#63 - Keith Rosenkranz: The Delta Captain Who Chartered His Own Retirement Flight

[00:00:00] Hey, welcome back to Passive Income Pilots everyone. Tait Duryea here with Ryan Gibson on another episode. How are you doing, Ryan? Oh man, we just interviewed a guest that gave us probably the most heartwarming love letter to aviation retirement story that

[00:00:15] I've ever heard of. I'm so excited about this to share this with our listeners. It was so much fun. I'm doing great. A legend, a new newborn legend because it's a, this just happened. It's been all over the news and yeah, we have the Delta captain that chartered

[00:00:32] the A330neo to Hawaii for his retirement flight. Yeah, as airline pilots, we always joke around about what will we do on our last flight, steal the airplane and fly it home to our own house or whatever in land and abandon it there and let them

[00:00:45] come fetch it or whatever, but you'd end up arrested if so don't do that. You all these like these old airline captain retirement stories. Literally this is the most legendary airline pilot story in retirement story ever. There is nothing. Nobody has

[00:01:00] ever done anything like this and Keith tell, we're not going to ruin the story. Keith tells a story at the end of the episode of what he did. And of course this is a passive income pilot podcast. So we're talking about passive income. So we're

[00:01:12] going to, we're going to talk about how Keith positioned his career, how he saved, how he invested, how he's retired on and he's earning passive income. And he has the means to actually go spend an airline captain's

[00:01:25] salary to go do an amazing retirement party. But it's just an incredible story. So absolutely. Yeah. It was heartwarming. The guy is a complete class act has had an incredible military career and incredible airline

[00:01:39] career. He's just one of those guys that you would want to fly with. You just, you'd really enjoy flying with someone like this. Yeah. You know, those, those trips you go on and the captain is buying

[00:01:49] the pizza and the beer and helping out with the crew and just a gentleman or a lady and a scholar and just an upstanding individual, somebody who you're just like, this is who I aspire to be like as an

[00:02:02] airline pilot, right? When I, that's who this guy is. And I know you always dream of as an airline pilot, having the perfect career. This guy had the perfect career and the, and an absolute amazing sendoff for

[00:02:13] his last flight. So if you're looking, if you're wondering what to do on your retirement flight, like this guy wrote the book on it on how to do a send off and how to have a lot of fun with everybody who's

[00:02:21] touched you and been part of your life from growing up in the neighborhood to the guy who flew with on your last trip, whatever it might be. Absolutely. I will note that when we talked a bunch about the,

[00:02:32] the investing strategy sort of in the middle of the episode, I was surprised. I was expecting if someone was going to spend a wide body captain salary, yearly salary on a flight that they would have some pretty expansive investment holdings. And what's cool about this is he

[00:02:51] did it on a very, I don't want to say, podet. We will. And I don't want to, I don't want to talk about it, but it just goes to show that if you put very basic building blocks in place, and

[00:03:00] if you're listening to this show and you're implementing some of the real advanced stuff, it's just, it's incredible how successful you could be. But anyway, Keith Rosencrans, the man, the myth, the legend that charted the 330 to take 112 friends and family members to Hawaii for his retirement

[00:03:17] flight. Without further ado, let's get to it. Welcome to passive income pilots, where pilots upgrade their money. This is the definitive source for personal finance and investment tactics for aviators. We interview world renowned experts share these lessons with the flying

[00:03:35] community. So if you're ready for practical knowledge and insights, let's roll. Keith, thank you so much for joining us. It is an honor to to have you on the show. Everyone has heard about this story in aviation. I'm so excited to be able to share

[00:03:50] you with our listeners and get the story firsthand. So welcome to the show. Thank you very much. I appreciate your having me. Yeah, Keith, when you when I read your story, it just brought me so much happiness and joy. It's like why I got

[00:04:03] into flying in the first place. And I feel like you had the perfect career. We I always think about how I want to be as a captain, how I want to end my career, how I how I dreamed of being a pilot when I was a kid. And

[00:04:16] I feel like you just saw the whole thing so perfectly you had the military career. You had the awesome career at Delta and just if you wouldn't mind just give us the give us kind of an overview of where you came

