Podcast: Alpine Air Express Beech 1900D conversion ‘perfect’ freighter for GAM Air

After beginning revenue service with Australia’s first Beech 1900D Super Freighter at the end of May, GAM Air will soon take delivery of another. The carrier signed a deal this year to purchase three aircraft from Provo, Utah-based Alpine Air Express to operate for Team Global Express in Australia under a ten-year contract. The first unit (UE-254) arrived in April. GAM Air started to seriously evaluate the Beech 1900D Super Freighter about two years ago, when Alpine Air Express, which holds the only STC to convert the type, began marketing it. “We started doing some numbers on the airframe then with what we did know, just from a soft approach to see if that was the right sort of aircraft for our client, and it was really the only aircraft in the market — and still is,” GAM Air Chief Executive Carl Jepsen says in this week’s episode of “Cargo Facts Connect.” “They had a point of difference against the Metros, the Dornier 228, and it blew the socks off the SkyCourier as well. “So for us, and what we do in Australia, the routes that we have, the speed we need and the payload we carry, it was the perfect airplane.” The deal with GAM has opened more opportunities for Alpine as interest has grown, Alpine Chief Operating Officer Bob Frisch says. “I think that this airplane fits a really good niche and it’s got that specific market,” he says. “And I think people are starting to look at that not only because of that niche that they have, but also just at the other replacements and the other costs of the airplanes, and what this can do.” Alpine CEO Michael Dancy says he would be reluctant to sell any Beech 1900D freighters to other operators in the United States. “I think the whole idea is I just don’t want them showing up next to me,” he says. “But there is so much interest from these aircraft in Canada, in Europe, in Africa and so forth.” For now, Dancy is happy to have GAM Air as a partner in Australia and wants to see the Australian carrier be as successful as possible. “So, we’d love for them to be the only operator in Australia, because for us, that's a great relationship,” he says. “We know how advantageous that is.” Tune in to this week’s episode of “Cargo Facts Connect” to hear more about the Beech 1900D as Dancy, Jepsen and Frisch speak with Editor Jeff Lee, Senior Associate Editor Robert Luke and Associate Editor Jay Aelick. A transcript is available below. This transcript has been generated by software and some transcription errors may remain. Jeff Lee Hello and welcome to another episode of Cargo Facts Connect, the podcast of cargo facts, the publication of record for the air cargo and freighter aircraft industries for over 40 years. I’m Jeff Lee, editor of Cargo Facts, and it’s Friday, the 12th of June. GAM Air of Australia recently started commercial service with its first Beech 1900D Super Freighter, a conversion STC developed by Alpine Air Express, based in Utah. As the second of three aircraft from Alpine begins making its way to GAM Air, my colleagues Rob and Jay and I had a fun and enlightening chat with GAM Air CEO Carl Jepsen, Alpine CEO Michael Dancy and Alpine COO Bob Frisch. Here is part of that conversation. Jeff Lee I think what would be good is if the three of you kind of take us back to how this deal came about and, you know, the story behind it. Maybe Carl can get us started. Carl Jepsen Sure, okay, it's a long story, so I'll condense it somewhat. So GAM is an organization, we've been in the freight business for 3 decades. And we've got the largest independent freight network, predominantly for Wilson Toll Group, is now Team Global Express. We've operated Air Commanders and Dornier 228s for the majority of that time. And we kind of got to a point where our client needed a different aircraft. And I'm going back probably four years now. And we were up against what were we going to do with the Dornier 228s as they aged, support for them was dwindling from the OEM. The other aircraft that was in the network is the Metro 21 and the Metro 3. So, you know, the client wanted a good 10 year longevity out of a different airframe, something that could do something else. So, you know, we looked at the 1900 C and the D as a standalone aircraft. Neither of those two had a point of difference against the Metro or the Sky Courier or the Dornier. It was just different. It didn't give enough value for the client to get excited. So I first found out about the super freighter that Alpine were doing some years back. Just through some forums, I'd heard whispers and then I started to follow it and then once they first advertised, I think Bob that might have been...Am I right in saying that was two years ago when you first advertised the super freighter? Michael Dancy Thereabouts, yeah, maybe between 2 and 3 years, something in that