The Learjet repo man
salon.com
salon.com
I never really thought about it before, but stealing a jet would probably be easier than stealing a car (minus, of course, the crazy militia who might kill you for repossessing the airplane).
Edit: I was referring to outright theft above, not repoing.
b) atc will probably notice when your 1200 blip is doing 250kts and climbing at 2000'/min.
c) this also assumes you can figure out how to turn off xponder mode S (transmitting your 24-bit ICAO address) back to mode C or mode A
ATC won't care about #3 ever. If you're not in class B, ATC won't care about #2. Jets are allowed to fly VFR, too; they just don't very often. In class B, you can get your clearance by cell phone, and start using the radios once you get to the movement area (or at a non-primary class B airport, when taking the active).
Definitely not a job for the faint of heart.
Getting behind the controls of a $10 Million plane that you've never flown before and having to take it somewhere has got to have a higher pucker factor than the guys with guns, if you ask me.
My Brother in Law is a very seasoned pilot, so is my dad.
I asked them about this one day. Like "guys, how do you go from flying around in little Citation 5s to flying around in massive jumbo jets?"
They were confused about my question.
Why?
Because flying isn't flying, it's systems. You learn the GPS, you learn the autopilot, you learn the radio, and after that, you follow the checklist.
You're just there to press the buttons, the rest of it is planned.
They always joke that, "if you're flying IFR (instrument flight rating, meaning that every single one of your movements in controlled by the tower), you have to get clearance from control before you can scratch your balls".
I still don't believe them, but just thought I'd chime in.
"About two minutes" was the answer
Another _very_ seasoned instructor I know confided in me that he was concerned that a private student with a very expensive airplane wanted highly-technical training and he didn't feel like he was up for it. Now this is coming from a guy who is in the top ten or twenty instructors worldwide.
I get the gist of what they're saying -- but I think there's a bit of malarky in there somewhere. Airlines pay big bucks to get pilots current on gear just a little different than what they've already flown. There's good reasons for this.
Flying your seventh type of airplane is sorta the same, but it's nowhere near like using your seventh version of a word processor.
But that doesn't mean that taking off solo in a plane you know only from manuals is always going to result in an accident, either. Even DUI drivers "usually" get where they're going without incident.
Reading the article (yeah, with a little salt applied), this is a guy who faces down armed resistance. So the appropriate question of risk isn't "is an accident possible?", it's "Is an accident more likely than the other risks assumed?". There, I think he's on much firmer ground.
Risk analysis covers a lot of ground. John Denver lost his life because of a fuel valve that was in an awkward spot. People have flown perfectly good jet airplanes into the sides of mountains on bright, sunny, clear days while screwing around with the flight computer. More people than you can shake a stick at have gotten killed by simply running out of gas.
Not a lot of guys want to go to jail over an airplane, but people dent up airframes every day. Aviation is a great sport, hobby, and profession, but it is also very unforgiving. If I had to pick one, I'd take the angry guys over unfamiliar complex systems, especially in hard weather.
You could argue the point either way, but since he's still alive he's obviously played the odds well. I wonder, however, if all super-repo men are of the same caliber.
Talking about it publicly seems about the dumbest possible thing to do.
No, someone who missed several payments on a leased $100 million toy. The ultra rich-and-powerful don't miss the payments.
Also, if the repo man dies shortly after repossessing your property, you are probably going to be at the top of the list of suspects... so killing the guy's whole family is probably not a good idea.
He's got the mob name already!
He isn't just repossesing airplanes from businessmen, he is repossesing them from psychotic foreign dictators, drug dealers, warlords, etc.
This is why he has ended up in South American prison.
There is some reason that they can't or won't just ask the police to secure the plane, though, and my guess is that the reason is more that it's legally unclear whose plane it is. That is, in some cases, this is legally just theft that's papered over later.
Most of the time they just fill out the paperwork and go get the plane. But getting the paperwork straight and finding the thing are really hard to do unless you've got a good team of experts ready on a moment's notice. Which he has. But that would make for boring TV.
I can't speak to property seizure warrants, so you may be right there. However, if it is anything like arrest warrants, this is rarely true.
Fun fact: Typically, it takes a mountain of evidence to convince a judge to issue a warrant, and then those serving the warrant have a small window of time to execute. If they are late, or the individual isn't present, then it expires and a new set of evidence has to be presented to issue another warrant.
(I often think it's amazing anyone is arrested at all).
My lack of knowledge notwithstanding, I doubt that issuing a warrant to seize a plane would be a quick, Law and Order-like process, simply due to the size and dollars involved.
It is a sticky spot legally, and there are rules they have to follow. But this man has experience doing high-risk repos that public law enforcement doesn't have. It's the difference between regular infantry and mercenaries.
The police get paid whether they show up or not to handle your problem. The repo man doesn't get paid unless he delivers.
If you wanted your property recovered, who would you want on the job?
Anyone wonder why the bank is lending money for private jets to neo-Nazis?
Call me crazy, but I think starting a tech consulting firm might be a happier way to get at that kind of money than facing down shotgun-wielding militiamen and flying off in a strange jet.
The numbers in this post kind of don't add up:
* His first repo gig got him $145k.
* Recovering a string of badly-maintained helicopters got him a "tidy six figures".
* A good year is 10 planes.
* He employs 65 "super repos" --- if these people, who actually fly dangerous aircraft out of dangerous situations --- take a desk worker's salary and have so much as high-deductable health insurance, the company's payroll overhead alone is high 7 figures.
I doubt that he employs 65 full time pilots. It sounds like more him, his wife, and his two sons.
The other people are probably just brutes that he calls up every once in a while for doing large things like taking a fleet of helicopters.
Also, I suspect that that "tidy six figures" is a net after he has paid his employees. (I'm going to assume that they get paid per job, not per year).
I'm leaning towards calling shenanigans on this.
I'd call it hacking.
I'll allow it.
Oh well, at least it's not politics...