Bob Werderich, a professional pilot and executive vice president of Spartan Flight Operations, shares his inspiring journey into aviation, emphasizing the importance of personal connections in flight training. He discusses how his early experiences with his father, a pilot for North Central Airlines, shaped his love for flying, leading him to a career he never initially intended to pursue. As he reflects on his transition from sports to aviation, Bob highlights the significance of adapting to challenges and the value of teaching in a personalized manner. The conversation delves into the evolution of his flight school, Illinois Aviation Academy, and its recent acquisition by Spartan, which has allowed for growth and innovation while maintaining a commitment to quality education. Ultimately, Bob's passion for aviation and dedication to fostering a supportive environment for students shines through, making a compelling case for why learning in challenging conditions can better prepare aspiring pilots for their future careers.

Takeaways:

• Bob Werderich journey into aviation was inspired by his father's career as a pilot, which shaped his passion for flying from a young age.
• Overcoming a football injury led Bob to reassess his life choices, ultimately pursuing flight training more seriously.
• Teaching aviation presents unique challenges, especially when adapting to different learning styles among students of varying ages and experiences.
• Bob emphasizes that flying in challenging weather conditions, like those in Chicago, prepares pilots better for real-world flying scenarios.
• The acquisition of Illinois Aviation by Spartan was a lengthy process that aligned with Bob's vision for quality aviation education.
• Bob aims to maintain a personalized approach in flight training, ensuring each student feels valued and supported in their journey.

My name is Bob Wardorek.

I'm a professional pilot and executive vice president of Spartan Flight Operations.

Bob, what's going on?

Welcome to the Pilot to Pilot podcast.

Good morning.

Yeah, it's good to have you on.

I'm excited as a person who used to live in Chicago and to talk more about Chicago aviation and flight school.

It's going to be a good time.

But first I want to touch on your story a little bit.

I want to talk about kind of how you got to where you are now, how it all started.

So why aviation?

What was the original inspiration for you to even start flying?

Wow, that's a great story.

So true.

My father, George Werderick, used to fly for a company called North Central Airlines.

He flew the Convair 580 and so that's a big old turbo prop back in the day, super overpowered machine.

And anyway, I would r ride my big wheel up and down the street and had the propellers going around and around.

So in a way, I've been flying a big wheel and airplanes my whole life.

My father went on and ended up working with Republic, which ended up being Northwest and Delta at the very end.

So I've always been around aviation.

Didn't actually intend to be a pilot or professional pilot.

It kind of was just through a life events, if you will.

I went to college to be a school teacher.

So I have a degree in education, biology and earth science.

And then while I was going to school, I played sports, I played football and I wrestled in college.

But at the same time kind of flying for fun, it was more of a recreation, so I was doing that on the side.

Then when I got to about my junior year, I got injured pretty bad in football and kind of was that reassessment of life, you know, what are you going to do with your life?

How much you bench press?

Doesn't really matter.

No.

Yeah, no, not the airlines.

Don't care about your speed?

No, no, not at all.

So, yeah.

So what ended up happening was, is that I assessed in life what did I really like to do.

And I like teaching, I like flying.

So I got a lot more aggressive and got my instrument rating, got my commercial and I just got my commercial.

Then my flight instructor invited me one day.

He says, hey, Bo.

Hey, you're in the education program at your college?

I said, yep.

He says, well, I teach a ground school down the street at a community college.

Would you like to come and help out And I said, sure, I'm happy to help out.

So, true story.

So I show up to the community college and to assist him in teaching the class, and he never showed up.

So as a.

As a commercial pilot, recently minted commercial pilot, I showed up to class and I'm like, hi, everybody, I'm Bob.

Like, Bob Garen's not here.

You're teaching the class.

So I had to teach cross countries to a crowd school class.

So I immediately realized I need to quickly get a ground instructor certification and started working on my cfi.

And then things grew from there as.

So I played sports as well and I had to make the decision eventually.

Well, the decision was made for me.

I took it up to college and quickly realized that I wasn't going to be a professional athlete and kind of looked elsewhere to see what I could do.

But when your identity isn't something so strong and like, you know, you're kind of so focused on sports or whether it's acting or whether it's just anything else that you're passionate about, and you got to make a pivot in your life, this could be someone that's 30 years old, that's an engineer, and they're going to be thinking about becoming a pilot.

But their identity for so long has been something else.

Was it hard for you to make the change in your life, or was it easy because aviation was already something you were used to and something that you were kind of intrigued by?

Well, obviously, anybody that's in a pilot that is a pilot will be biased that we have the best office on the planet.

Right?

Tell me I'm wrong.

So there's nothing more, we'll say it, more invigorating than flying an airplane, than further like successfully flying an airplane from point A to point B.

There's just nothing better.

There's a great feeling.

So that's already been embedded in me.

But, you know, in all honesty, those are pretty catastrophic.

That injury that I sustained playing football, it, you know, that ended football pretty abruptly.

So it was a catastrophic change in that life decision at that moment of what are you going to do?

And that's.

And that's how that catalyst helped me make that pivot point.

So it was unfortunately kind of easy for me to make that call.

Yeah, well, it's a good thing that you had something that you did love to do.

Right.

It's a good thing that you Know, following your dad's footsteps or just seeing what he was doing.

And speaking on that as someone whose dad and whose grandpa was in aviation, was aviation in your life?

Like, was it easily accessible?

Was it constant trips to small airports to go see small airplanes?

Or is it something that you kind of found your own love of?

That's another.

Like, once again, that's a neat story because, yeah, we were always flying.

I mean, my mother lived in Lansing, Michigan.

I mean, these are going back to the old days, and dad was a junior first officer, and we'd get on the airplane and I mean, I've flown multiple times on the Convair and back then even in the DC9 when he flew that, you know, they'd have the door open.

