Not flying blind. My name is Israel Slottawitz. I'm the founder and CEO of Craft. OpenAI just announced they're going to be public. We're seeing like not just an insane wealth creation moment, probably the largest we've seen in the history of humankind, but we're also seeing a shift in how people spend their wealth. The most sought-after thing once you make some money is to start flying private. It's like the one thing everybody looks to do. It's a truly unique tool that nothing else replaces.
What does like a Jeff Bezos have? What does Elon Musk have? So when you think about like the Jeff Bezos of the world and Larry Page and Sergey Brin, they're typically G700, Global 8000 category. That's like the top of the line. If you buy a $10 million airplane, you can take a $10 million business deduction the year you bought the plane.
This is why people are buying $75 million airplanes.
That's exactly why people are buying. There's no other good reason.
Izzy, welcome to Sourcery.
Good to be here. Thank you.
What are we doing right now? Where are we?
We're sitting on a Challenger 350. This is a super-mid aircraft that can fly coast to coast, New York to California. You can fly California to Hawaii or to Europe. This is one of the aircraft that we operate in our charter company. I operate a Part 135 charter company that I started six years ago while I was still in college. We now operate a fleet of these. We have pilots and we fly them all year round. We do a lot of supplemental flights for NetJets and Flexjet and Wheels Up and all the large providers. And I'm excited to talk to you about what we're building and about the industry.
I'm excited. I came across you guys through LinkedIn and these posts. We were doing some collaborative posts with some of the interviews that we've done. I did this amazing series with Michelle DeLuana of A6Z Perennial, which is Mark and Ben's multi-family office. We did two episodes so far, and it's all centered on the major wealth creation event that's happening right now. We're about to have more millionaires and billionaires minted than ever before with the OpenAI, SpaceX IPO, Anthropic IPO, the Cerebras one that just happened, and all the secondaries and tenders that are going on also behind the surface. But right now, we're in this crazy period of time where a lot of people are going to be making a lot of money. And so with these conversations, I've been trying to get down to, okay, what do you do once you have that wealth? How do you manage it? And one of the topics in the conversation on wealth management is private aviation. So I'm really excited to talk about this today. And I'm just really curious. So are we seeing more private jets? What's the state of the market?
Yeah, I mean, so it's like you said, it's absolutely insane what's going on right now. We're sitting here on a Sunday. SpaceX is supposed to IPO this Thursday. So some of our clients and a lot of our investors are going to be in New York for this iconic IPO. It's probably the largest IPO by twice as much as the last one. And this is just the first of many, right? OpenAI just announced that they're going to be going public. And we're seeing like not just an insane wealth creation moment, probably the largest we've seen in the history of humankind. But we're also seeing a shift in how people spend their wealth and their priorities and also the type of wealth that they are generating. It's not the same wealth that was generated historically where people kind of built a business over many, many years and they slowly diversified.
New money. This is just like completely new money. So there's like this massive tsunami that's hitting and we're seeing it in our business. We're seeing it in the preferences of what people are choosing, how they're accessing private aviation. And of course, like of course the most sought-after thing once you make some money is to start flying private. It's like the one thing everybody looks to do. It's truly a unique tool that nothing else replaces.
So, how is that changing who's buying jets versus who's chartering them? What is the difference?
First of all, we're seeing people entering the market buying bigger airplanes. So this airplane, for an example, this is a Challenger 350. It's considered a super-mid. It's considered what I like to call a proper jet. It has a flat floor. Normally, people would sort of enter the market by starting to charter or they would start with getting a light jet. And people are now going straight for the super-mids, straight for the heavy. They're going straight towards buying like the, you know, or buying or even chartering the latest and greatest. So we're just seeing like this big sort of skipping of steps that we are accustomed to in our industry. The other thing that I'll say about our industry is, you know, if there's almost 8 billion people in the world, if 0.01% of them are flying private today and that doubles, which I think it's going to more than double to 0.002, that has like a huge cataclysmic effect on our industry.
So our industry is just not really built for like the manufacturers, the OEMs, the supply chain, engines, parts, the speed at which these factories are able to build airplanes, the speed at which you can train pilots.
Are we going to have a shortage of...
