How To Become An Airplane Repo Agent
On a muggy summertime twenty-four hours in 2022, Ken Loma walked onto a small-scale landing strip in DeLand, Florida, and appear his intention to repossess two airplanes.
Normally, the process goes smoothly enough: He'll slap a seizure notice on the aircraft, look over the logbooks for mechanical issues, weasel his way inside the cockpit, and wing it off into the sunset.
But this time, the planes' lendee, a disgruntled flight school operator, was on-site — and drunk as all hell. As Hill prepped the planes, the man charged toward him with a ii×4 and started swinging.
"I had to have a complete knee replacement considering of that," says Hill. "But I all the same got both airplanes out of there."
For Hill, it was all in a day's work.
One of America's only airplane repo men, he'south spent more than 2 decades flying all over the world on behalf of banks, reclaiming aircraft from broke businessmen, crumbling corporations, and drug lords.
The repo concern
Hill makes his living on the back of delinquent borrowers.
When y'all buy something using a loan, you have an obligation to make timely payments to the lender. If y'all fall far enough backside on these payments, the lender (typically a banking concern) has the correct to reclaim the proficient in question without a courtroom order.
To get this task done, it often enlists the help of a repo visitor.
In the US, repo is an $800m manufacture with 11k firms; nearly all of them focus on cars, where the bulk of the business lies. Just sometimes a bank needs to reclaim something bigger — much bigger — and that's when Ken Hill gets the call.
Hill, with a stash of repossessed planes (courtesy of Ken Hill)
At 77 years-old, Hill is far from the stereotypical repo man.
He isn't jacked, bearded, or tattooed to the gills. He uses words, not fists, to wrestle airplanes abroad from loan defaulters. With kind bluish optics and an affinity for grandpa sweaters, he looks more like Mr. Rogers than a member of the Hells Angels.
But looks deceive.
In the words of one airplane lender, Hill is a "fable" in this niche industry — a human who comes back with a plane no matter the risk or circumstances.
The 'legend'
A licensed aircraft dealer since 1968, Loma found success in the '80s running an aeroplane maintenance operation (FBO) in Arizona. It was around that time that he got a strange request from a bank he worked with.
"They called and said, 'A Florida guy we sold an airplane to disappeared on us; tin can you find the aeroplane?'" recalls Hill. "The typical car repo guys didn't have the necessary experience to exercise the airplane repossessions."
Hill saw a business opportunity — and in 1996, he fix his focus on airplane repossessions.
Today, Hill's Santa Barbara, California-based outfit, Business concern Aircraft Sales, is one of only 3 airplane repo outfits in the US. The task requires an unusual mix of skills: Vast flying experience, mechanical noesis, legal know-how, and a big capacity for risk.
It'due south a business full of unexpected encounters, shady characters, and bumpy rides. One misstep could price a bank a multimillion-dollar airplane.
Over the final 23 years, Hill claims to have flown some 13k miles and repossessed more than than 3k airplanes, ranging from single-engine private planes to jumbo jets.
His jobs range in scope from repossessing a pocket-size Piper Saratoga from a private owner in Chicago to seizing an unabridged fleet of planes from a defunct airline in Mumbai, India.
Hill on a -48°F repo telephone call in North Dakota in 2009 (courtesy of Ken Hill)
As ane industry insider puts it, today's repo work is "more than of a chess game than combat." It's a process requiring delicacy, attention to detail, and legal finesse.
Nether laws adopted by all 50 US states, a repo man must not "breach the peace," meaning Hill can't employ threats or forcefulness to obtain an airplane. He also must have "costless and clear access" to the aeroplane: If a plane is inside a hangar, he has to get permission to enter. No cutting locks or breaking downward doors.
Loma has a item resentment toward Airplane Repo (2010-2015), a Discovery Network reality show that chronicled the staged adventures of fellow repo men.
"They're unorthodox cowboys," says Loma. "I'm not jumping over fences with cameramen behind me and flying away in the night. There are laws to follow."
How to repossess an airplane
The plane repo process is adequately straightforward, albeit logistically complex.
A bank typically gives someone who is late on a loan payment 90 days (and 3 written warnings) earlier siccing Loma on the job. But afterward 31 days, it volition preemptively send Hill a file including the plane's registration number and the lendee's contact data.
Using this information, Hill begins the process of finding out where the airplane is.