[00:04:26] from and your background. Thank you. I grew up in Southern California and lived for a while right behind the Santa Monica airport. And my mom was divorced and she used to put me on a continental jet to Arizona for a month every summer to visit with

[00:04:40] my father. And my face is always glued to the window looking outside the entire flight. So I think just being by an airport and those fights back and forth to Phoenix got me hooked. And then I went to high school at St. Bernard's, which is

[00:04:55] right by 24 right at LAX. And on rainy days, I used to sit in the second story window and just eat my lunch and watch the planes take off and land. And I thought that's what I'd love to do one day

[00:05:07] and finished high school, went off to college in Long Beach State University. I was on the baseball team. That was not going to go anywhere. And the brand new Air Force KC 10s were landing right over the field at McDonald

[00:05:19] Douglas in Long Beach. Went to talk to an Air Force recruiter, put me in touch with the ROTC unit, Loyola Marymount and started taking the courses. And I was commissioned in December of 22 and went off to pilot training at Reese Air Force Base in Lubbock, Texas in

[00:05:37] April of 83. Newly married, Collette and I had just gotten married in June of 82. So we headed off to Reese Air Force Base in Lubbock, Texas. Quite a change from Los Angeles, California, as you can imagine. Went through pilot training. I had always wanted

[00:05:51] to fly that KC 10. Did not get that out of pilot training. I was brought back as a T 38 instructor pilot. And so I spent an extra three and a half years at Reese Air Force Base instructing UPT students. And that entire

[00:06:05] time I wanted to fly that KC 10. And so toward the end of my time at Reese, I used to have this program that I ran called Buddy Wing where pilots from Reese can go to other commands, get a ride. Other

[00:06:17] commands can come to Reese, get a ride in a T 37 or T 38 and decide if that was the course they wanted to take. So my boss let me go to Barksdale and get a KC 10 ride. So I'm on this KC 10 in the cockpit for

[00:06:29] four hours. We're going to refuel some A 10s. And the pilots turn around, what the heck do you want to fly this thing for? We don't get any flying time. They make us sit alert in Saudi Arabia. Gosh, if I could fly a fighter, I'd do it in

[00:06:43] a minute. So I came home, I told Collette I said, gosh, these guys hated it. I want to be challenged. So I was the instructor for our wing commander and he said, Rosie put down an F 16. That's the best path for you. So I did. And that's

[00:06:57] what I got. Went through a F 16 training at Luke. My first tour was a one year remote at Kunsan Korea. I left when my twin girls were four months old. So all of a sudden maybe that KC 10 didn't sound so bad. But the tour of Korea

[00:07:14] at the time was hard because you miss your family and being gone a year is a long time. But when you're older and you look back, what an incredible tour that was great flying every night was a Friday night at the officers club, great friends, great camaraderie did

[00:07:29] that ended up at Hill Air Force Base in Salt Lake after and no sooner did we get there. Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. We deployed to the United Arab Emirates and I was there for six months ended up flying combat missions during the war. Got 10 Maverick missile

[00:07:45] kills on the highway of death north of Kuwait city. And my last flight in the F 16 and we'll get back to this in a little bit was February 28 1991. And so got two more kills on the highway death came home back to the base and

[00:08:01] then the war ended that night came back to Hill, put in my papers got hired by Delta and started training in July of 91. I spent seven years as a second officer on the panel on the 727. I was furloughed for seven months

[00:08:16] of that and then eventually got to the right seat at the 727 flew that for four years. I was a great job and then upgraded to the right seat of the 75767 and back to the story of when I was in high school and looking

[00:08:30] out of that window at the planes taking off and landing. It was 14 years after graduating college Air Force and the first time I'm taken off in a Delta jet out of LAX. I look down and I see that window and as I made it. That's so cool. Still

[00:08:47] emotional. Nice. And so for the last 33 years, I made a point every time I took off out of LAX to look at that window and dip the wing and in case any young boy or girls looking out wanting to fly one day