range, yeah. Carl Jepsen So we started doing some numbers on the airframe then with what we did know, just from a soft approach to see if that was the right sort of aircraft for our client. And it was really the only aircraft in the market and still is. They had a point of difference against the Metro, the 228, and it blew the socks off the SkyCourier as well. So for us, and what we do in Australia, the routes that we have and the speed we need and the payload we carry, it was the perfect airplane. So for us, it was, well, can we make the financials work? Will it fit our business model? Do we have that, you know, 10 plus year support of that airframe? Who else is doing this? Do they make it work? There's all these questions. So, you know, once we connected with Alpine, it, you know, gave us a lot of confidence that, you know, these guys do what we do, they're bigger, they're better. You know, we need to learn from them and how they do things and what they're using. So, you know, we first started the discussions probably two years ago with their broker and Bob, and it's taken this long for us to get to the point with our client, where they were excited, they were convinced us to write Airframe. We'd been over to Utah, we'd met Michael and Bob and the team, and we were, you know, we were blown away with what their organization did, how they did it, how efficient and streamlined they were, and, you know, how they made this particular aircraft work extremely well. So for us, you know, it was a no-brainer. It was really, how do we make the numbers work? So I managed to do that. And we secured a ten-year contract with our client on the back of that airframe. But it gives us a platform that no one else has got here in Australia, and we can grow the Super Freighter platform plus, you know, a Pax D if, you know, that suits our needs as well. So there was a lot of R&D from our perspective. And, you know, for a company of our size, we're only 100 employees. We do about 22,000 sectors per annum. And, you know, there's a lot of moving parts for an organization like us that's so small. But it complements our aircraft. It gives us that that pilot retention as well. So they come on to a smaller aircraft and then they get on the right hand seat to do some markers on the 19 and then to the left hand seat as the pilot. So, you know, it's really given us a point of difference that the market here, I guess, has been disrupted somewhat as a result. No one saw it coming. We kept it fairly quiet. But it's been, you know, it's probably one of the best things that we've done as a company in a long, long time. So that was a long story short. Michael Dancy Yeah, no, no, yeah, that's pretty good, Carl. Yeah, that's good. Jeff Lee Yeah, now the Alpine side. Michael Dancy Yeah, so I bought the company in 2014. And when I did that, we had two aircraft that were flying for a military contract over in the Middle East, flying passengers around. It was out on lease. And when I bought the company, the owner, previous owner had told me, you're going to have to, one of them is sold. So as soon as those two aircraft come back, we have to sell one of them up to an outfit up in Canada in passenger configuration. And then you are left with one aircraft. And now, meanwhile, at that time, I had about 21 or 22 aircraft in the fleet. And I had, I received this one airplane back and I thought, gosh, what are we going to do with this 1900D? Because, well, nobody had ever put into cargo configuration before and we're an all cargo airline. In fact, Beechcraft in our investigation, Beechcraft did put one into cargo configuration. And when they did that, we ultimately bought that airplane so that we could get some experience in flying it and learning about it and whatnot. But I think what we did is we determined that we could convert this airplane from passenger to cargo and it might take us about three months to do so. We were woefully wrong. I think it took us somewhere around five years. It took 50,000 drawings, sketches, and whatnot. Beechcraft wouldn't give us all of the loads. Beechcraft wouldn't give us all the details. They wouldn't give us all the drawings and everything that we needed to really do all the design work because the FAA had determined. At the time of this aircraft certification, there is a need for a right-hand side emergency exit. And that right-hand side emergency exit in the one that Beechcraft made, they utilize the emergency exit over the wing as that right-hand side emergency exit, which means that whole area from the cockpit to that over the wing area would need to be devoid of cargo and or anything. And if you don't have that volume and that weight forward of the spar, then you don't have it after the spar as well. So it became basically useless. And Beechcraft punched out and said, listen, we're not going to, there's nothing else that we can do. So