There's going to be... Yeah. I mean, these are obviously depreciating assets. These are airplanes, you know, airplanes are equipment, right? They don't go up in value normally, but we're seeing them go up in value for the first time almost ever, especially in the higher end of the market. So that like small little change in wealth, which I think is actually huge, is something this industry is not at all ready for. And I think we're going to... there's going to be a lot of adjustment and price fluctuation and uncertainty until like the new wave sort of takes effect.
I guess to give more of like the 101 behind all the sizes and pricings and that kind of thing. Could you walk through, you mentioned it before, but like can you walk through all the sizes and then up to like, okay, what does like a Jeff Bezos have? What does Elon Musk have? Drake has a very weird plane, but that's just him and that was a deal. But I'm curious, could you like walk through all the different planes and like when you should start at which one? And then obviously we can talk about the different kinds of financing options for those. But I guess first let's start with the sizes and the prices on them.
Yeah. So typically like the entry level, what was the entry level would be something like maybe a light jet. So like a Phenom 100 or a Phenom 300. It seats about six. You can fly about an hour, two-hour flight. Step above that, you go into the midsize category. Citation XLS or Latitude are like the popular ones. Step above that, we go into the super-mid category. This is like, as I call it, the proper jet, which is what we're in today. Super-mid category, you have like the Challenger 350 like we're in today. And then there's the Praetor 600, also a phenomenal airplane. Above that, we go into the heavy jet category. So think of like a Gulfstream G450. People are flying these heavy jets quite frequently, even on short missions. So we're seeing people who have large families that want to travel that they're like, 'We don't even want the light or super-mid.' Like they're going straight for the heavy even on a two or three-hour flight. And then of course, if you want to go to Europe, you would need something called an ultra-long-range. Something like a Global 8000 is like the top of the line. So when you think about like the Jeff Bezos of the world and Larry Page and Sergey Brin, they're typically G700, Global 8000 category. That's like the top of the line.
I fly. I'm a pilot as well. I'm a certified pilot. I only mostly fly for fun now. I have a full company to manage and it keeps me quite busy. But I am certified in this airplane.
I'm not going to be flying today. Yeah. Yeah. We have two great pilots on board. But I'll be flying from back here.
So, walking through all of those different options, when does it make sense to buy a plane versus charter?
So the traditional logic is somewhere between 150 hours a year to 250 hours a year is when you want to start thinking about owning a plane. But I think it's important to really understand why and it's important to understand what are the reasons you really want to own a plane. The first reason is the flexibility. So when you charter or when you even own a fraction of an airplane, there's usually like long call out, usually at least a 24-hour notice call out. And they're not very flexible on changing your time when you want to leave. So I have an example of a customer of ours that flew to... he had a bunch of warehouses in the Reno area. He lived in San Francisco and he flew and he owns a plane. He flew his plane to Reno to go visit his factories and initially his scheduled return was supposed to be for 6 p.m., but by 1 p.m. he was done his tour. So he decided, 'Hey, text my pilots and see if they're ready to go.' And by the time he got to the airport, the plane was all buttoned up and they were out four hours early. When you're chartering or when you look at like a fractional ownership, it's a lot more difficult to do that. So there's like some flexibility I think in owning a plane and even if you're flying less than 150 hours, you might want to consider owning just because if you need that like four-hour less sort of call out. On the other side of the spectrum, owning a plane is extremely complex. It's basically running a little mini airline. You're dealing with pilots. You're dealing with maintenance.
Do you have to put that in an LLC? Like does that... how do you actually make that like tax-advantaged?
Yeah, I mean typically all aircraft are in a single-purpose LLC like an SPV and they'll usually be like under the business. So an LLC that's owned by the business and then the LLC will have a lease agreement in place with the business for tax efficiency. But yeah, so I think like on the other side of the spectrum, owning an airplane's complicated. There's a lot that goes into it. We'll talk more about that. So we're seeing people that are even flying 300 hours a year. They're like, I don't want to deal with owning a plane. And I think actually like that's one of the big differences in this new generation of wealth. These people don't want complexity. Most of them are able to book well in advance. They're not last-minute people. They are willing to book seven days in advance, two weeks in advance. They don't need that four-hour call out most of the time. If they do, they can find other options. And those people would rather simplicity, ease of use. They don't want to deal with the complexity of owning a plane. So in some cases even above 300 hours it doesn't always make sense to own. But typically, you know, in that sort of range, the second reason you own a plane is for cost efficiency. So once you start hitting the 250-hour range, the cost of owning and spreading the pilot cost and all the fixed costs around one aircraft flying 300 hours a year starts to make much more sense.