I've been in.

I've done more Christmases on a jet than not when I was younger.

So he used to open up the door and us kids would walk up to the cockpit, look for Santa Claus on the radar.

I think it's there.

I think that's him.

And all the kids would run back and forth.

You know, it was like, unfortunately, we can't do that anymore, as, you know.

But, you know, that was.

Those were neat stories where we would travel the Lansing to see my mother's parents and fly back and forth.

And there were days where dad would take off on a Lansing and there was a Fourth of July parade, and all of a sudden, everybody's got the parades going by and there goes this CONVICT probably like 600ft above the ground.

I mean, once again, you know, it's just stuff like he can't do anymore, but he did it.

I feel like there's a lot of stories of that generation where it's prefaced with, well, you can't do this anymore.

But it was awesome.

It was.

Yeah.

I mean, so it's stuff like that, you know, it just.

That was a neat era.

Obviously, things have gotten more professional, safer.

I'm not saying they weren't profess.

Those were the.

In my opinion, that era where they came through that, you know, with the development from the ADF to the.

To the gps, that group of pilots are just some of the best that's ever walked.

I call them the old lions.

And they come by every once in a while.

And those old lions, they can tell stories, but they did it.

They can walk the walk and talk the talk.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, they thinking now.

I always think about what my grandpa would think about me being a pilot now.

He flew in World War II.

He flew for capital.

He flew for United.

But thinking now about how I'm just like a child of the magenta line, essentially, where it's like, gps, direct enter, line select, bring it up.

And in his mind, he's probably like, that's not real flying at all.

Like, what are you doing?

He's like, you think that was scary?

Yeah.

So I'm sure if I ever told him a story, he'd be like, that's it.

Like, what?

That's nothing.

That happened every day.

That's a Tuesday.

I'm scared about that line.

It could be moving this way.

I know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So just the.

Like, in my mind just.

I think every once in a while about how our conversations would go and he would just laugh at me, like, what are you talking about?

That is nothing to worry about.

Oh, yeah, you're talking about.

Oh, keep going.

No, it's okay.

I was just going to say you were talking about being kind of thrust into teaching, and obviously teaching was something that you were passionate about, something that you realized that you wanted to do.

But for me, I never got my cfi, but I did kind of start down the process, and there was a couple times where my.

The person that was training me, my CFI for becoming a cfi, he was like, hey, I'm going to bring this private pilot student in.

I want you to explain this to him.

And I was like, okay.

And I'd sit down, you know, and I'd explain it how I understand it.

And they'd look at me just like this, and I'm like, I don't know how else to explain it.

That's just how I understand it.

Did you have that moment when you're teaching that as well, or kind of talk about overcoming those teaching techniques and figuring out how one way isn't right for this?

Like, how you learned it might not be how someone else is learning it, and you really need to kind of step out of your comfort zone to figure out a different way to explain things.

Yeah.

I think for many people that that is the.

That is the challenge for all new educators is to learn multiple perspectives about things.

You know, So I was blessed to be in an aviation or not an education.

I went to Concordia University.

They have a good education program there, and they did, you know, so I was already trained as a teacher to appreciate different perspectives of learning.

And so that was.

I was aware of that going into my flight instructing career because they had formed that foundation as an educator that we need to be aware of that.

That perspectives are different and we have to go Find them.

There's many different ways to arrive at the number two.

And that's a fun warmup exercise you can do.

Give me 10 ways to come up to the number two and to watch people think about it like what?

But it's a great warmup and it gets your brain going.

So things like that I learned.

So then as you go into flight instructing and working with the dynamics.

So when I taught in those community colleges, it was an outreach to many different people.

So I would have a class of say 16 and I'd have a 75 year old and I'd have a 13 or 12 year old in the class.

And so you can imagine the learning styles and the differences between that age range and perspectives about things.

You have to learn rather quickly that you have to find mediums to both.

So learning techniques like to pair people up.

So sometimes the secret sauce is to get make partners when you train, because then they would.

You can elect, collaborate with the teams.

And through the teams we could get better perspectives and arrive at solutions.

So it was like little things like that which have shaped my.

The way we teach at Illinois Aviation, at Spartan.

Those kind of things have changed.

Those are big influencers to me as to how do we arrive at the best education possible.

Yeah.

Coming up in your career, you mentioned airlines, you mentioned corporate.

Talk about your path to getting your ratings and to where you are today.

Okay.

So I started flight instructing and then through my father's connection, he introduced me to a gentleman named Bob O'Connor.

He flew for the Evinrude.

The Evinrude family.

So he had a King Air 90.

And my dad introduced me to Mr.

O'Connor and he was my dad's captain.

And so he was the guys that Flew the Beach 18s and the DC3.

So we're talking now the, you know, the world War, like your grandpa guys, you know.

Yeah.

And so I got to fly with Mr.

O'Connor.

Yeah, he flew like to get perspective.

Like when the 727 was brand new, he was closing that, you know, he was closing his career out when that was rolling out.

I mean, just get perspectives.

Yeah.

Isn't it like he flew before they're, you know, FAA what, You know, he has great stories.

But so I was blessed to.

Once again, I think I'm very fortunate because I got to fly with all those old guys and hear their stories and hear how they crossed the country and how they did things.

So I flew a King Air 90 for Mr.

O'Connor.

Mr.

O'Connor, you know, trusted me in the right seat.

Then he lost his medical.

So then he flew on my medical and he taught me how to fly the King Air.

And so I was pretty fortunate at the time.

So mind you, this is in the early 90s and anybody that flew in that era, that was the we'll fly for food, legit shirts, people were paying for interviews.

You know, people, you know, people were paying for type ratings to get interviews.

