircraft. So I think it's just making helicopters a little bit more obtainable, right? I think for the majority of the the public, you know, you you hear a helicopter fly over, you look up, you don't even begin to know how or why or you know, how do you do it? How do you get there, right? That's even a thing. And um, so I think, yeah, it's probably been a resurgence because of just the popularity of some of these people on social media. And again, it doesn't take much, right? You know, if you have the means, um, you go do a demo flight in a helicopter, it's going to attract you, right? It's very fun. It's um it's the most fun you can have with clothes on. That's always what I say.

Yeah. I think even me being around aviation so much, when I hear a helicopter, you know, my first thought is Medebac, police or military. It's not Yeah, not private, not private ownership, right? Yeah. Yeah. But obviously you see a a citation flying over and you know, you know, some private indiv individual probably.

Some guy that's doing a little bit better than you. Yeah, yeah.

Maybe more than a little bit. Um the key players in the industry. So again, on the fixed wing side, just because that's what I'm familiar with, I I think there's a lot of consolidation around operators, um, especially charter and and fractional ownership, like NetJets owns like 80% of the market when it comes to that. Um, and then you have just the few below that take up the rest. What does it look like on the helicopter side? Is it as consolidated or is it a little more spread out?

I think it's a lot more spread out. Yeah. I mean, there's there's big operators for sure. You know, you start talking about, say, air medical, right? Like GMR is a good example. You know, GMR operates several different air medical brands. Uh so they're, you know, have a large footprint, Metro, same with air medical, air methods, also big consortium of of of uh helicopter air ambulance. So you see it kind of in that world, but I would say by and large, the helicopter industry is made up of a lot of smaller companies, right? Maybe they're operating three to five aircraft, maybe five to ten at some cases. But I think it is really made up of a lot more of the smaller operators, kind of very similar to like where Corey used to be. You know, that that kind of size of operation is very typical of what we're seeing outside of air medical. So I don't think it's as nearly consolidated as you see like with net jets. Do you think it's just harder to make profitable at scale? You know, I don't know enough of of operating and owning helicopters. I I do know that, you know, the old joke is is, you know, to make two million or to make a million dollars in in helicopter operations, you know, start with two million. So I'm you know, I'm guessing that cost is certainly a factor. But yeah, I don't know exactly. I just think that there's uh man, there's so many different missions that helicopters can fly. You know, uh airplanes are a little bit of a one-trick pony, you know, especially when you start getting into like say the corporate aircraft, like what net jets would be operating, right? That's a very clear defined mission of going from A to B and taking the the wealthy person, you know, from from Florida to California or whatever. Whereas, you know, helicopters, and I think that this is the coolest part about helicopters is they they I don't think there's a single thing within our economy that somewhere along the supply chain there wasn't a helicopter. And and they're so prevalent in everything that we do. So I just think that there's so many micro industries that require helicopters, and therefore you just have uh more operators uh and just you know smaller footprints.

One of the things that kind of came to my mind when I wanted to start the podcast talking about careers I didn't know existed in aviation. I used to run the drone operation for the company that Corey was a part of too. And one of the pilots we hired in his interview said that he used helicopters to dry cherries. And I did not believe that was a thing. I thought he was full of shit. Like, there's no way that's a thing that people do. But yeah, they'll actually fly helicopters over cherry trees.

Go up to Wenatchee, Washington, you know, in the springtime, and yeah, you'll see 60 helicopters up there. It's hovering.

Hilarious to me. I feel like there's got to be a better way.

You would think, yeah, you definitely think they fly some pretty obscure machines too, some pretty old Sikorsky. Those like cool S55 or something. Yeah. That's cool. Those are those are badass, actually. Um yeah, but that's the cool thing of helicopters. I mean, like literally everything that we do, you know, even eating a cherry, you know, there's uh there's a helicopter somewhere in the supply chain. Uh and man, they just do so many different missions. They're so versatile, which is awesome. I think that's what makes helicopters so cool.