they flew, they sold it to, I'm not sure, somewhere over in Europe. And they were flying around packages for DHLs and probably mostly letter mail and that kind of thing. So it really wasn't being utilized for what it's intended to do. But with that design work that we did, and without really getting into all the real detail of that design, it was a pretty big project. And so much so that we had to redesign the entirety of the interior and many of the functions and many of the systems along the way. But we did have to prove certain things as part of that certification process to the FAA in doing so. Not the least of which was a pressurization test that we had to take that airplane up to an altitude that far exceeded the ability to take that airplane. I think the pressure differential was almost 11 PSI, which puts us in 50,000 plus feet, that kind of thing. And that is an airplane that goes to 25,000 feet. So how do you do that? We got smart how we did it, and we ended up building a really nice design engineering team, scanned the inside of the airplane, scanned the outside of the airplane, put all those things together, built it in designed it from beginning to end, first article inspections, all of the documentation that we needed to do so with the FAA, which took a tremendous amount of data. In fact, behind me here are all the books that we have that we had to compile along the way to build all of that and do all the first article inspections and whatnot. But we received the final approval from the FAA at the end of 2018, December or so of 2018, so truly four years after I bought the company, 2019 was when we were able to get Transport Canada and EASA approval on it. But as such that was a true differentiated airplane. Our customer, UPS and others as well, they didn't have an airplane that fit that size, that volume size. And that's the whole point is that how can you make the volume fit the available weight available to the aircraft? Either you cube out, as they say in the industry, or you weigh out, but typically, very rarely do you do it at the same time. With this airplane, because of the additional, it's 40% larger than the C model. Because of that, that enables you to get the volume and the weight to conclude at the same point. And with that, that truly differentiated us against the Metroliner because we have the speed, but now the volume. And the way that that aircraft was built to begin with, it has straight sidewalls, so you oftentimes end up with square peg round hole problems in our world. And the Metroliner was a round circuit, and this is not. So it allowed us to load it much more efficiently. It's much less expensive to operate than two pilot operations. In the United States, we can fly it single pilot. In other countries, you can't. But that being said, comparatively up against the EMB-120, it was a much less operational expense. We found ourselves in a position with this particular airplane that was very unique and very advantageous to our cargo customers. And although we are an airline to begin with, since that point of having about 25 airplanes, now we have 81. And that enabled us to go buy another airline, Great Lakes Airlines, that had 27 or so D models themselves that they were flying in passenger configuration, that flying essential air service here in the United States. In fact, Bob used to fly for them many years ago, which is kind of fun. That said, that enabled us to go procure that group, take those airframes, do complete refurbishments on those airframes, engines and everything, did design work along the way. So as an airline, we were pivoting to become an engineering company. And then we pivoted again to become a manufacturing company as we were manufacturing them for ourselves and anybody else who we thought that would fit the criteria. And I'll get to those criteria as to who we would sell it to, because we really didn't want it showing up next to us on a flight line, if you will, competing with us. But that said, it was a fantastic next generation airplane to the 1900s C. And the big part of it is there were 400 or so of these made, a little more than 400 made, where there were, I think, 75 C models made. And of the available airframes still today in the C model size, C&B, not many. And so spare parts, available parts, next generation avionics, all of those things, that didn't really exist in the C model, existed in the D model. And that enabled us to really take advantage of newer parts, newer tools, more plentiful things available to long-term sustainability for that aircraft. And there really aren't as long as you're maintaining it within the manufacturer's requirements and so forth, you don't have life-limited parts that can't be changed, things like that, spars and whatnot. That's a unique part about the D model as well. So that in itself allows us a long life with that very capable