Okay, let's go through a scenario. You just bought a Global 8000. Walk through the financing of that and the maintenance.
So this is an extreme example. I'm aware it's an extreme example, but like let's shock the people. Yeah. Well, I think like first of all, Global 8000 is like a $75 million airplane, right? Just to put things into perspective. So that's like an extremely expensive airplane to buy. It's really like you're going for the top of the line. Most people don't actually buy brand new. Even if they can, they don't. Right. So the maintenance for a brand new airplane looks very different than maintenance on a used airplane. Most people tend to buy used aircraft, aircraft that are pre-owned. It's what it's called. Whereas a new aircraft, you'll have like warranties and all sorts of... the manufacturer will give you all sorts of stuff like that. Make the maintenance costs a little bit less expensive. But say you bought a Global 8000, $75 million. Typically, the first thing you have to think about is depreciation costs. So the aircraft do generally go down in value, right? They generally do not go up in value. So if you factor in a 10% a year reduction in value, when you go to sell the plane, you're not going to be able to get as much money back. So a lot of people kind of ignore that, but you really want to bake that into the cost of running the plane. Then you need to hire pilots. So you'll have to go out and find pilots. Typically, you'll want at least three pilots, especially if you're going to fly longer missions. Pilots get sick. Pilots need to go to training twice a year. So you'll need to hire three to four pilots. That might run you one to two million a year. There's insurance costs. There's hangar costs. And then there's maintenance costs, of course, right? The maintenance cost is kind of where everybody gets... they buy the plane, they think it's like a great investment and then they're like now the plane's down for six months because the windshield breaks or they can't get a part for the engine. So maintenance is like another area and this is kind of where people maybe try it out and then swear off after doing it for some time.
Go through the different prices of Citation, G450. We obviously just went through Global 8000, but maybe just talk through the starter kind of ranges.
First of all, there's a journalist called Doug Goolan who has a website called Private Jet Card Comparisons. He does a great job. If you are very serious about flying private and you do want to get like the latest pricing on jet cards on different aircraft categories, highly recommend looking into Doug Goolan. But I think the pricing is somewhere around $7,500 for entry-level light jet per hour to fly, about $9,500 an hour for a midsize. So most people are actually, you know, buying... it's not that they can't buy new, they don't buy new. Because buying new is like very, very expensive. But if you're buying sort of pre-owned airplane, a light jet will run you around three to five million bucks. A midsize something like this will be anywhere from 10 to 20 and a heavy jet maybe 20 to 30 million just the sticker price just to get into the airplane. Buying the plane is just the beginning of the journey, right? That's the cheapest part of owning a plane. Then you have the pilots, the fixed cost, the maintenance cost, the fuel cost. You're probably looking at anywhere from two to four million bucks a year to run the plane just to keep it running for you. So as you can see, it's very expensive and unless you really have a need for it or a real business need for it, it's something that a lot of people will do and then they'll swear off of it.
Since we just went through what full ownership looks like, let's get more to like what people really... most people actually do. And so there's a couple different options where you can charter, you can get a jet card, and then you can also do fractional ownership. What can you just define for people who don't know... like define what each one of those are and then how the pricing changes?
Yeah. So typically the way people first experience private aviation is maybe they've heard of like an empty leg, right? They've jumped on an empty leg. What an empty leg is is where the plane maybe has one trip landing in LA, another trip the next day is departing out of San Francisco. So the plane will need to move, reposition between LA and San Francisco. And sometimes companies will sell that as an empty leg and for a significantly reduced price because they have to go anyways. So sometimes people get experience to private aviation through these empty legs, but I think it's probably worth glossing over because it's not really the utility and the reason people fly private, right? Like an empty leg is more of a luxurious, more of an experiential type of transaction. People buy airplanes or people fly private. They typically do it as a utility, as a way to conduct business or for ease of comfort with their family and they want to be able to go on their schedule. They don't want to be flying on someone else's schedule. So typically the way somebody will enter the market is through charter. Usually the first taste they'll have of private aviation. We operate a charter company. We charter our airplanes out. Chartering a plane can be great, but because you don't have all the commitments, but you really have to be careful of like safety. It's very hard to know what you're going to get. And the prices can fluctuate quite drastically. So one day it might cost you like $12,000, the next day it's costing you $24,000 for the exact same flight, right? So a lot of times people will charter and then say, you know, why are the prices fluctuating so much? And then they'll upgrade to what's called a jet card. I'll explain to you what a jet card is. A jet card is essentially prepaid charter. So you're giving a deposit to somebody and they are essentially sourcing charter for you at a fixed price. So rather than one day paying 12,000, the next day paying 24,000, they'll charge you $18,999, right? And you'll pay for both flights $18,999. Actually, you're actually paying a little bit more than you would have paid during charter, but you at least know when you want to fly, it's going to cost you $18,999. So you're really getting essentially more expensive charter. And also jet card is typically like where you'll first maybe get a taste of a NetJets or a Flexjet type of experience because they offer jet card services as well. So that's typically where you'll maybe first enter into the bigger leagues of flying private.