Yeah. For the general public or maybe even fixed-wing pilots that aren't as familiar with helicopter operations, what do you think is the biggest misconception you hear about helicopters?

Um probably that they're really dangerous, you know, or or if your engine quits, you know, you can't land. Um I would I would actually, as I've been in the industry long enough now, I would say that helicopters definitely are dangerous to a point, right? I think that the machine itself isn't necessarily falling out of the sky all the time. That does happen. Um by and large, it just such a small, you have a small margin for error. Same with you know, fast moving airplanes, too, right? Things can happen really quickly. Decisions can be made that are not the right decisions by even good pilots and you have a negative outcome. I just think that that's more prevalent in helicopters. And so I don't think that they're as dangerous as as people think. I do think that when there's helicopter accidents, they typically tend to be a little bit more catastrophic. Big headline accidents like the Kobe Bryant accident certainly don't help, you know, the industry. Um, but again, right, like the Kobe is a good ex, you know, a good example of you know, a pilot that's probably a good pilot making some fairly poor decisions, right? Um, and you just have such a small margin of air in a helicopter. And so I don't think they're as dangerous as people think and and they auto-rotate quite well. I've uh I taught full downs exclusively for probably three, three and a half years. So I don't know how many of thousands of times I've you know landed at uh a not just any helicopter, but a R22 with a low inertia rotor system. You know, you give me five knots off the nose, and I can almost do a you know zero ground run auto-rotation.

Sure.

Or used to be able to, at least. I I don't think I could anymore, but um, you know, you can auto-rotate. Um so that's probably like the biggest misconception.

Yeah, I I would attribute a lot of that to the operating environment that they're in. They're operating in environments that give them, just by the nature of the mission, a much smaller uh room for error. Uh you talk about the power utility guys, I mean, literally the ones there where you're hooking guys onto the line, you're just hovering right next to it. Yeah. Or line stringing or whatever it might be. Um, my buddy flies HH 60s for the Air Force, does combat search and rescue. And he's like, Yeah, 80% of my hours are below 200 feet.

Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. Helicopters fly in in low environments, the wire environment. So yeah, I think that your your mission environment can dictate safety. Um and then just the complexity, right? Again, you just have a small margin. Good pilots crash helicopters all the time, right? I feel like I feel like I'm a good pilot. I'm just as capable as crashing a helicopter, just because the the margin is so much smaller. So you make one bad move or one bad decision, uh, it can bite you quickly.

If you had to give a peek behind the curtain for someone who wants to come into the industry as a pilot, what do you think is something that maybe people from the outside don't realize as they're coming in?

Well, again, I think it's the draw of the helicopter itself that that gets people in the door. That's the that's the drug, you know, that's the exciting part. But it's a hard industry, and and even though I'm an advocate for the helicopter industry, I don't think I've really advocated that strongly this this episode. Uh, but you can check out the helicopter podcast where I do advocate strongly for the for the industry because I love it. I do love the industry. But I'm never dishonest with people. I just give them my honest experience within the industry. And I have friends that have very similar pathways to mine, uh, and they love it, right? I have friends that love flying air medical. They don't mind getting woken up. The pay isn't great, but it's good enough for them, you know, and it pays their bills, and and maybe they have a wife or a husband that has a good job uh that can help kind of supplement income and they just absolutely love it. And so like that person's gonna have a very different answer than I would have, right? So I I always just try to be honest. Like it's it's fun flying helicopters. I love it. It's incredible. They're amazing machines. You have to be very careful. You can it can uh turn to not so fun very quickly. So you're constantly having to be making good decisions and you're constantly, you know, it's getting better, but for a long time you're also getting put in positions, you know, to make bad decisions through company pressure and and things like that. So I'm just honest, like, you know, this was my experience. It was challenging. I loved a lot of it. A lot of it was a turn off. Um, and you know, hence why I don't fly full time anymore, right? I I like doing what I do now because I have a better schedule, right? I'm home more. I have a kid now. I love being with my with my wife and my kid. To me, that's so valuable, right? Um, the pay is not gonna be as good as you can get in the airplane side. So, you know, I always just try to uh kind of talk people out of doing it, and if they still want to do it, then they could uh really enjoy doing it.