[00:09:03] that was where I came from. So flew the 75767 for 12 13 years finally upgraded to captain on the 320 did that for six years and then went to the A330 in the left seat for my final two or three years and all of a sudden you snap your fingers and

[00:09:20] it's over 41 years of flying. That's so cool. That's amazing. You always loved aviation. You wanted to get into it as a kid, but what was better about it than you ever anticipated as a kid? Like what you after this long career, what surprised you about flying in

[00:09:37] your career? I love the challenge of it and I love seeing the world and whether I was in an F 16, a T 38 or an A330, I always had a window seat to the world. And as a former Air Force officer, I've stood in Red Square in

[00:09:52] Moscow. If I wanted a nice steak dinner, I go down to Buenos Aires or Santiago Chile and have a great steak for dinner. And I think the flying itself was always exciting and fun. I went to talk to the eighth grade class of my old elementary school

[00:10:08] or students at my old high school. I'd always ask them, when do you think the last time was I worked? And they say, Oh, last week or yesterday. And I would tell them I haven't worked since 1983 when I was at Safeway supermarket ever since then, I've been getting

[00:10:21] paid to fly jets. It was just a great rewarding time that just seemed to pass in an instant. I can relate to that so much. I for years was flying wide bodies as an FO and I used to call my airline, my trust

[00:10:34] fund. I said, I just do fun stuff. I get to fly to these fun places and have these incredible experience and money shows up every two weeks for no reason. And that's exactly the way I felt. Now, I went to the left seat and worked a

[00:10:46] little bit over the last bit, but I am officially this is my last layover on IOE going back to the right seat as a first officer in the 330 just because I wanted to be super senior. So I could definitely relate to that man. That's

[00:10:59] that's a great jet. You'll love it. Yeah, I flew it as an as an FO before I upgraded eight years ago. So I just spent eight years in the left seat and then I just pulled the plug to go back to the right to enjoy a really great

[00:11:10] schedule. So it was all about that's what it's like. Absolutely. Speaking of quality of life, what were the difficult times in your aviation career? And what did those teach you? He said you were furloughed for how long that teacher seven months. What was it like

[00:11:27] going through that for a lot of the young people out there that have not been through a bankruptcy cycle or furlough. What wisdom do you have to share with them? I went to give a talk to the student body at Embry Riddle in Florida many years ago.

[00:11:40] And a lot of it was about I'd written a book called Vipers in the Storm about my 16 experiences during the Gulf War. So they invited me out. And during the Q&A portion, they wanted to know, hey, I want to be where you're at one day. But I

[00:11:55] don't know which direction to go. Should I go through the military? Should I go through civilian? So I took about 10 minutes and I talked about all my military experiences, instructing in the T-38, flying the F-16, going to war, being qualified for special weapons and how great the

[00:12:13] responsibility was, how incredible the flying was. And then I came over and I said at Delta Airlines, I'm number 5825 and I stopped. And my point being was in the military, you have a lot of responsibility. You have clearances, you have incredible challenges. In the

[00:12:30] airline, I'm a number and I learned that. When it came time to furlough, I thought I was going to be okay. And I was in Buffalo on a layover and we're at the gate and the gate agent said, hey, is Keith Rosencrantz here? I said, yeah, I'm

[00:12:45] right here. Yeah, you got a phone call. You need to call this number. I'm like, who do I know in Buffalo? And I called the number. Well, it was a chief pilot in Dallas telling me I was getting furloughed two weeks from them. So I think the

[00:12:54] hard part was just being a number and not having all the responsibilities anymore that I'd had in an F-16 in the Air Force. And the other hard part was not knowing when I was going to come back. And ironically, when we came back from the

[00:13:12] Gulf War, some of my friends weren't really interested in getting out of the Air Force yet. I want to get a thousand hours on the F-16 they would tell me. Getting a couple of flights a month, all of a sudden, hey, I want to be at Delta or

[00:13:24] I want to be at American or United wherever. That time difference between them getting hired and me getting hired, they were on furlough for three years. I was seven months and then I was back. And those were hard times. You didn't know when you're going