And then where does fractional come in?
So fractional comes in really at the next step, right? So fractional... so you maybe flew some charters and didn't like that you kept getting different airplanes and different prices. You got a jet card and you just gave them a massive deposit and you realized it wasn't that much better than charter. So you decide, okay, now I want to like maybe move to the ownership side of the aisle. And fractional is really on the ownership side of the aisle. So the main difference between the two is that on the fractional, you know, you are carrying the residual risk of the plane. So if the airplane depreciates, the depreciation, the cost of capital is essentially on your dime, not on the charter company's dime. So you're getting a more consistent experience. You're getting an ownership type of experience. So you're getting a premium sort of product, but you're also paying a premium for it because you hold essentially the residual risk of the aircraft. So fractional, and the two largest providers is NetJets and then second largest is Flexjet, do a phenomenal job and you can essentially buy a 1/8 or 1/16 of a plane. They'll manage all the operations. The pilots, you'll never have to worry about maintenance. The plane will be there at eight hours or 24 hours notice and you're sort of getting a taste of ownership.
You run a charter business. How is it different?
Basically, there's two sides to Craft. There's like our operating business which is like somewhere in between the fractional and the jet card. We're mostly like a B2B company. We sell to all these other larger companies which are brokers on these platforms. But what makes it interesting is that we actually, because it's an operating business and we generate cash, we are able to run this exchange fund which is a completely separate financial product that's designed for people that have low-basis stock. Exchange funds... are you familiar with exchange funds at all?
Yeah. Yeah. So exchange funds, you know, a simple way to explain it is like, you know, 10 people come together with 10 different stocks and they all contribute a stock into a fund and they all get the benefit of owning. What people don't realize is that unless you have an operating business to run it through, like you have a business, right? You have income, you have cash flow, right? So you have a business you're running everything through. Unless you have an operating business to run it through, there aren't really any tax benefits. If you're like a SpaceX employee and you have a lot of stock, right, you don't have a business to run this airplane through. So not only are you paying like sticker price for the flights, but you're actually paying almost double that because you have to sell stock to fund it, right? So this is, I think, one of the problems with this sort of new massive wealth creation and just the onslaught of Silicon Valley becoming so big and all these people with like huge equity values.
Yeah, it's insane. And the legacy models of like buying an airplane, running it through your business and taking tax write-off, like it doesn't quite work for these people. Their net worth is in capital gains, not in ordinary income. Right. So we actually built an exchange fund which is a very old financial product or financial structure where people can diversify, people... a bunch of people can contribute their stock into a fund, pull together kind of like a potluck, right? Where everybody comes with a dish and they walk away with a meal. And one of the requirements, one of the rules for these funds to exist is that there needs to be an operating business in the fund as well. And historically, exchange funds have used real estate and public storage units in Albuquerque, right? And like self-storage, like things that people don't care about. And what we did was we took an already existing thriving operating cash flow business, right? And we basically layered an exchange fund on top of that. And what that allows us to do is it allows us to offer the members in the fund access, premium access to these planes they wouldn't be able to get otherwise.
Wow. You have VCs on your website. Did you raise venture capital? Like how did this start?