I mean, it was a rough era to get a job.

So I was really lucky.

I drove, I was willing to drive three hours to Waukesha, Wisconsin to fly an hour flight and an hour flight back and drive three hours back home because that's the way the industry was back then.

Yeah, it's crazy.

And just thinking about what the industry is like right now, I think it really puts it in perspective to hear these stories for anyone right now that's waiting to get a job, that really wants a job.

For an interview, right?

Yeah.

Just for an interview.

Not even a chance.

$500.

You want to interview at Execjet?

500 bucks.

There you go.

Was it really?

No way.

If you want an interview.

Yeah.

And what was the other ones?

There was Chicago Express.

That was one.

You had to pay for your first officer position.

So you paid to be a first officer.

Then if you were still good to qualify as a captain, they might keep you on.

Otherwise.

Bye bye.

It was crazy.

You had to pay to fly the actual airplane and actually work for them.

Wow.

Yeah.

In the jet stream.

Jet stream 31.

Yeah, it was, it's just, it was, it was rough.

So for me to do what I did to get that experience in a turbine in a large, you know, in a cabin class, turbine powered aircraft.

I mean, no money.

I did it for the experience like many others like myself did.

So I was just lucky to have that, you know.

So that started me up into the corporate.

So I went from a King Air 90 to a Cheyenne to us flying that for an auto, for a family had automotive dealership.

I hadn't like fully broken into the left seat position in that airplane.

And at the time a company there was right after the acquisition of Air Wisconsin, when United bought Air Wisconsin, the original Air Wisconsin, that kind of got broken up into pieces.

And I had an opportunity to work for a company called United Feeder Service.

So I flew the ATP, which is that plane right there as a 64 passenger, 100 foot wingspan turboprop.

So it was the biggest turboprop at the time in the United States was a little bigger than the ATR 72.

So I got a first officer position in that and eventually upgraded to captain which was pretty, pretty awesome.

So I did that for a few years and then I ended up working for Midwest Express out of Milwaukee.

I flew the MD80 for them, which I have wonderful memories and crazy cool experiences flying with that airline.

I loved it.

The people that I worked for were amazing.

Unfortunately, after 9, 11, you know, I don't.

Are you familiar with MDX?

Have you heard of.

I've heard.

I've flown with people that flew there and I've flown with people that also flew at Midwest.

I guess they did a take two, possibly maybe a different airline in Raleigh, Durham area as well.

So I've been, I have a little bit of knowledge about it, but speak on it as much as you want.

Sure.

Well, anyway, what was really cool about the business plans of like once again you're in the business, you understand, you're like, you want to start a fight on an airline.

You tell two people sitting next to each other, ask them what'd you pay for your seat?

And the prices of what people pay on their tickets is just, it's crazy.

As we know.

Well, Midwest business plan was, it was, it was one fee, it was one fee for the seat and it was all first class.

Because if you could figure, if you could level off the first class ticket price and frankly the no fare ticket price and you level them all out, you say you have, Everybody just pays $500 for a ticket.

Now everybody gets first class.

So it's two by two, leather seats.

Every flight had a meal, complimentary cookies, wine and champagne on every flight papers, everything.

It was, I feel it was the last of the romantic era.

You know, people dressed up to fly on us.

It was, we were number one in the United States for quality and customer service for 15 years in a row.

We were top five in the world.

So I mean it was a great place to work.

And once again it was, it was everything that I remember as a kid about how romantic and how cool aviation was and I got to be a pilot in that.

I mean, frankly there are old airplanes too.

I mean the DC9 and the MD80 are not exactly the most modern airplanes.

So we still had to like calculate with the charts our drift down points and figure out where we're going to go and we started to figure out what VOR did we use just in case, so things like that.

So I got to experience that and so really great.

And then unfortunately 911 happened, everybody stopped flying.

So then Midwest had to reevaluate the business model and because frankly, like that plane I flew, we had 116 passengers on it, versus American would have the same airplane with 160 passengers on it.

So it tells you how much revenue we were losing by that business model.

So when people said they didn't want to fly and we had to entice them with low ticket prices, that means we had to change our business model for the aircraft.

And unfortunately, unfortunately we lost our identity a little bit with that.

And it was really tough for Midwest to overcome that.

And then you start competing in a market that you're not used to, you're not used to competing and it's pretty cutthroat.

You see, Spirit now, once the major airlines figured out a way to combat the low price and the low cost carriers, it's really affected Spirit's business model.

And obviously they've had other issues as well with engines and just some bad luck with mergers.

So.

But once you start changing your business model up and you don't have the actual experience for it, you can make some mistakes pretty quickly and you can find yourself in a place you don't want to be in.

Yeah, unfortunately there's a lot of airlines with that story.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah, it's crazy.

I mean even.

Yeah.

The amount of airlines that you've even named already on this podcast that aren't like the true airline that they were anymore.

Maybe they're operating as a regional now, but you know, they're just not the same airline anymore because they had a similar fate.

Yeah, yeah, it's true.

It's, it's sad.

And there's a lot of, as my, my dad would call, he'd call it the dinosaur boneyards.

And yeah, you know, there's a lot of dead dinosaurs out there.

Unfortunately.

They were big, but they're boneyards now.

So as someone that has flown King airs, Cheyennes, Airliners, DC9s, MD 80s, would you say there's a favorite, a type of flying?

Were you a fan of the Airline121 flying?

Did you like the more personalized kind of relational relationship side of corporate?

What did you enjoy most?

So funny.

You're NetJet guys, so you understand.

So the reality of it is that because I think of my roots, I've always loved the personal side of corporate.

So When I was at Midex Midwest Express Airlines, I ended up moving towards.

We had a pretty significant charter department, so I migrated over to our charter department.

