Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] John Ramstead: These gentlemen and their company are responsible for actually me being here because 13 years ago I had what should have been a life ending accident. And because of the services, the aeromedical services that you guys provide, I am not only alive and functioning and not a quadriplegic. So.
[00:00:20] Intro: Welcome to Hangar X Studios where former fighter pilot and host Kenny Morrow takes us on a journey across aerospace as it enters an historic period of innovation and transformation. Our guests include aviation experts, pilots, financiers, military leaders, and innovators of all types. Buckle up for another episode of Hangar X.
[00:00:50] John Ramstead: All right. Hey, welcome to Hangar X Studios. And we're live at Verticon. And I am really excited about this interview. We're going to be interviewing both John Ramstead and John Vance from Metro Aviation. And these gentlemen and their company are responsible for actually me being here because 13 years ago I had what should have been a life ending accident. And because of the services, the aeromedical services that you guys provide, I am not only alive and functioning and not a quadriplegic. So I am so excited here to have you guys on, talk about this entire industry, tell a little bit of my story. I think when we have John back on who's from the pilot side, but John Ramstead, first of all, welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:29] Kenny Morrow: Thank you very much. Thanks for having us. And we just figured this out five minutes ago.
[00:01:32] John Ramstead: Five minutes ago, as I was kind of telling, this is not my story. So this is really cool. And you really sit in the COO and CFO seat for Metro. So tell me a little bit about kind of Metro and what differentiates Metro from other maybe aeromedical services that are operating out there?
[00:01:48] Kenny Morrow: Sure. So Metro Aviation is a family owned business. So Todd and Mike Stanberry own the company. It was formed in 1982. So we're 43 years old.
Again, family owned, based in Shreveport, Louisiana. There's really two sides of our business. One is that we operate air medical helicopters and airplanes for 42 different air medical programs all over the country. So these are hospitals or ambulance services that we provide services to. We provide all the pilots, we provide all the mechanics, the parts, the work, the support, everything that goes into flying those aircraft. On our Part 135 certificate, we contract with these hospitals and ambulance companies and they provide the entire medical crew. So we're everything. Part 135 Aviation. They're everything on the medical side of it. So that's, that's one side of the business. The other side of the business is that we do, we perform helicopter and airplane Completions. So when you purchase a helicopter, it's not like going down to the Chevy dc.
[00:02:49] John Ramstead: You get basically the green airport.
[00:02:51] Kenny Morrow: We get the green airframe.
[00:02:51] John Ramstead: You get the green airframe.
[00:02:53] Kenny Morrow: There's no interior. I mean very minimal interior, very minimal avionics. We take the aircraft, we put all the avionics in it, we put the mission specific equipment in the aircraft, we paint it, we put the air conditioning in it, all the things that need to happen to that aircraft. So we deliver about 3,500 aircraft per year out of our facility in Shreveport, Louisiana. We have a facility in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania called PAC International that's also a part 145 repair station. We deliver about a dozen aircraft a year out of that facility. And then our most recent expansion is called Metro Golf. So it's in Lafayette, Louisiana. We're doing full avionics integrations on both rotor wing and fixed wing. So we're currently completing a caravan for Texas Department of Public Safety. It's at that facility in Lafayette, Louisiana.
[00:03:40] John Ramstead: So we're, what's an avionics integration?
[00:03:43] Kenny Morrow: So think of getting that green basic aircraft. It's got your, your basic navigational equipment in it, but you want radios specific to the region of the country that you're working in. We install, our sister company or cousin company is called Outerlink. And we put, we'll install Outerlink equipment which tracks the aircraft and transmits data from the aircraft down to the ground in real time. And John can talk more about how we use that data to monitor the safety of our operations, monitor the health of the aircraft, monitor how the pilots are flying the aircraft.
So, so again, those are the two sides of the business. We operate helicopters and airplanes and then we also perform those big completions on the operations side of the business. I think we have about 175 aircraft on our certificate.
[00:04:38] John Ramstead: I was going to ask you, with 42 programs, how many aircraft is that?
[00:04:41] Kenny Morrow: 175. And, and we own about 75 of those aircraft. Our customers own about 100 of those aircraft. And that's really as far as the ownership of the aircraft, that's really customer preference. Yeah, some want to be in the aircraft ownership business, some don't. So we're, we're totally flexible with that.
[00:04:58] John Ramstead: Now from, from your seat as a firm, you know, that's a lot of programs, a lot of aircraft, a lot of pilots, a lot of infrastructure, a lot of partnerships. How do you guys manage that from an operational standpoint?
[00:05:08] Kenny Morrow: It's a lot, it's a, it's A big operation. The corporate headquarters is in Shreveport, Louisiana. So I'll sort of break it into components. We have the, the operations side of the business, which is what John's in charge of. So that's all the pilots that are flying the aircraft. We have the maintenance side. So the part 135 maintenance department. Our director of maintenance is Mark Breton, and he manages all those mechanics, or we call them maintainers now, but manages all those maintainers all over the country. And then we have the third leg of that stool is the safety department. So Brady Carpenter is our director of safety. Each of those individuals have regional managers that oversee their regions. And then at each program will have an aviation site manager if it's a large enough program, if it's two bases or less than we have lead pilots, lead mechanics at each of those programs. So it's, it's a tiered system. The communication works really well. But our, our biggest challenge is we are a family owned business. It's all about the family. It's the partnerships that we have with our customers and the things that we do to try to help our customers succeed. And as we get bigger and bigger, how do we maintain that, that family feel? And I think, I think we've done a pretty good job so far. One of the things that we've implemented is what we call Metro University. Okay. We've got a lot of really good pilots, a lot of really good mechanics, a lot of really good safety people.
