AOPA Pilot Magazine - February 2015 - 74

H
He's been called the "super repo man" and once starred
in the first season of a Discovery Channel reality show
called Airplane Repo. He is an "aircraft repossession
specialist" who never finished college but who has a net
worth of more than $2 million, drives a Bentley, chain
smokes cigars, and owns the oldest aircraft repossession
service in the world. He chose to follow only one piece
of the advice that his father gave him, and got his pilot
certificate at the age of 16-being a pilot "might come in
handy," his father said. He flew for Braniff International
Airways for a while but he found it boring.
For Nick Popovich it all started when a bank loaned a company enough cash to buy a couple of Boeing 747s. The new owner,
it seemed, had stopped making payments, and stopped maintaining the jumbos. Some of the bankers knew Popovich and asked if
he'd like to take part in a little adventure.
Popovich tracked the airplanes to an airport in Asia, rounded up
a couple of crews, and headed east. He explained to airline employees that they were there to perform a typical inspection, so they
were allowed to make sure both 747s were airworthy; they fueled
them up, fired up the engines, and filed flight plans to Australia. "By
the time they figured it out we were gone," Popovich says. From
Australia they flew to Mojave, where the bank had prearranged storage, and Popovich collected his check. "That paid a lot more than I
expected," he says. "I decided there was a business there."

NICK POPOVICH has
an enviable collection
of spoils-like this antique
Packard-from his
extensive work in aircraft
repossession, including
a remarkable collection
of random aircraft parts,
which he also sells (right).
74 | AOPA PILOT February 2015

That was 1979. He formed sage-popovich, inc. (SPI)-Sage is the surname of his
ex-wife-to repossess commercial aircraft.
The first 10 years he was on his own. "I'd
get a call and I'd round up some friends,
and it was an adventure," he said. But business grew, and now, with more than 1,600
repossessions, it's the world's largest specialist in the recovery of aviation-related
equipment.
Whenever there's a recession or a natural or man-made disaster, business picks
up: after the first Gulf War in 1991, post9/11, the Great Recession. "I kind of look at
European traffic patterns to see how well
the airlines are doing," he says. Although
the airplanes are not always maintained,
SPI still has an agreement with the bank
to operate safely. "We've had a couple of situations," he says.
"Nothing major." An Airbus A320 out of Thailand suffered a minor
hydraulic problem, so they landed in the Azores to replace the
brake valves, and there was an engine problem on a Gulfstream
G200-but "nothing traumatic or dangerous or scary," he says.
This comes from a guy who spent a week in a Haitian prison.
In 1986 a nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine, suffered a
meltdown, and the airline business took a deep dive. One skipped
a few payments on an airliner thought to be in the Dominican
Republic, so the bank hired Popovich to look into it. He flew to
Santo Domingo with a flight engineer and two mechanics, but
when they arrived the airliner wasn't there. Popovich tracked it
to Port au Prince, Haiti; drove to that airport; and told the airport
manager it was their airplane.

AOPA Pilot Magazine - February 2015

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