So I ended up doing a lot of VIP charter flights, which were really cool.

So we would fly like the Brewers.

We fly the bucks.

I flew.

So I was not part of the presidential details, not the actual president, but when they were running, like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Kerry.

So we were part of that series.

We flew.

So all the airlines typically do have some.

Like United has a very robust charter department as well.

So I migrated over to that because what I loved about.

And I.

And I.

And why I'm still in the corporate world.

So I still.

We still.

We manage a Gulf Stream.

And I fly a Gulf Stream now I fly a CJ3 plus still manage it, still fly that.

I just took delivery of a brand new 960tbm.

The most modern airplane on the planet.

Yeah.

So, I mean, like, talk about like, push the button.

It does everything.

It does it.

It does everything.

Yeah.

But I.

So to go to your question, the part for me that I love about corporate versus airlines is the airlines is very regimented, as you know.

You have a great dispatching crew and a great team that work with you.

But I like the personal touch and the challenge of corporate.

I like the fact that I can be more involved in the decision making and the outcome, the positive outcome of the flight.

You can say hello to the 200 people you got getting off of your airplane.

But I get to know the five people on my airplane.

I get to know that I took care of those five.

Those people from what they ate, what they drank.

Was it a safe flight?

Did we get their safe.

You know, did we get to the right fbo?

Did we make sure that their cars were taking.

I mean, you've not seen you say.

That, but that's happened before.

I've gone to the wrong FBO before.

So it just.

It's like you don't think about as an airline pilot, you don't even think about it.

You're like, all right, what's my gate?

All right, let's go to the gate.

But sometimes, I mean, you go to San Antonio and there's a signature on this side.

There's a signature on this side.

It's all right, well, what signature you want to go to?

And every once in a while, you just make an executive decision, and it's like, dang it, that was the wrong signature.

All right, let's go.

Taxi back.

Yeah.

Recently we had a C.J.

one of my C.J.s.

it flew out.

Where were we?

It was anyway, not lying.

City, same city.

Airports at each of those cities, but two different states.

He just said, take me.

We'll just say Thompsonville.

So we're like, Thompsonville, South Carolina.

Okay, so we flew to Thompsonville, South.

Nope, Thompsonville, North Carolina.

You know, my experience with that was Gainesville.

So there's a Gainesville, Georgia, and there's a Gainesville, Florida.

And we were dispatched at a previous job that I had to go to Gainesville, Georgia.

It was nasty weather going in there.

We're like, all right, we're an hour and we're getting ready to send in.

We get a little ACARS message.

Be like, hey, they messed up.

You need to go to Gainesville, Georgia, or Gainesville, Florida.

And we're like, oh, okay.

Look at the weather.

It's even better.

We're like, sweet.

This worked out for us.

But it happens.

Yeah.

All right, let's go.

Someone needs to check the airport identifiers next time and not just assume Gainesville.

But what is also funny to me about the situation is if you hear Gainesville, I feel like you should error toward Gainesville, Florida, or other than Gainesville, Georgia.

But who knows?

Maybe they're from Georgia at that time.

You never know.

Yeah, this guy, he's a construction guy, and he does things in rural America.

All over the place.

That's why he's got a jet.

And it is like that.

Just see the moment.

Take me to Tulsa, you know, Tulsa, Oklahoma, or Tulsa, Illinois.

Just give me.

Yeah, so I want to go to Paris.

All right, well, Paris, Texas, or Paris, two different planes.

We're either going on the TBM or we're going on the Gulf Stream.

What do you want?

Yeah, exactly.

Which one do you want?

Yeah, what was the reason that you didn't keep trying the airlines?

Was it just something that you remember how much you love flying corporate, or was it just no one was hiring at the time and you kind of fell into the corporate side?

Okay, great.

This is actually kind of a nice segue.

Anyway, so mid ex loved it.

So we got bought.

So let me back up at United feeder service.

It was a weird experience for me because we were contracted out as a.

As the pilot group and the flight attendant group and the dispatcher group.

But otherwise we were United Airlines.

The planes owned by United, the gates owned by United, everything that we did was all owned by United.

So we were never part of United, but we were representing United.

And it felt like you were that.

Like you were Cinderella up in the attic, you know, go represent us.

But you're not.

You're not us, and it's not going to work.

Don't talk to me in public.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So it was like.

It was a very awkward thing.

And then, you know, and then the regional jets came on the scene.

So they're.

I mean, you know, those people that are kind of new.

The regional jet was like, wow, catastrophic at the time for the mainline carriers because they thought us regional pilots were going to be flying those regional planes and taking all the mainline jobs.

And it was quite a big deal.

And I was part of the original RC2 program at United.

And, you know, so we really got entwined with.

Even with the pilot union and the management at United, but we still were not allowed to be part of the family.

So it left me with a little bit of bad taste.

So then I went to Mid X and then I felt I couldn't have been more family than that place.

Anybody you meet that ever worked there will tell you that I felt so much like family.

I felt like we belonged.

And then we had to change because of 9 11.

And then we got bought by Texas Pacific Route and.

And Northwest.

And then all of a sudden, like, relationships started to change, perspectives started to change.

And then Northwest merged with Delta.

And then Delta, you know, we're part of.

I could.

I'll stay some other conversations, but we'll just say that as a pilot group, we wanted to be part of.

We were excited.

We thought that we were going to be part of Delta.

We thought we were going to be part of a larger family.

And due to circumstances that we won't talk about today, but we were not allowed to.

And we were not allowed to be part of that family that we thought we were going to be in.

The flight attendants, the ground crew, the pilots, all of us, we thought we were going to be part of a large family.

And once again, we're like, no, you can fly the flight, but you're going to be under.