Well, it actually just started by understanding that my problem was their problem. My problem was that I realized that when I had a single airplane, I had a very volatile P&L, profit and loss statement, right? So like one month we had like very profitable, the next month it was like very unprofitable because there was some sort of maintenance issue or a pilot left. And what I realized is like as I started adding more airplanes to my fleet, I realized that the volatility started to come down. And then while one airplane was down, four airplanes were flying and one airplane was down, six airplanes were flying. And I realized that the customers that I was flying had the exact same issue. They didn't really have a private aviation issue. There are many options when it comes to private aviation, all very good ones. But what they did have was a stock problem, right? A big part of their net worth was concentrated in a single company. They were one article, one news report away from losing 13, 14% of their net worth in a day, right? IBM lost 13% of its value in a single day. I think Broadcom just now, just this past week, lost like 10% in one day on a single earnings call or a single article that Anthropic is building some sort of software, right? So people who have now built this like sort of generational wealth for the first time also had a volatility issue and I realized that I had the same problem my customers had and that's when I started to like learn about exchange funds and understand how they worked and their mechanics and do a deep dive and ultimately like came to my customers and said, hey, this is like what I'm building and they were like immediately very interested and that's kind of how we've pivoted into this exchange fund model.
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Okay, Izzy, we are now flying. We're in air. It's actually not that loud. I was really worried about that.
There's pilots in the cockpit. You just walked through the different types of financing and ways to fly private. But what is the most economical way to fly private on a friend's airplane?
How do you find these friends?
That's the key question. I think like the truth is like flying private is not economical. There is no real economical way to do it. It's a very expensive thing and it's really a matter of like priorities if it's something that is important to you, if you see like the utility of it as important to you in life. But flying private isn't cheap. There is no cheap way to do it.
Yeah. Last year in 2025, I think it was publicly reported that Alex Karp spent around $17 million on flying and if you kind of like do some of the math on the price and the per hour, it came out to around three months in the air.
Yeah. Yeah. I think I saw that report. And it's probably like... I think they have like two airplanes. I think maybe the way they leased it back to the company, they probably structured it as like a dry lease or something. But yeah, that sounds like they were in the air a lot. I mean, you see like SpaceX, Elon Musk, like he's flying... like I'm sure you've seen that clip of like, you know, one year of his flights. Like you just... there's just things you can't do without private aviation. You just can't do it. Like what we're doing today, just being able to go to San Francisco for the night, have a few meetings tomorrow, and then come back when we're done. Like you just can't do that. LA is the best commuter place for people in San Francisco. You don't live in LA, you don't get it, but it's very beautiful.
Okay, I have a really fun question. Who do you think flies more? Elon Musk, Alex Karp, Jeff Bezos, Taylor Swift, or Jensen Huang?
I think the answer's easy. Elon Musk.
Even though it's mostly domestic.
Yeah. Yeah, but I mean that I think first of all he flies international as well, but like I mean he's running what, how many companies going between each company and he like goes in office and is there in person. I remember when I was like just starting to fly out of Hawthorne airport. I used to see his plane come in and land and see him get off and on and it was just very inspiring.
So Preston makes a lot of content around the financing of private aviation. What does he mostly cover? Like what should people be reading?
Yeah. So Preston Holland, he has a podcast. He talks about aviation finance in general. He's a broker, so he's good. If you're looking to buy a plane, you're looking for a loan, he'll help you find a bank. Financing a plane is kind of like financing a car, right? A bank will want to securitize the aircraft. They'll file a lien on the airplane, and then they'll also want to look at your personal financials and make sure you have ability to repay the loan. Financing fractional is a little bit more difficult. So if you go to like NetJets, for an example, they have their own in-house financing department. So you can get a loan there, but most other fractionals, there's only a select few banks that will do finance. Actually, a fun fact is that only 30% of aircraft have loans on them.
Yeah. 70% of people will close in cash. And a lot of it has to do... it's just very difficult to go through the process, get a loan. A lot of people don't want to like personally guarantee these loans and how are they just closing cash, don't want to deal with the hassle. I'm working on a company right now called Radar which is focused on providing financing for people who want to do asset-backed, like no-PG, non-recourse type loans for aircraft because they are really good assets to finance against.
So what are the biggest mistakes people make when they're buying a plane?
