From as far back as I can remember, travel and airplanes were all I thought about. Like so many other career aviators, the dream started early and never relented. From models of every commercial airliner hanging from the ceiling of my room by fishing line, to weekend plane-spotting at the Philadelphia airport off 27R with mom, aviation permeated my very being. It didn't stop with airplanes either, I collected and read Fodors travel guides from cover to cover, and my parents routinely saved me the Travel section of the Philadelphia Inquirer every Sunday. Anybody who knew me as a child in the 1980s knew my future was sealed.

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My aviation career started out much like any other; flight instructor, single-pilot night freight, the regional airlines, and then the majors/nationals. It was in 2005 that I got my first taste of the ferry business. While working as an MD-80 pilot based in Las Vegas, a colleague offered me the opportunity to participate on a DC-9 delivery over to Belgrade Serbia from the Southwestern United States. I distinctly remember looking out over the glaciers of Greenland from 33,000 feet and knowing that THIS was going to be my future. 

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After that first trip, I was completely hooked. I saved up for and enrolled in a Boeing 737 type rating course to broaden my marketability, and started nagging the various crew-leasing companies for work on my days off from the airlines. Initially, I worked as a freelance contract pilot and slowly started adding more type-ratings. In 2007, I joined up with a partner and co-founded a business with the intention of getting serious and making a career of it. Quickly we were not only operating our own missions, but organizing the logistics and building the foundation of what would become one of the busiest and most respected transactional flight operations companies in the world. 

 

In 2014, I said goodbye to my seniority number and placed all my chips on the table in an effort to really grow the business into what it is today. These days my Company, The Nomadic Aviation Group, operates over 250 global flight-ops per year on six continents, with most of the world's lessors, many airlines, conversion facilities, and maintenance facilities as customers. I hold TEN pilot-in-command (PIC) type ratings and maintain currency on the Boeing 737, 757, 767, 777, Airbus A320, A330, A340, McDonnell Douglas DC-9/MD-80 and Dehavilland DHC-8. I spend about 180 nights per year on the road, and typically hit all six populated continents by February or March of each year. 

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Amid the constant chaos and endless demands of the job, I'm fortunate to have the loving support of an incredibly capable and patient wife Avery, four sons, and two dogs. Still obsessed with aviation, I own and operate a 1969 Aerostar 600 (six-seater, twin-engine airplane). I also co-founded and operate a Non-profit airlift charity called the Humanitarian Lift Project (www.hlpair.org) which provides airborne disaster and hurricane relief services in the Caribbean.

 

You can follow me on Social Media as @JTTsteve on Twitter and @sg_nomad on Instagram