It's like some of our pilots go to Frontier, you're going to go to Frontier.

In my case, I was going to get stapled on the bottom of Republic's seniority list.

So after 10 years at mid X and being told I was going to be at the bottom of a seniority list at Republic, no offense to anybody, but literally seeing instructors that worked for me that had graduated and they were way senior to me, it was like, oh, my gosh, I don't know if I can handle this.

There was a Lot of reflection going on in my life.

My son had a family house.

There was a lot of things that were going on personally.

And talking to friends, I was given the guidance that, you know what, why don't you just put all that work and effort you did with the airlines and put it into Illinois Aviation and really go after it and really, really make that my 100% passion.

And I did.

And so I walked away.

I do miss it.

From time to time.

I watch, like your United flight come overhead or I'll watch Atlas and there's 747.

Literally says Atlas right over my head.

Like, I wonder what plane that is, and they'll fly right over.

And I miss it.

You know, sometimes I do miss it.

I'm not going to lie.

But I think it's the best decision at that point.

Once again, kind of a catastrophic thing.

But it turned out really well for me, and it's changed my life.

And Illinois Aviation took off, forgive the pun.

And we became.

We were already a smaller successful school, but we became a larger, very successful school at that point.

So did you start Illinois Aviation then?

Is that like your baby or did you just come on board with it?

Nope.

What was so starting.

What was the plan?

Was the plan to eventually turn it into what you turned in today?

Was it.

I just really love to teach, and I would just love to be a.

An independent contractor teacher.

And I'll rent a plane and it'll go from there.

So I started.

Like I told you, I started what was at Triton College.

At a community college.

And that's how I got my students back in the 90s.

Once again, as an instructor.

You gotta get time to get a job.

Okay.

I was teaching at Triton, and then I realized to get more instructed, to get more students, I started contracting out other community college.

So I worked my way up to get six community colleges.

So I was teaching.

So virtually almost every day of the week.

I was teaching a ground school at a college at one point.

And that's how I was able to get students, put food on the table for myself.

Not a lot of food, because we didn't make that much back then.

I mean, I think I made food $15 an hour.

Yeah, let's do it.

Yeah, we're living it.

This is why I became a pilot.

Yeah.

But it was like, you know, and so I was getting students, but then I started to get enough students that I couldn't handle all of them.

So I ended up contracting a couple More instructors to help me out to cover my students.

I leased planes from other operator.

There were flying clubs on the field, so we joined the club and then we would lease the planes and provide instruction in those airplanes.

And so that was like, that was the start.

I then circumstances presented itself again that like, it really was a small operation.

It was just me and one other guy at the time.

We were teaching and we, we had to.

Basically what I wanted to do is I wanted to frankly have my wedding, marry my wonderful wife here at DuPage Airport.

But like we were acting as a business.

They're like, look, Bob, we love you, but we're going to kind of have to say, you're going to have to become an official business FBO or you're going to have to think about getting off the airport and just like this, you renting this building as a business and blah, blah, blah, you're going to have to make that change.

So that.

I ended up becoming a certified FBO in 95.

And I ended up having officially employees and I had fortunately had a great circle of friends, a young man named Chris Wostiak, who was my very first student.

And he became my insurance broker.

So he helped me with all the nuances of insurance.

Yeah.

And so it started, I only intended it to be like a, to be frank, maybe a six plane operation, five plane operation.

This is going to be my fun money.

I was going to be an airline pilot and have a fun little operation on the side.

And this is going to pay for vacations and, you know, whatever.

And it just kept growing.

The business model kept growing.

And the tagline I put together was like, we're gonna always be in a.

Provide a quality education and an affordable price.

And that was what I drilled on.

From day one when it's really interesting that you say that.

They kind of like were like, hey, we need you to be more like, you have to like go all in or else we're gonna kick you out, essentially.

Which is like a wild thing to say.

It's like, we're just doing our thing over here.

Like, why can't we just keep doing this?

But they're like, nope, we want FBO and you gotta do it.

I've always thought that it'd be really cool to own an fbo.

I've also talked to other people where they kind of say it's a really tough business.

It's not an easy place to make a lot of money.

You can kind of say otherwise, but a lot of the money is made on fuel from what I gather.

And even then you gotta compete with the thousands of other FBOs that are in the area.

I mean, when you think about they're not.

There's a lot of airports with a lot of FBOs and a lot of options for people to choose.

Few, especially Chicagoland area.

You're probably more expensive than rural.

It's a tough word for me to say Illinois, you could go somewhere down in central Illinois and they probably get fuel.

Pump it yourself and it's really cheap.

But talk about transitioning to owning an fbo.

Some of the challenges that came with essentially your business was just flight instruction and leasing airplanes.

And now you are, you're figuring out fuel, you're figuring out lav carts.

Maybe you're getting business jets now, maybe you're getting just transient people coming in and talking to them and figuring out what coffee people like papers.

All that just kind of talk about struggles that happen with owning an fbo.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's funny, prior to this, I was just on a call and it's our marketing team in any way, they talk about how they should just drop a GoPro on the head and just.

You know, let you go.

Yeah.

The reality of it is everything that you're talking about, it is crazy.

It's 24, seven, seven days a week.

If you want to be good, you got to put your heart into it.

And you have to.

Like I said, when I stopped flying for mid acts and I dedicated myself to Illinois Aviation when we really turned the corner, because it wasn't a part time deal, it was a full time deal.

And that's that whole, you know, so there's an FBO for fun and a little bit of training.

There's an FBO to handle maintenance, there's an FBO to handle customer service, loading people in and out of airplanes.

DuPage Airport doesn't allow us to sell gas.

So that made an FBO even more challenging because the highest revenue producer is the gas.

So I didn't even have that on the table either.