It's a great question. A lot of times people think that they'll find like a better price on the market for a plane. So sometimes people won't sign an exclusive with a broker, like a reputable broker. They won't sign an exclusive and they'll say, you know what, whoever brings me the best price, I'll buy their plane. And what ends up happening is you have all these sort of like back-to-back shady transactions that happen sometimes where somebody will bring you an airplane and they buy it for much cheaper and they flip it to you and you don't really know what's going on. When you have a reputable broker that you have an exclusive you sign with, they will tell you if you're overpaying for the plane, right? Because their interest is making sure you get the best airplane for the best price. So a lot of times people think that they're going to save some money and they're going to find some good airplane. They find some like off-market airplane they think is a really good deal. They buy it and they realize there was like forced transactions before. So I think that's like a pretty big mistake people make.
What questions should they be asking in any of these processes from chartering to buying, whether it's the year of the plane, what kind of inspections they should be looking for, insurance, that kind of stuff?
I think corrosion is like really the big thing that gets you when it comes to buying airplanes. There's nothing that would be more expensive than corrosion because...
It is very terrifying, financially terrifying because like if you discover corrosion in an airplane, sometimes they will have to re-engineer an entire component for an actual part of the plane that could take months and cost like hundreds of thousands of dollars. There's probably nothing that will cost you more money on an airplane than a problem with regard to corrosion, especially with regard to the engines.
What about insurance? Like what do you... or inspections and that kind of stuff? Like what are you...
Yeah, I mean aircraft have engine insurance. It's called engine program is what they're called where the manufacturers insure the engine. I've heard stories of people not enrolling in these programs. I think David Sacks said that he wasn't enrolling his aircraft in engine programs. I guess if you have the balance sheet and you're willing to withstand, you can afford a pretty big event if something happens and you could afford a few months of downtime, you could do that. But really, you know, these engine manufacturers, they really have a monopoly on the supply chain of the engines. So if you're not on a program and something happens, you go to the bottom of the list for the parts. It is a big issue. And the companies like us and other companies that can get together and they have some negotiating power can go to these manufacturers and get... they have some leverage. But if you're buying, you're a single person buying an airplane on your own, a single airplane, you don't have a lot of leverage and things can get very expensive.
Okay. You were talking about...
Or as we call it nowadays, a flight deck.
You were talking about... Wait, really?
I don't know. Maybe it's like a little bit more politically correct.
Well, cockpit's not politically correct. I don't know. It's... they also changed... it used to be called airmen is what a pilot was considered, an airman, and now it's maybe airperson. I don't know. Yeah. So yeah, pilots have to go every six months into simulator training. It's about a week long and you sit in something looks just like this. So everything's about the same. It's full motion so you feel turns and everything and you go over all sorts of emergencies and different sort of stuff. But I think something interesting that I found going from being a pilot to being a founder that's really helped me as a pilot, you know, when you're flying the plane maybe over Las Vegas and you're, you know, an hour out from LA, you're already starting to think ahead about the landing in LA, you're thinking about what the weather's like there, what runway you're going to be using, what the sort of arrival is going to look like. So even though you're still over Las Vegas, you're kind of really thinking an hour ahead of time. And I think that running a business is very similar, right? Like even though there's stuff you're dealing with today, you're dealing with things that are happening on the day-to-day, you're also thinking ahead and making sure that you're planning for the arrival. So I think that's something that, you know, just the training of being a pilot helps in some ways being a founder.
What's been your favorite part of being a pilot?
Getting to meet all very incredible people.
How many people have you flown?
I've flown quite a bit of people. I think it's like, you know, there's the celebrities and everybody wants to hear about the people we fly, but I think that really getting to know on an intimate level people that... like building these good relationships with the businessmen, like the venture capitalists, people that really see private aviation as like a utility and a tool for them. Getting to spend time with them, getting to talk to them, talk to them about my business, like these are just like an incredible experience that someone like me who, you know, dropped out of high school would never otherwise get to interact with. So I just think like meeting some really incredible people, I would say.
What do you think the biggest misconception is about private aviation and the glamour about it?
That's a great question. And I have a great answer for you.
People think it's a luxury. People think of it, they sort of compare it to like a yacht, right? But like, you know, you cannot... you go on a yacht for... you can spend a week on a yacht. You don't spend a week on a private jet. Right. They think that a private jet is a luxury. And in reality this is a tool to allow people more time to do more. Today we're going to go to San Francisco. We got some meetings. We're going to come back tomorrow, right? Like we wouldn't be able to leave on our schedule, come back on our schedule, and get so much done without private aviation. I think that there's a common misconception that it's a luxury, and it really isn't. And I think that a lot of times private aviation companies tend to mask what they're doing with luxury because of how opaque the pricing is, because of how expensive it is. And it's very expensive to fly private. There is no cheap way to fly private. People like to mask that with this idea of luxury when it really isn't. It's just a tool.