Yeah. I want to go through three personas and get your advice on overlooked opportunities. So as a pilot coming into the industry looking for a job or career path to go down, what do you think is an overlooked or underrated opportunity for pilots?

Well, maybe I'll answer your question maybe a little bit differently than you're hoping. Uh because I don't I can't necessarily think of the top of my head of like one thing. Well, I guess, okay, let's talk like what you guys used to do at your Corey and did uh you and Corey at the last company, right? That that type of environment, I think, is a great environment to be a helicopter pilot in.

For the listeners, power utility operation inspection.

Yeah, power line inspection. Uh I think that most people get into it and they're like, I want to fly air medical, right? Like that's I hear that like nine times out of ten. And then you also have the crowd that wants to just go like full utility, fighting fires. Like if you tr if you choose that path, you're choosing like a life and a career that's going to be very difficult for relationships and things like that. But I do think like an underlooked part of this the industry is like doing exactly the power, power utility stuff. It's um it's it's fun flying. It's different flying every day. So you're in different places. Uh your mission isn't always the same. You could be doing a LIDAR flight, you know, one day, and then the next day you're doing, you know, uh some type of pipeline survey or a methane detection survey or whatever it might be. So I think having always something a little bit different, operating in new areas, which is always kind of fun but challenging, right? Get used to operating in like the the planes of say the Midwest and then going and flying in the Rockies, right? You're really getting to test your your skills. And so I think if I could do it again, trying to get into a company like like where you used to work, that was not having to fly at three in the morning, flying nice helicopters, being in diverse mission sets, so you're doing multiple missions in a in any given hitch, and flying in diverse locations. You're not just glued to say flying a you know one circular route in in a Grand Canyon or flying to the same hospitals with air medical.

Yeah. I haven't really thought about that with tour operations, but I bet that would get old. Like how many times can you see the Las Vegas strip?

Mm-hmm.

I've seen it a lot. Yeah. Um overlooked aircraft for operators. And and I know this is going to vary depending on what they're doing, but maybe let's just stick on the theme of power utility inspections. Do you think there's a platform that people should maybe give a little more attention to?

Yeah, I mean, it won't happen, but I think the R-66, um, I think that, you know, the platform is for for what it can do, and and things are getting smaller and smaller, right? The LIDAR units are getting smaller, the cameras are getting smaller. You know, in the past, the R-66 had a challenge because some of that stuff weighed so much. And so by the time you had all the equipment on and an operator in the back and a pilot up front, you were, you know, at a half a bag of gas or something. But as the as the technology gets smaller, I think that, you know, even like in law enforcement, you know, you're they're using these, you know, uh Airbus helicopters or bell helicopters, and they're all great. They're awesome aircraft, and they're extremely capable of the mission, but they're very expensive, right? Whereas like if you look at the R66 for helicopter sense, like, man, it's very much a uh decreased operating hourly cost, both fixed and and variable. It's very uh capable aircraft. Um, but yeah, Robinson's a very um, you know, it's a it's the most sold civil helicopter, you know, being the R44, but it's also like the most uh polarizing, you know, helicopter. There's a lot of misinformation, in my opinion, with with Robinson and and safety and and things like that. So I think like in a in a utility world, uh law enforcement, even news gathering, man, you could put an R66 in a lot of those missions and be very successful and really increase your top line.

Goes back to what you were saying with like the twin engine overkill for a lot of people. We worked with a power utility that had an S76 for their power line inspection. Yeah. This doesn't seem necessary. It's a horrible idea. Yeah. And then final persona on this one, for a private owner that's just looking to get into it uh for fun. Maybe they have a mountain home or something they go up to on the weekend. What do you think is an overlooked platform there?