So it was, it was all about service.

It was all about just going not just 100%, but 200%, if that's a real number, into every day and every.

Yeah, but, yeah.

So you know it.

You know, my son, you know, my son and my wife knew that, you know, there are days that I sleep at the hangar because we had planes coming in late and I had to take care of it or I had to get up at three in the morning because I had to make sure that we had everything plowed and shoveled so we could dispatch at 5 in the morning and, you know, and then people would get upset about things.

And even though in my mind they're absurd, you have to listen, you have to appreciate, once again, perspectives like we talked about.

I have to think in their perspective and think about what they're thinking and why and appreciate it.

May not agree, but I can appreciate their perspective.

And then I have to, I have to get through that.

And that is the secret sauce that I learned is that I had to build a team that could provide the services at a high level but be willing to be selfless and give a little bit less to that themselves.

To be honest, you have to give a lot more than you get back.

Was there a moment when you were building this where you were like, you know, I think the airlines are hiring again.

Maybe I should go do this again.

Like waking up at.

I'm.

I don't, I shouldn't be waking up at 3am right now or shoveling.

I mean, you just mentioned right now you're in Chicago right now.

You're looking out your window.

I mean, I'm in North Carolina.

It's 65 degrees and it's nice outside and it's snowing where you are.

So was ever a moment where you're like, what am I doing?

Like, I need to get back right now.

Yeah.

Today.

Yeah.

As I was walking in, I could be honest.

I could be on a 7 47, fly into Hawaii right now.

What am I doing?

You could.

Yeah.

You can apply, man.

It's not too late.

Go.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, I have some interesting stories.

I mean, I've had people, people steal from me, lots of money.

I've had people.

I've, I've been arsoned.

I, you know, so I've, I've been through some extraordinary things because you're right, it is a competitive industry.

And when I was just breaking in, there's a lot of people that didn't want me to succeed.

And some of them were not good people.

They were just blatantly.

Sounds like Chicago in general.

Just gotta be careful who you.

You kicked us off in Chicago.

Yeah.

My dad told me a long time ago.

Who's your dad?

Probably said the same thing because your family's been in it even longer than mine.

Is that, you know, careful whose toes you step on because they're connected to a butt you're kissing later.

And he was right.

Everybody knows each other.

And.

Yeah, so there was a lot of people that didn't want us to Succeed.

And there still are.

There are still challenges and people that don't like what we're trying to do.

And that is to try and provide, to get on a large scale.

I want to reach the public in a large scale in the same model that I started with one and two airplanes, and that is that everybody should fly.

I want.

I mean, let me back up.

I want to make it for those that can.

I want to make it possible for them to fly.

So I want to reach as many people as I can and have personalized education.

I want to have quality education.

And so a lot of people want to make it canned food, quick money, get the heck out, you know, low risk, high intake, and go.

I'm not quite like that.

And that.

And that bothers some people in some operations because it works.

The Midwest mid X model in flight training works.

And that's what I'm doing.

Have you seen it become more difficult with the bigger you get?

Because, I mean, obviously, when it's just you, you control your whole brand.

As you get bigger, you have new instructors coming in, and you are holding them to the same standard that you are, which at sometimes it's just not possible.

Right.

Like, everyone's different.

You can't expect someone to love your product as much as you do.

I mean, you want them to, and you hope that they do, but, I mean, at some point, they're just a cfi, right?

They're not.

You are the brand.

You have the big kind of idea for everything.

But has it been difficult as you've gotten bigger to kind of keep it very personalized like that or even kind of tempted to go the route of, well, maybe less personalized?

You can make more money.

There's less to, like, you know, just like.

Like, change the business model up, like med X.

Or have you realized that when you change the business model up, you're not in your comfort zone anymore and you start making some bad decisions?

Yeah.

So, you know, we just.

In this last year, Illinois aviation has doubled in size.

So we were, you know, 27 to 47 airplanes in just one calendar year, which is enormous.

So the.

I guess the best way to put it is with that growth we've got now, we've went from, say, 50 people to a staff of over 100.

And they maintain quality control is not that easy.

And it's not because they're bad people most often.

It's just the people need to learn.

And they learned.

Once again, they learn different learning styles.

They learn in different locations.

And so it's not that they're bad is just inexperienced.

So my job as a leader is to train them properly so that they can provide a quality education and make sure that everybody in the group, from the mechanics to our dispatchers to our line techs and line ops, that they all share the same vision.

That's my job.

And so it's not as easy.

You're right.

There's a lot more rules, there's a lot more regulation, there's a lot more.

There's a lot more other people in play because it's so large.

But in general, in general, it can be done.

Once again, I got to stay up late.

I got to stay up till one to send my emails because I couldn't do it during the day.

It's a grind.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's when you're like, you know that 747 is flying over right now.

It could be me right now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I have a lot of friends that fly like you.

Yep.

And they're like, hey, Bob, we're going to Seattle today to catch a Kraken game.

I hate you.

I hate you.

So I did.

I started my private training in Columbus, Ohio.

I would kind of equate that to the equivalent of what the weather is like.

Training in Chicago has it maybe even a little bit better.

There's low overcast, winter flying.

It's hard to get some solid IFR time in without.

Has it been difficult or even.

I guess a better question to be is how do you convince someone that wants to become a pilot to stay local in Chicago and train with you rather than say, go to Florida or Arizona or Texas or somewhere where it's sunny 300 days out of the year and they can just fly all the time?

Has that been difficult to you or has it been kind of the relationships you're able to create?

And it sounds like from the outside looking in and the 40 minutes we talked to is you're a very passionate person about this.