How big of a difference did it make on the business or at least the experience when you guys got Starlink?
A huge difference. We've been operating Starlink from basically the moment that they came out. We started off with the Starlink minis and then eventually when they got the full certification, we installed the full certification right away. But it is... the only way I describe it is it's a game changer. Like people today won't fly if you don't have Starlink. They won't get on the plane to be able to continue what you're doing. Like if you have Zoom calls, just be able to have that continuity. You know, these other systems out there, like they have good connectivity when you're in the US, but they have lags. They work and they stop working. They work, they stop working. Starlink is just like an absolute game changer. And all of our aircraft have Starlink. And I think there's a dish right there.
Oh my god. There's literally... it's just a dish.
No, no. We have an actual Starlink on top of the...
Oh, this is just an extra.
This is like a backup. Yeah.
This is a backup. You got backup Starlink.
Yeah, we fly lots of fintech companies, founders of fintech companies that are...
Need to be on the market.
They are on... like they don't take their head out of their computer from the moment they get on the plane to the moment they get off. Right. So like having...
The best of the best.
I have a hard question for you that's very important. How long and what is the process like for installing Starlink and why are the commercial planes taking forever? Because I think majority of planes their Wi-Fi is a scam. So like what is the actual truth there?
Yeah. Well, I mean it's good. We're seeing some airlines now say they're going to install Starlink. I think United and American both signed agreements to sign for their whole fleet. I'm not sure why Delta didn't do that. I suspect they're probably going to lose some customers because of that. I think right now Starlink is changing their whole assembly line for their new version of the dish which has like the ability to download much more, like has higher bandwidth than the current dish that we have right now. It's almost double. So I think that they've decided that they were going to stop production, upgrade the production line, and then now they're starting to roll out with the new one. So I think we're going to see it start to roll out quickly. Of course, commercial aviation seems to get a priority over private aviation sometimes.
Really? I feel like none of them even have it on any of their planes. Like I interviewed Jake Paul. He just got a beautiful new plane and I asked him if he had Starlink and I think he said he doesn't yet and it takes three months to get it installed. So you have to ground it and that kind of thing.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you have to ground the plane. That's a little extreme. But we... maybe there's something else going on there, but we... I mean we have orders for Starlink kits all the way through like end of next year, all the way through end of 2027. So yeah, you have to put down a deposit and then they come about three months apart. So yeah, so we have like all throughout next year Starlink kits being sent. It's about a $300,000 cost to install on an aircraft like this, very slightly on a bigger aircraft or small aircraft. But to me, if you're flying private and you don't have Starlink, why are you flying private?
Exactly. It's a good place to leave it. Anything else we should talk about while we're in the cockpit?
The people pit or whatever you call it now.
The cockpit. The people pit. The flight deck.
The flight deck.
Anything else? Do you have a favorite button?
Are you going to put that one in?
Yeah, absolutely. We're keeping that in.
Do you have a favorite button?
Yeah. What's the favorite button? Well, this is the autopilot disconnect button. This red button here. And this is when you actually start to fly it yourself. So it's always nice to every once in a while take over and fly. I try to stay away from the buttons that have red on them in general. Not quite sure why. They just say don't touch, scare you.
Yeah. Don't touch the red buttons.
Okay. This is like our power lever. So this is like when you want to... when you're ready for takeoff, you push that forward.
That's like hitting the gas pedal in your car.
And you can just touch that while we're...
Well, right now the engines are not running.
So, but when the engines are running, this will produce all the power. So you can watch on takeoff as the pilots advance. This is the lever of where we put the landing gear up. So once the airplane's in the air and we have a safe distance from the ground, the pilots put the landing gear up and then these three gear, this is the left gear, the right gear, and the nose gear will come up. My favorite button is probably this button, the autopilot button.
I feel like I shouldn't have asked you this question because I'm being so nervous whenever you touch anything.
Yeah. So my favorite button is the autopilot button. Once we get in the plane and once we're up, once we're off the ground, especially the autopilot button and autopilot and chill.