Most cases call for tracking technology, both from FlightAware.com (a website that traces the real-time flight patterns of FAA-registered aircraft) and proprietary databases, to pivot downward a precise location.
Hill taps into an extensive network of contacts to check out the aeroplane in-person: Is it on a rails? In an enclosed hangar, requiring entry permission? What kind of shape does it appear to be in?
Once he has a read on the situation, he flies out to personally retrieve it — a process that might take as little as a few hours, or as much as several days.
Hill, with a repossessed Pilatus PC-12 single-engine shipping (courtesy of Ken Loma)
On the ground, Loma's first club of business is to get inside the aeroplane. If the lendee isn't there to greet him, he must resort to a crucial tool of the trade: a collection of "thousands and thousands of keys" he's amassed over the years. When he can't arrive using a master central, he'll wriggle his manner through the emergency exit or the "hellhole," a small compartment at the rear of the plane.
Possession secured, he looks over the airplane's log books and does a visual bank check for things like rat and ophidian nests to determine whether it'southward mechanically sound to fly. If information technology is, he fires her up and flies to an undisclosed "condom oasis."
"I desire to make certain I get it out of state," he says, "so some low-life judge can't effect a 120-twenty-four hours stay and drag information technology through the courtroom."
From here, he'll get the plane appraised and list it for sale on behalf of the bank, ad with online platforms like Trade-A-Plane. Within a few hours of posting, he might become 5 calls from interested parties.
For the repo itself, Hill is paid anywhere from $i.5k to $15k, depending on the size and scope of the task; for the auction, he takes a minor percent of the plane'southward recovery value.
On whatsoever given year, he'll have on 30-50 of these jobs — a effigy that increases during financial crises, when defaulted loans spike — and he's sold everything from a $10m jet downwardly to a $15k "junker" plane.
Every bit he likes to say, "There'due south an ass for every seat."
Risky concern
Some repossessions go smoothly and a lendee simply hands over the keys. In one case, Loma was fifty-fifty offered a domicile-cooked meal before flying off with a man'southward plane.
But repo work, even when by the books, lends itself to occasional danger.
According to the American Recovery Association, the foremost organization for repo agents, an boilerplate of 2 repo men die on the chore every year.
Hill has been "beaten up a few times" (including the shattered kneecap in 2022), stared down past drug transporters, and even chased past a woman yielding a yard rake.
A mid-flying cockpit shot (courtesy of Ken Hill)
On a sticky summer afternoon in 2007, Colina walked into an airplane hanger in Lincoln, Rhode Isle, to reclaim a single-engine aircraft. 30 minutes into the job, a Bentley came screeching up the road and a "short, stocky mafioso type" came barreling toward him.
When Colina said he was taking the aeroplane on behalf of Santander Bank, the human reached into his pocket for a snubnosed .32 revolver — but as he attempted to pull it out, the gun got defenseless in the homo's pants and he shot himself in the foot.
"I collection him to the emergency room," says Colina. "Every bit he was existence wheeled down the hallway into surgery, he looked at me and yelled out, 'Hey, I similar you, you're a adept guy! Go take my plane.'"
Loma speaks of such encounters with nonchalance, as if recounting a fishing trip with buddies.
"Danger," he says, "is merely something that lurks in the heed of a man."
The grim reaper cometh
Repo work has taken Loma all over the earth.
In the past year, he'south done jobs in Arizona, Illinois, Massachusetts, Texas, Hawaii, London, Germany, India, South America, S Africa, and, of course, Florida, which he calls a "oasis" for illegally maintained planes.
"I go there a lot more than than I'd like to," he says. "For whatever reason, there are a lot of dishonest people in Florida."
A happy airplane repo homo (courtesy of Ken Hill)
His diligence in the manufacture has earned him a Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award from the FAA, an honor bestowed on but ane.5k of 386k registered pilots in the US. Requiring 50 years free of violations, it's a rare feat in the rough-and-tumble business of repo.
Though nearing 80, he hasn't put much stock in finding a protégé. Scores of young bucks express interest in joining him, only often for the wrong reasons. Besides, he says, the work is too challenging and circuitous to teach.
Besides, he adds, not everyone wants the nicknames that come with the territory.
"Some folks call me the Grim Reaper," he says. "Because when I knock, y'all know I'm going to take something from you."
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Source: https://thehustle.co/airplane-repossession/
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