And if you have the opportunity to sit one on one with someone, you're going to win them over with just how real you are, and we're going to take care of you and you're like family.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So the true story, when I was flying for United Feeder Service, flying the ATP, one of our routes that we flew was from Chicago to South South Bend, and we would never go above 5,000ft.

And so if you could imagine flying over Lake Michigan at 5,000ft during the winter and the summer, I'd either have significant icing or I'd have significant storms every time, and it was just inevitable.

And you had no time to.

I mean, there's no time to react.

It's just.

It happened so fast.

So what I learned as a captain there, and once again to no fault necessarily of the first officers that I had flying for me, was that they had no experience, their skill sets were really low.

And so they would say, this is the first time I've ever flown in ifr.

And I heard that a lot.

This is the first time I've flown in icing, and I'd hear that a lot.

Nobody tries to fly in thunderstorms, but you know, what I'm saying is like navigating thunderstorms, you're either on the ground like in Texas or Florida.

It's a hurricane.

You're on the ground, you're nowhere near it, you know, so those experiences from IFR to icing to thunderstorms, that they don't get in those other areas we get in Chicago, provided me the better stepping stone and knowledge base to deal with that.

So if you're going to be a pro pilot, my humble request is, or my, I guess not request, but my question would be to you and to others would be, if you're going to be a pro pilot, wouldn't you rather learn what it's like to fly when it's snowing outside and see what it's like?

Does the plane actually fall out of the sky?

If it's snowing and you're flying through snow and the answer is no, but you don't know if unless you've done it, does the plane.

You know, can you fly IFR and work with a Class Bravo airspace as an instrument student?

And the answer is yes, you can.

And these are all great things to learn prior to becoming a professional pilot.

It makes you a better professional.

So I would almost argue it's better to learn in Chicago and in Ohio, where you have a greater variety of weather conditions, ATC capabilities, you know what I'm saying?

And then go to the workforce and your captain can focus on your professional development, not your flying development.

Does that make sense?

No, it makes total sense.

And you're kind of spot on with that.

I got my private at Ohio State, and the rest I did in Charlotte, North Carolina.

So I always dealt with a Delta or a Charlie in Columbus.

And then when I went back to Charlotte, there's always the big Bravo.

There's a lot of approach, there's a lot of talking on the radio.

And I think when you are forced, not necessarily Forced.

When you choose that route, it's kind of, that's the normal to you.

Like if you, if you start out of an uncontrolled field, you're going to be terrified of going to a Delta or a Charlie just because you're not used to it.

And talking to the radios can build up some kind of anxiety and you can make mistakes.

But if you're there and you're already learning in it and learning in Chicago, like you said, it's great.

Like you get a wide variety of decision making chances.

I will say to learn how to say no, to learn what you're comfortable in.

To learn from flight instructors, mistakes that they made in the past and like, oh, wait, wait, wait, I've seen this before.

We're not taking off right now.

We are staying on the ground.

Right?

When I was doing my time building, I was aerial survey and we only flew during good weather.

And I started realizing that I am hindering my abilities as a pilot by only flying in good weather.

So I took a 180 turn and I flew a single pilot IFR which seemed like I only flew in bad weather.

And I was like, man, I kind of wish I was still flying in the nice weather.

But you, you needed that experience.

So when you hit the line, you aren't being second guessed for your flying decisions or your choices.

You are just being kind of coached up on how the company operates, on how the SOPs are, what the manual says, you're not wearing your uniform right.

You know all those kind of stuff.

Which is more of a job than you think of staying up to date with your aom, your FOM and all that kind of stuff.

So you should just be able to know how to do something else.

Wait a minute, you guys have electronics books now?

We had the paper was we had to shove the paper in, in and out.

Yeah, man, we had not a thing.

For me, there's no way we carry big suitcases for.

I got a search bar where I'd literally just type it in and I search.

Yeah.

I hate you guys.

I hate you.

Amazing.

I know, right?

I'm saying when I go back to my grandpa thinking about what my grandpa grandpa would say, he probably just like smacked me like, you have no idea what I had to go through.

You have no idea.

Boy.

And I'm complaining about, I'm complaining about how my updates are taking too long and my wifi is too slow.

You mentioned how you grew in size.

You want to talk a little about how you grew in size?

Was this the acquisition From Spartan.

Was this something you did separate from that.

But talk about growing in size and the introduction of Spartan and how all of that kind of came together.

Sure.

This did not come overnight.

This took.

This was a three year process.

So to put it in perspective, this didn't happen quickly.

This is something I didn't need to sell, I didn't need to move.

But what I did want to do was grow the company.

So in that time period I was trying to figure out if I was going to work with capital investors or a buyout.

And so either way, more or less someone was taking the flight controls, if you will.

There is going to be someone involved in the decision making process.

So what I learned from Spartan was that they have a history that is amazing in aviation.

I don't know if you're familiar with.

Are you very familiar with Spartan at all?

No talk about it.

So I know of Tulsa and I know of Spartan College in Tulsa.

What I didn't know is the expansion of it and I believe California possibly isn't there.

Denver and then Chicago.

Now is that kind of the head quarters that they have or the bases?

I would say yeah, yeah, those are, those are all bases.

And so they got a history that's almost second to none in aviation.

And to the point is that they're the only flight school or flight operator that is allowed to still carry their army insignia on the airplane.

So you will actually see a black cat on the tail of the Spartan aircraft.

That comes back to their days when they were training army aviators.

And the idea is that I like that history.

I like once again I like, like you've already heard how I'm grounded with those old lions.

Well, I wanted to partner with an old lion and I wanted to partner with people with experience that have.

It's not about money, it's not about the quick turn.

It's about development of aviation over time and get in developing with the community.

So that appealed to me significantly since I was looking to more or less give the flight controls to somebody else.

And where in October the acquisition finally happened and Spartan shared my vision.