So, one of my friends got their pilot's license a couple years ago and I asked, I was like, 'When you got your pilot's license, was it like getting your driver's license and like feeling the freedom?' And he was like, 'A thousand times more than that.' Did you... like is that how you feel?
I got my pilot's license before I got my driver's license.
Yeah. I got my pilot license on my 17th birthday.
Which is the legal age to get it. Actually at this airport right here, Van Nuys airport. And I got my permit maybe when I was 16 and a half, but I think I got my driver's license at 17 and a half. So I was flying airplanes by myself before I was driving a car by myself. And it is one of the greatest feelings of agency that you can have, especially as a 17-year-old, to fly an aircraft on your own. And I think that maybe is another thing that has led me towards continuous agency in my life and continuously wanting to build and do more things.
More pilots. We need more pilots.
What do you think of the cockpit?
I think this is really fun. It's very intimidating. I feel like I shouldn't be sitting here.
Uh, I don't have a favorite button because I don't really know what any of them do.
You can push this button in if you want.
Just to see what it does.
No, I don't want to. It's too scary. Is that going to make a plane?
I have to get out of here. What's the most common cause of downtime and not being able to use the aircraft? Because I know people who have bought recent aircrafts, I don't know the model or the year or anything like that, but then they're all of a sudden stuck servicing it where the plane's been down for like a year or more and that kind of thing. So what are the most common causes and how do you avoid that?
I mean, an airplane like this, there's tens of thousands of individual parts on the plane. 80% of the parts, if they're broken, the plane's down. You can't fly. So there is like 20% of them that we get exceptions that we can fly a certain amount of flights until it can get fixed. But almost the major vast majority of the parts on this plane, if they fail, if any of these components fail, the plane's grounded. And sometimes, like we were talking earlier about the supply chain in this industry because of all the demand of all the aircraft coming in. These manufacturers are trying to build as many airplanes as they can as quickly as possible and their priority is the newer airplanes that they can sell to brand new customers, right? So their priority is not supporting the existing fleet. It's more on delivering as many new airplanes as quickly as possible. So you can sometimes find yourself down for several months because of a windshield that breaks. We just replaced a lav panel for the toilet in the back of the plane. $25,000.
Yeah. Just for like a little lav panel. A set of brakes on this aircraft is over $100,000.
What is the deal with people talking about the windows popping out? What do you mean?
I've heard from a couple of people like there were stories that the windows will pop out and people will get crushed lungs.
I've heard it. And now they're making planes without windows.
Well, I think the planes without windows is actually a very interesting idea. And that has more to do with like the airframe shape, right? There's one company I think that's building a newer design for these airplanes. It's supposed to be more efficient. I don't know much about it, but it sounds pretty interesting. And they're like, 'Hey, I don't know why we need the windows. They can just do screens on the side.' But I don't think that has to do with windows being crushed in.
That's not like the whole fun about looking out the window. Like right now, we're looking at like beautiful California.
There's farms down there. There's lots of mountains.
You can't see it. Sorry. But it's beautiful.
I don't know. I think I would want to have windows in my plane.
Seems to me like we'll have to put up a poll. How many people... I would be curious to see what people think.
I want to... I guess like this is an interesting point because you mentioned that there's going to be a shortage of planes and everything as more demand increases, right? As more demand increases, I assume all the prices are going to go up. Buying a plane is really just the beginning of the torture, right? It's everything that comes after buying the plane that really makes you maybe regret your decision. So are NetJets, Flexjet, are they just all going to increase their prices substantially? Like how does that work?
Yeah, I mean I think we're already seeing like massive wait lists at these fractional programs. Like the line to get into an aircraft is maybe two, three years ahead of time. If you wanted to order a plane right now, a brand new plane, it would probably take you three to four years until like I think they're delivering now into 2030, right? You can always find like you can actually buy a slot from somebody. So somebody else who got in line, people are actually like reselling these slots because people want planes sooner. So there's already like a huge, huge demand for these aircraft and we are seeing the market price of them trade a little higher over time. But again like at the end of the day they do depreciate. The aircraft are not like real estate, right? They do depreciate over time. They get wear and tear. They get fatigue. And then at some point there's a newer airplane with a better sound system or something you know that people like and zero windows.
Yeah. And over time the value of airplanes will go down. But we have been seeing in the last couple years like a very weird phenomenon where the price like we bought this airplane and now it's worth like more than we paid for it.
Yeah. Like almost $2 million more.