Well, you know, the hard part with helicopters is if you plan to insure it, which most people do, um, you don't have to, but you know, most choose to, obviously, for for obvious reasons. Um you don't necessarily have a strong pathway into getting into helicopters that you might want. Right. So you're you're familiar with, say, the 407, right? You know, you know about the 407 GX, great platform, glass cockpit. You can have autopilot, air conditioning, it's fast, it's uh fairly powerful. Depending on how high your mountain house is, you might struggle at altitude. Uh, but the insurance companies won't underwrite you as a private owner, private pilot with little to no helicopter experience in that aircraft. They won't even give you a pathway. It's not even like if you're willing to pay$300,000 for the premium, they still won't take your money. They won't, they just would rather not write the policy. So I don't know if there's like an underlooked. I think that a lot of people overlook Robinson, say the 44, because they want to just get into something like they see Heavy DN or Cletus or, you know, Lee or whoever. You know, they want they want the Bell or they want the bigger Airbus, but you're probably not going to be able to get it. And so I think that the R-44 specifically is the best platform to begin in. It's a piston aircraft, so insurance was willing to write it for you. Um they're very challenging to fly. So if you can fly an R-44, you can fly anything else. A lot of the technique that you have to build in a 44 will make you a better pilot and bigger platforms. People always in helicopters complain about power, right? And so when I'm learning how to fly, I'm in an R22, I'm like, oh, I just want to fly something that has more power. You know, the problem is when you have more power, you just load it with more crap, and then you don't have any power anymore, right? And and now you're having to revert to taking off like you used to have to take off with the R-22 and really being ginger about going forward with it, right? So, you know, I would say it's, you know, the 44 is obviously very much not overlooked in the sense that a lot of people buy them. But I feel like a lot of the people that we talk to, we have to kind of show them the pathway that you really have to start with something like an R-44 or an instrument that's a piston, uh, to then create that pathway into flying larger turbine aircraft.

Yeah. I've told this story probably four times on the podcast already, so I'll probably cut it out for this one. But uh my buddy that flies the HH 60s, he went so Air Force Path, obviously he goes and does his fixed-wing training. So he's in a DA20 at um uh Colorado Springs, and then he went and flew a T6, and then he went to Rucker for his helicopter training. And I'm like, oh, are you in like a Schweitzer or an R22? He's like, No, it's a Huey. Like, that's your first helicopter? He's like, Yeah, they put us in Hueys. I'm like, Well crazy. So on what planet is that a good idea? Yeah.

Yeah, and actually now that you know the Army is actually uh has a has a program, it's called the Flight School Next Program. I don't actually know all the details. I'm I'm podcasting with Bell Helicopters this week about it because they're uh essentially it's a competition. You know, that the Army is having these different companies, I guess including Bell compete uh to be the next training platform and provide the next training for abonitio helicopter training in the U.S. Army. So, you know, Bell, I think, is you know, pushing their product. Uh right now it's also happening with what they I think they're calling the TH 55 or something, but it's an it's an R-66, you know. Um and I think that that's done by Helicopter Institute. And so it's interesting that, you know, we are starting to see kind of these more civilian helicopters potentially getting into, you know, Army aviation.

Yeah. Uh the Air Force has a few platforms. I mean, they've been flying uh essentially a PC-12 for a long time is reconnaissance, and then they have now the Skywarden, which is just an air tractor that they've put missiles on, which is hilarious to see. That's awesome. Um those are cool. Yeah. Uh where can people find you? Business and podcast-wise.

Yeah. So my helicopter business is celicopter. You can go to our website, celicopter.com. Uh North American Aircraft Brokerage is my fixed wing brand. That's North AmericanAircraft.com. Um also the helicopter podcast. You can listen to me on any of your uh podcast platforms, Spotify, Apple, or whatever else you consume your podcasts. Uh and then uh Heli Halsey is my handle for uh Instagram. So you can always message me there. I try to be as responsive as I can. But yeah, that those are all good ways to connect.

Hey, thanks for listening. If you want to hear more from Halsey, I'll leave all his information down in the description. And if you want to hear more from aviation professionals just like Halsey, you can subscribe to the AirPod on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify. I will see you right back here on the AirPod.