airframe. We were competing as a manufacturer for ourselves, but really against Beechcraft again, because they built the Sky Courier. And the Sky Courier, although it's a 25,000 foot airplane, it's not an airplane that really, that's pressurized, and it has the speeds and the real requirements that we need. So we need it and so forth. And Carl, I think, mentioned it as well. So we're 100 knots faster and we have all of the carrying capability and, you know, with their own airplane. So it was kind of a tickle for me to beat Beechcraft with their own airplane that they stopped producing. So with that in mind, Bob and our team here started talking with Gam and Carl, and Bob came to me and he says, you know, I think we have a really wonderful airline who knows what they're doing. And that's, we'd like to enter, you know, enter an opportunity to perhaps sell those aircraft that we have online to them. And my first question is, well, are they going to show up next to me on the flight line? He says, well, I don't think so. They're in Australia. Well, then that's helpful. So then I think from there we took off. Yeah. Jeff Lee About as far away as as you can get. Michael Dancy Yeah. So then we put the, we put a deal together for the first, the first of three, and hopefully more, and we go from there, yeah. Jeff Lee Great, thanks. Michael Dancy So that's how we got into that. Jeff Lee So, yeah, lots of, yeah, lots of lots of interesting points and questions. So Michael, after this first deal with GAM and down in Australia, are you do you think this has opened up more door doors to potentially other deals with other operators or companies or leasing companies, whether they're inside the US or outside the US? Michael Dancy You know, I'm going to let Bob talk a little bit about this because he fields these questions from our agents who are taking them in. Jeff Lee Sure. Bob Frisch Yeah, the answer is the answer to that is really quickly, yes, it has. And I think that, you know, as Carl pointed out, this airplane fits a really good niche and it's a very specific, it's got that specific market. And I think people are starting to look at that for not only because of that niche that they have, but also just as the other replacements and the other costs of the airplanes and what this can, what this can do. It's, And as Michael kind of pointed out, there are extra shells out there. There are other airplanes that can be modded with the SDC. We have right now, we have three in our immediate pipeline with about 10 more after that coming that we're continuing to mod. So we're not slowing down our mod lines at all. And in addition to that, one of the things that we've looked at doing is expanding that of our cockpit on these aircraft too. Michael Dancy That's right. Talk a little bit about that. Yeah. Bob Frisch And so we've we have done all the flight testing for a glass cockpit in the D model to enhance that as well. And it's and Carl had to and his team were able to look at that and get a good tour of that when they were in Provo. And so that's another option to keep this airplane relevant. And I do believe it's going to get a lot of interest out there because it is so unique and it serves a, it's a workhorse. I mean, like Michael said, I flew this airplane and it's a great airplane, very stable, and it's a workhorse. The STC mod that we have for the cargo maximizes its ability to haul the missions. Michael Dancy And it's a full all-weather capable aircraft. You know, we fly a lot of mountainous regions and it's, you know, has PT6 engines on there that are extremely capable engines, far more so than the engines that were specified for the DC models. And so those airplanes can climb straight up if you be careful. You have to be careful when you take off that you don't climb straight up, you know, because they are incredibly powerful and they're great stable aircraft to fly. So because of that, that enables pilots who are, you know, moving their way through their training career. It's a great airplane to you know, understand next generation systems on. And this cockpit that we've just completed the development work, it's in submission to the FAA. We expect that approval shortly. So with that, that would be another option for really extending the life of the aircraft even further. Robert Luke Thank you, Michael, and thank you, Bob. Carl, question for you. As you were evaluating the super freighter, and with the years of experience you have operating these turbo freighters, how much did the factor of the PT-6 engine being the power plant for this aircraft in addition to what it offered as far as volume play into convincing Team Global Express, who I assume likes to get their shipments delivered quickly, factor into their decision to commit to this aircraft type? Carl Jepsen For us, the power plant choice was really around support. So we've been