But how do, how do we train them or equip them to be leaders? And so we teamed up with a company called wildspark.
[00:06:40] John Ramstead: Okay.
[00:06:41] Kenny Morrow: And so wildspark provides the curriculum.
[00:06:44] John Ramstead: Okay.
[00:06:44] Kenny Morrow: And then we encourage, we don't impose or make it mandatory for anybody to participate, but anybody in Metro Aviation that's been with us at least a year can sign up and participate in Metro University. So wildspark is the platform. Metro University is what we call it, and it's monthly learning modules. So you're put on a team with five or six other people and each month your team goes through that learning module that teaches you how to have difficult conversations or how to build the next generation of leader, or how to effectively communicate with people, or how to take care of yourself and, and, you know, make sure that you're regenerating and, and taking care of yourself emotionally and mentally.
[00:07:26] John Ramstead: Well, you know, I love that because I know, you know, as a military pilot, but also, you know, the environment you guys work in, right? It's, it's life and death situations, like literally super challenging Very challenging. You know, last minute, you know, there's a lot of stress. But that esprit de corps, that camaraderie, the friendship, it's the people that holds that allows that to be successful and grow. That's, that's, you guys have been very intentional about that.
[00:07:50] Kenny Morrow: Well, and we, we love everybody that works for us. We try to invest in them, we try to, to educate them as a, as a chief operating officer, you know, our focus on our employees is to, to make sure that we're paying them enough. We provide full medical benefits for our customer or for our employee and dependents with no payroll deduction. So the health care that we provide is at no cost to our employees. Now if their spouse has health care coverage available to them through their employer.
[00:08:22] John Ramstead: They can do that.
[00:08:23] Kenny Morrow: That's primary. And then we, we kick in as a secondary. So we, we want them to be financially stable, we want them to be healthy. And so I tell our guys all the time, if you come to us 30 years old or younger, you should be able to retire at least a millionaire and be perfectly healthy if you take advantage of all of our healthcare benefits. So that's, that's our goal for our employees is they get to that retirement point, they got at least a million bucks in the.
[00:08:49] John Ramstead: I'm going to sign up for a, be a pilot for you guys, John, as soon as we're done here. Although I don't know how to fly a helicopter yet, but you know, I am willing to.
[00:08:55] Kenny Morrow: We have six wing. We have fixed wing as well.
[00:08:57] John Ramstead: Hey, good. Yeah. Hey, question for you too in our last couple minutes that we have too. And we're here at Verticon and I know you guys have been, you're forward thinking with innovation and there's a lot of new platforms coming on. You know, powered lift.
[00:09:08] Kenny Morrow: Yep.
[00:09:09] John Ramstead: You know, vertical takeoff, longer range, you know, six, 700 miles. And you know, there's companies like, you know, from Joby and Beta and even unmanned like Elroya, there's a lot of platforms out there. How are you guys thinking about what some of the developments that are happening in the world today are going to.
[00:09:24] Kenny Morrow: That's a great question.
[00:09:26] John Ramstead: Change or even affect or enhance your mission.
[00:09:28] Kenny Morrow: Yeah. So there's, there's three primary areas that we're focused on or platforms that we're focused on for the future. So the first is the Airbus H140 that was just unveiled yesterday morning. So we signed on to be one of the launch customers for that aircraft. So we're committed to the first 12. And then we have an option for 24 more, which is a big, a big commitment.
[00:09:47] John Ramstead: And that's a. That's a bigger twin engine helicopter.
[00:09:49] Kenny Morrow: It's a bigger twin engine. It's the evolution of the EC135. I haven't said that it's replacing the 135. It fits that gap between the 135 and the H145. So we're committed to that aircraft. We're already working to design an air medical interior, so when that first aircraft gets to the United States, we get that Air Medical Interior certified and can start pushing those aircraft out. So that's, that's a really exciting development for our company. The second thing is we've partnered with Leonardo helicopters on the AW09. So we're committed to buy the first 30 AW9s that come to North America. And we're a distributor for Leonardo. For the AW9. We actually have a fuselage, a factory manufactured fuselage not serialized in our facility now that we're using to mock up the Air Medical interior and get ready to certify the Air Medical interior for the AW9. And then the third platform is Beta. So we've partnered with Beta to develop an Air medical interior for their aircraft. They sent us what they call a buck. So it's a prototype fuselage. We just got it last week. And so we're developing an Air medical interior for that. We've ordered one aircraft, the VTOL version. So they have a ctol, which is conventional, and then the vtol, which is vertical. So we've ordered a vertical aircraft and hope to get that in the next few years and start testing it and figure out what's going on because they're doing some really, really innovative stuff.
[00:11:14] John Ramstead: Kenny, thank you so much for being here. That was fascinating and I can't wait for our next conversation. Thank you so much, man. Keep knocking them alive. L.