They shared my vision to the point where the first thing they did is they said in the honor of my father who passed away last Year they created a scholarship for two people every year to get their flight trains paid for in his name because he was all about the development of it, he loved, you know, so that was the first thing they did, you know, and it was like, oh my gosh, I mean, like that, that kind of tells you about the kind of people they are.

And then they go on and say, okay, Bob, we believe in your vision.

What can we do to help?

And I started.

It took me five years to develop a.

With the help of Tim Gentz and others at College of DuPage, we've put together an associate degree program.

Why?

Because we wanted to have affordable grants, affordable loans, affordable education for kids at the community college level.

And they could now get the private instrument, commercial, multi CFI and be job ready after, you know that they'll graduate with their CFI in two years, which you can't do it like Ohio State or Indiana or those other schools.

And our goal is to get them out in two years and get them instructing, so get them in the workforce in three, three and a half years.

That's an awesome goal for people that may be coming from the inner city or making a job change.

They need to have the resources financially, education wise and materials.

And that's what Spartan brought to the table, is the materials.

So they brought me the capability to buy airplanes, which that's what really has been hanging me up.

An airplane that I could buy four years ago for $50,000 goes for $150,000 now.

Isn't it crazy as someone who wants.

To buy an airplane, it's absolutely insane.

It's crazy.

It wasn't four or five years ago that same plane was 50 grand.

When a new 172 now is $600,000 that entry into market to get new planes.

Everybody wants new planes, everybody says these old planes break, blah blah, blah, blah, blah.

Well, come up with 600 grand for a trainer and let me know how it works.

You know, someone who has such a strong vision for what they want, for what they need.

And you eventually found Spartan, right?

But you mentioned some other routes.

Was there any temptation to go elsewhere or was Spartan and kind of the main fit?

And the first time you really felt like you could trust someone with your baby, essentially because you brought this from the trunk of your car, like you said, this was your baby and you are just handing it to someone else now who is financially in charge essentially and makes the decisions.

Was it Spartan all the way?

Did they blow you away with what they had to offer or were there Other kind of opportunities that you're looking into?

No, there were other opportunities.

This was not something.

Not something I rushed into.

No, there were other opportunities.

There were investors that believed in the program, that wanted to buy into the program because they believed in it as well.

It just.

The difference was, is their mission was purely financial.

It wasn't mission based.

And I feel that the Spartan, and that's what threw it over the edge, is that Rob Polston, who's my boss, I truly believe he's been in the education industry for, well, almost 15 years.

So he knows the professional education programs and his knowledge of rolling out vocational schools to the people, his knowledge about doing that and being able to bring investors to the table that are willing to invest in that.

I found that that was the icing on the cake.

And then meeting the team, there's so many great people I work with, my wife, I mean, you've heard this saying, I have a great team at iaa.

I have a bigger family now in Spartan.

And it's great because I'm working with co workers that I look up to, which I think is pretty.

It's nice to go to work and know that I'm working with people that drive me to be better every day.

I mean, I always try to be better, but it's always neat to look up the people here and there.

And I do try to find inspiration wherever I can from people or things or thing, you know, things I read.

But that's what Spartan brings to the table is inspiration.

Sorry.

If that's correct, you know, what's the.

Vibe I'm getting from this?

No, no, it's fine.

And the vibe I'm getting and kind of as a student, if I was to go back and I was to invest a lot of money into this career and you're looking at major flight schools or universities, it's really easy to become a number and just become a per.

Not even like a person.

You are just a number.

They're trying to get you through.

They want to get you to 50.

They want to see you get on with a regional and they want to see you post about it in your success stories.

But what's really hard is in the training moments if you're.

I mean, this might not be for every kind of big flight school, but if you start falling behind, they might not have as much leeway or kind of the ability to help you out.

They're just like, hey, maybe this isn't for you and you spent all this money.

We're not going to give it back to you, but you might need to find somewhere else to go.

But what I'm trying to get at is it's really important for you to figure out find a place that values you as a person.

And it sounds like that's your goal and that's Spartan's goal as well, which is really cool to see as a big flight school that someone can still kind of have that ability.

I agree.

And that, that's the part that, you know, frankly that scares me the most is that quality, the customer service.

I don't want to lose the identity that mid ex lost when they, when they got bought by, you know, after 9 11.

I don't that that's a nightmare for me and I don't want to lose that.

It's truly a nightmare for me.

Yeah.

But the part that I also am excited about though is that, well, it.

Sounds like you found a good team to partner up with though, because it sounds like they share your values and they buy in.

Absolutely, I believe they do.

I really do.

And the part that I really am excited about is the desire for innovation that Spartan is going to start bringing to the table too.

So I'm all about like Frasca, who is based in Illinois.

I don't know if you're familiar with the Frasca simulators.

You know, they've come out with a full motion helicopter sim and they're developing a full motion level C simulator, you know, for fixed wing airplanes.

So the part that the leadership and I share is that the innovations in aviation technology and training, I'm excited about the future, where that's going to go.

It's going to be pretty neat.

So I'm curious if you would have any advice like you actually meet and talk to more people in aviation than I do.

I love your platform.

I love what you do.

How about advice to people like me in what we do and things?

The insight that you, you've gained that you could share with me because I would be grateful for any information.

I think the number one advice would probably be just to remember why you got into this and remember that you're here for the person itself.

I think it's so easy to just forget about the individual that's going through flight training that might be struggling and not see them as a student that is just here to get in and just get their ratings and go, but kind of get to know them and personally make it as advantageous as possible for them.

I think that's the best route to go.

And I think that if you can keep it as personal as possible.

And if you can keep it intimate and you can keep it about the person and not just about the flight training, I think it'll be very successful and will do well.

I agree.