operating the Honeywell TPE 331-10s for a number of years. And we found that the, you know, come overhaul time trying to find the turbine wheels at a you know, a viable cost was just getting harder and harder. Shield control units, the whole, you know, all the all the LRRs around the engine were making it difficult for us. We kind of knew that long term, the Honeywell was not the right power plant for the airframe we were looking for. You know, Pratt and Whitney with the smaller PD6s are not obviously the larger and this instance was for us, a no-boner, so we really had to ensure that the airframe we chose had the PT-6 engines. Robert Luke Thank you. And as you are taking in these aircraft, of course, you've got the 10-year commitment. This is a question for both Carla and Michael and Bob, as well, all three. What is it that you can do as far as the maintenance modifications that you mentioned earlier? And how does that further expand the life cycle of the aircraft? And what does that project as far as before it ages out, before a civil aviation authority says, oh, no more, you can't fly this aircraft type? Michael Dancy Yeah, I'm going to take a stab at answering that to begin with, and then everybody else can kind of chime in. But I can say that we've been operating PT6 engines for, you know, we're a 50-year-old company. We've been operating for probably 30 years at least, that platform on our group of aircraft. However, this particular model, which is the DAS 67 Delta, is the most sophisticated of that group. That being said, the engine itself has a 6,000 hour overhaul and cycle life. That is a manufacturer's requirement. However, there is a manufacturer capability from Pratt that if you do a particular option, they call it the option B, which is to say that they do an inspection and a light overhaul just prior to that 6,000 hours, which you could do it literally at 5,999. then that would allow you to take that engine to 9,000 hours. And that's a very, very significant difference, 30% reduction in the actual cost of the operation. There are many operators around the world who routinely operate these engines over 10,000 hours and cycles. And with that, they it depends on their approvals with their regulatory bodies, whether it's YASA or otherwise. But that being said, they is a is is a an engine that once you receive it through its first life, you can routinely overhaul it two more times. And when I say that, it's a very, very capable engine that Beech did. And it was a notable upgrade from the Dash 65s that are on the C models. So Beech, when they knew they were making the D model itself, they went to Pratt and asked for an upgraded engine, and this was it. And I'll tell you, it's a fantastic power plant, yeah, from our experience. Robert Luke And Carl, just as you kind of expanded on, you needed to transition out of the Honeywell engines you mentioned earlier, how do you see yourself be as far as support between you and Alpine Air Express to support the power plant as well as the aircraft as you commit to this investment in the super freighter? And do you see yourself expanding on the super freighter as you progress forward with your operation of the aircraft? Carl Jepsen Okay, so from an airframe perspective, the challenges we had prior to the super freighter with the both the Donia 228 and the 690 Air Commander, the Turbo Commander, both of those airframes had limitations on the fuselage itself. The 690 had been pressurized, had fatigue cycles. Once you had reached those fatigue cycles and the spar had done its time, you literally cut that airframe up in this country. So there's not an idea, I believe, in the US, it's purely for us, with the exception of the spar, which is interchangeable, but it's cost prohibitive to do that. So the Dornier again, but non-pressurised, it still had fatigue cycles, which didn't really make sense. But once you'd reached that, there was a small extension you could apply for. But post that, again, the airframe was scrapped. So, you know, with the 1900D, in my opinion, as a lane, it's an over-engineered airframe. It's extremely well built. It's well designed. There are no fatigue issues. There's no weak points at all that we would have any concerns around. So the airframe life itself was never really a factor for us from that perspective. Engine wise, we've got full support of Pratt and Whitney here, plus a few other grey shops and obviously our relationship with our pioneer as well. So we've got a lot of peace of mind that the longevity of this airframe and engine won't be an issue for us. Robert Luke Thank you. Jeff Lee Carl, so the certification must have gone very smoothly because you, I mean, that we see that that this first aircraft is already, I mean, has been flying for a couple of weeks now, which is great. It's not, you know, it's not very common these days for certification