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Risky business: Being an airplane repo man

If you or a loved one has ever thought that flying was a risky line of work or hobby, how about being a pilot and flying around the world to repossess multimillion dollar aircraft – including ones owned by dictators in Haiti or the Congo?

ABC News’ Nightline recently aired a segment profiling an airplane repo man named Nick Popovich (we also mentioned a New York Times story about an airplane repo man back in March) who has been in the airplane repossession business for 30 years and has done more than 1,340 repossessions. Nick has seen and experienced just about everything the business has to throw at him, from being thrown in jail for a week in Haiti during the fall of Baby Doc’s regime to having guns pointed at him (“The first time scares the hell out of you…”)

Nick says he is “scared every time he goes” given that he never knows if he will meet “crazy people” or if the “airplane could be bad.” However as he states: “Its what I do for a living!”

In other words, its just another day job for him!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. J Bales says

    October 21, 2009 at 21:33

    This story was over dramatized. The airport and hangar operator in the story had been notified of the situation and knew why he was there and what he was doing at the time. The Airport Police also had been notified and this is the reason he was not stopped.

    Reply
  2. Fan says

    July 7, 2012 at 02:55

    What a great show! I cannot believe it was cancelled so quickly because I found it so much better than many shows out there. Hope Discovery or another network reconsiders. I'd definitely watch it each week!

    Reply
  3. Guillermo says

    October 3, 2012 at 01:16

    When is your show airing again? I and a lot of my freinds think it just GREAT!!

    Reply
  4. Sunny says

    March 2, 2013 at 04:45

    I love the Airplane Repo show. Is it available on dvd for sale in the US? The only ones I could find for sale online were from Australian websites, and the dvds wouldn’t play on US players.

    Reply
  5. Jeff Bertles says

    November 3, 2017 at 20:35

    “My life and times of a repo man as seen thru the eyes of the dude that did it.”
    I can’t help but crack up hearing people calling the stuff fake. There are these things called credits, (usually) run after the show. In said credits it says that some things such as names etc. have been changed. Plus they are run rather quick.
    Well if I had more, many more spaces I could bore the heck out of someone seeking real stories.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Airplane repo - Golf Hotel Whiskey says:
    July 8, 2012 at 08:25

    […] aircraft and you fall behind on your aircraft loan, your plane may come face to face with guys like Nick Popovich (of Sage-Popovich, Inc.) or Ken Hill (of Business Aircraft Sales Corp.) – professional aircraft […]

    Reply
  2. The Business Of Airplane Repo - Forbes says:
    July 12, 2013 at 13:38

    […] aircraft and you fall behind on your aircraft loan, your plane may come face to face with guys like Nick Popovich (of Sage-Popovich, Inc.) or Ken Hill (of Business Aircraft Sales Corp.) – professional aircraft […]

    Reply
  3. Is Airplane Repo on the Discovery Channel fake? | Golf Hotel Whiskey says:
    July 31, 2013 at 09:44

    […] have written a couple of times about the airplane repo business (see Risky business: Being an airplane repo man and Meet an airplane repo man) plus the Discovery Channel has even created a reality TV series […]

    Reply

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Matthew Stibbe
Matthew Stibbe is CEO of Articulate Marketing and Turbine, the easy, online way to deal with office paperwork. He has an FAA CPL/IR and an EASA PPL/IR and sometimes flies a Cirrus SR-22. He also writes about wine at Vincarta and being a better manager at Geek Boss.
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