processes to go smoothly without delays. So, how with the these first few weeks, how how have the operations been and you know? What are your, well, first, what are your crews saying, but also, I guess, how happy is your customer? Carl Jepsen So I'll just go back to the first point you made that we got this here, once we got the airframe here and we had completed the customers library, we had that airframe with the import C of A done and ready to go within two weeks. So our major delay was getting that that air or that aircraft type on our AOC. Our regulatory body, we've got a very good relationship with them. So just through relationships alone, we were able to fast track that. So to get that on our AOC and also approved with our maintenance organization as well was a lot of work we were doing prior to the airframe getting here. So once it was here, you know, we knew that it was a matter of weeks, not months. The first flight we did, the first revenue flight we did was week before last. And, you know, sadly for us in Queensland, you either get good days or bad days with weather. And that was a bad day. There were some pretty hefty cells around the place, but, you know, pleasing, it was very pleasing for us that the aircraft was super capable and just went straight through the weather. So there was no issues at all once we got it up and going. So the client's super happy. They're overwhelmed with the speed and the ability from a payload perspective. It's very difficult for us to sort of really tell a true story without them seeing the airframe. So the first day we launched the aircraft in Queensland, we invited the management team to come out and have a look. And they all jumped on that, and fortunately for us, they were all able to get into the aircraft and stand up without hitting their heads. So, you know, for them, over the last several decades in the metros, they've had so many issues with staff, injuries or just personal fatigue, having to bend over all day, every day. So you know, they were they were pleasantly surprised by the size, the speed, the performance from a customer's perspective. Our pilots, our chief pilot, he had recently returned from the from the SIM, so you know, he was he had flown a number of aircraft, but he'd never flown a 1900 D. So, his first flight, it was obviously empty, but like Michael and Bob were saying, this thing can go vertical. It was just, the performance was outrageous. It took off and just, it boogied. It was, you know, the grin on the face of the pilots when they got back was, said enough. Michael Dancy Yeah, I've flown it and Bob as well, and he's not kidding. It's a rocket ship, boy, I'll tell you. Yeah. Carl Jepsen Yeah, it's a real airplane, it really is, you know, it's a big small aircraft, if that makes sense, but yeah, it's phenomenal. Jay Aelick If I could just jump in here for a second, Carl, I was curious along what additional routes you're planning to deploy the new super freighters. And if you're able to share what cargo load mixes will be moving along those routes, that would be great as well. Carl Jepsen Yeah, cargo mix is hard to know. It's predominantly priority freight, so a lot of it is pathology between hospitals in the region, regional and remote areas of Australia. The first two aircraft will, they will be based in Brisbane in Queensland and they will do the east coast and east-west to Mount Isa five days a week. So I would say 80% of the pallet will be pathology. The remaining will be priority freight and also government documentation. Additional routes we have we have looked at some of the southern states and also another run that we do from South Australia in Adelaide to the middle of Australia to Alice Springs that we do in a turbo commander at the moment. At the moment, the payload doesn't quite justify the super freighter, but that's a work in progress. So there's a number of other routes around the country that we just need to build the capability, or the demand I should say, to justify that sort of, or that size of airframe. Jay Aelick Can I ask what in particular about these aircraft makes them so suited to that niche around Queensland specifically? Carl Jepsen It's, I guess it's really, Michael touched on as well before, it's the ability to take the bulk. You know, in the past, you know, we've always had payload and or bulk restrictions. Now we no longer have bulk because the aircraft will be, reaches payload limits before the bulk if we've got that type of freight on board. So you know, if anything, been able to, and what we've basically done is condensed the payload from a Dornier 228 and two metros into two 1900s. So, you know, the commercial benefits of that, you know, are significant for us. Also, going from the 228, which is a multi-crew to single crew freight ops for us is another significant. step forwards as well. So it really did tick all our boxes from our performance, payload, the bulk, the pilot transition, the pilot ability with single pilot ops. There's nothing that we needed to consider to be, oh, well, that's the trade-off. It just took everything. Jay Aelick That's very informative. Thank you. Michael Dancy And Carl, in the future, you're going to love the new cockpit too, because I bet you you won't be able to not have that on there. That new cockpit's amazing. Yeah, so yeah. Carl Jepsen Yes. Yeah, well, we saw your the prototype that you had with you were doing with FAA when we were there, and you know, wow, you know, for us, that's just the icing on the cake. It's it makes a great aeroplane spectacular, so yeah, I think we'll be adopting that in due course. Jeff Lee And now Michael, after selling these three to Carl, you have to bring back additional aircraft on the passenger side and convert them into freighter to put them back into your own operation. How many more feedstock, conversion feedstock candidates, do you really see? Michael Dancy Right. So right now we have an additional 10 aircraft that are in our, that we own, that came as part of the Great Lakes group. We have several locations around the world, including in South Africa and several here in the United States that have been doing our refurbishments. And we have 3 aircraft that are slated to go to Carl, and we have 4 aircraft in late stage refurbishment for us. So 3 are coming out, 4 are coming back in, and we'll have those back into our team immediately. When I say immediately, over the next few months, that kind of thing. Essentially, we have them finished. We just have to do the final testing on them, and then bring all of the, you know, there are there are some life limit, not life limit, there are some there are some maintenance items that are that are calendar based. And so we just have to make sure that all of those things are completed. Hang on here. And as we do that, three are coming out, four are coming in, and then we'll still have another, you know, roughly 6 aircraft or so that are that we have available to us to add to our fleet. If we did have another request from Carl or otherwise, our intent would be to go out and procure the aircraft because we know where all these airplanes are that are sitting around in the world and who owns them and so forth. We've been really developing a network of that for years. Because of the fact that it works well in cargo configuration and less well in passenger configuration because the regional jet and whatnot have really kind of taken over those markets from a passenger seat mile cost that we would take from draw from that those procured aircraft and then put them in one of the facilities so that it doesn't impede ourselves as an airline. The whole idea is we're an airline first, we're an engineering company second, and we're a manufacturing company third, and we really try to keep those directorates all operating separately, but proficiently and efficiently. So, and it's been working, yeah. Jeff Lee So, you'd be, you'd be very reluctant to sell to anyone else in the country, right? Michael Dancy Very reluctant. Yeah, I think that's the whole idea is I don't I just don't want them showing up next to me. But there is so much interest from these aircraft in Canada, in Europe, in Africa, and so forth. And we just we're so happy to have GAM as a partner in Australia. We really feel like that we want to see them be as successful as possible. So we'd love them to be the only operator in Australia, because for us, that's a great relationship. We know how advantageous that is. Jeff Lee Well, Carl, Michael and Bob, thank you so much for sharing all this interesting information with us and these stories. And of course, congrats again on this deal. And Carl, good luck with the next two. And we'll see, we look forward to seeing the second one and making its long journey down toward you. In the meantime, thanks again and we'll hopefully we'll talk again very soon. Michael Dancy Excellent. Thank you very much. Carl Jepsen That was great. Bob Frisch Thank you, guys. Robert Luke Thanks, guys. Carl Jepsen Thank you for your time. Jeff Lee That was Carl Jepsen, CEO of GAM Air, Michael Dancy, CEO of Alpine Air Express, and Bob Frisch, COO of Alpine Air Express, talking with the Cargo Facts team. And that’s all the time we have for today. For more coverage of the freighter aircraft market, visit cargofacts.com. Thank you very much for tuning in, and join us again next time. Subscribe to Cargo Facts Connect on iTunes or Spotify , or download the episode on Transistor . Cargo Facts Symposium 2026, the premier event for the freighter aircraft and air cargo industries, will take place in Nashville, Tenn., on Oct. 21-23. Find out more and register by Sept. 4 to take advantage of early-bird pricing.

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