[00:13:38] to come back. You got to take care of your family and stuff. Fortunately, my wife had a great job and I was only out seven months. So with unemployment, with furlough pay and savings, I was okay. I didn't have to get a job, but I knew

[00:13:52] there was going to be a point out there in the future. If I didn't get called back by them, yeah, I was going to start putting applications out. Keith, one thing you always tell people is every day in our industry is September 10th and you never

[00:14:04] know what's going to happen tomorrow. What do you mean? Yeah, what do you mean by that? And how do you financially prepare for something like that? Well, what I meant by it is we look at our industry and how things were the day before 9-11. And then

[00:14:18] after 9-11 when planes were grounded and people were in fear and it was just a different industry after that. And I would tell my first officers that and then my one friend Rusty, he used to laugh at me and he'd say, yeah, you'd always

[00:14:33] tell me that. And I just think, yeah, that's, that doesn't mean anything. Then COVID hit. And all of a sudden he said, you know what? I remember you telling me that. And when COVID hit, all of a sudden it was the same thing. The industry was on its

[00:14:45] knees so to speak. So that's what I meant by that. And going back, when I left the Air Force, I took a 50% pay cut. I was a captain. It was summer of 91. I had about $13 in an IRA. That's all I had. I was 32 years

[00:15:01] old. And so my very first trip with Delta, the captain gave me the best advice I'd ever received. He turned around during a flight and he says, I hope you have a great career. Here's my advice for you financially. Take 50% of every raise you get and save it.

[00:15:17] Take the other 50% and improve your lifestyle. And so I made a point throughout my career of taking that advice and living within my means, which I think is hard for people to do. We all covet nice sayings and how many people have a finance charge on their

[00:15:35] credit card every month because they don't pay it off. So I always felt living within my means was important. I always put 10% into the 401k. And at the time, Delta had a defined benefit program that they funded. And if you were a 30 year Delta pilot that was going

[00:15:52] to retire at age 60, typically those guys would get a lump sum, which was half of their defined benefit. They'd probably take home about 1.2 million in their lump sum. The other half would stay in an annuity that would pay them about 70 grand a year the rest of their

[00:16:09] career or their life. And then whatever they had in their 401k. And so I was managing my own money, no clue what I was doing. I'd see a mutual fund that was up 30%. Oh, that's where I need to put my money. It might be up 30% this year and

[00:16:22] next year, maybe down 10%. I had no idea what I was doing. So by word of mouth, first officer I'd flown with said, Oh, you need to talk to this guy that I work with. He's a Delta pilot. But when he was on furlough, he got involved with finance

[00:16:36] and taking care of managing others finances. He never came back to fly. So I gave him a call and he took a look at my portfolio, which wasn't much. And he agreed to work with me. And I would say the magic word is diversification. If

[00:16:52] you were to go into my fidelity account, you'd probably see four or five dozen different funds and stocks and things that he's got spread out across the board. And that really was the best decision I'd made as far as management of my money was having somebody

[00:17:07] that really knew what they were doing, take care of that. Now on the other half of the equation, in a way when Delta went through his bankruptcy, that was tough for people. I can remember in the months leading up going on a trip to Europe

[00:17:21] and the captain would walk in, never met him before. And he would say, I'm out of here at the end of the month. Talked to my wife, talked to my financial advisor. I can't afford for us to go bankruptcy and lose my lump sum. End of the month,

[00:17:34] I'm done. And on the way across the Atlantic, they talk about all the things they were going to do. And the next day we get in the jet, I can't do it. I'm not leaving. Their hair was falling out. They were just a wreck. And the bankruptcy

[00:17:46] took a toll on people. Some people lost all their 401k matching funds from Delta. Mine was about 80,000, gone. In the bankruptcy, Delta was trying to file an 1113 motion that would basically end our contract. And as that time went through and discussions, they ended up converting to a defiant

[00:18:05] contribution, which started and everybody in bankruptcy court has a claim against the company, whether you're a caterer or a pilot with a contract, whatever. You end up getting pennies on the dollar because the judge usually wipes off all the debt, gets a fresh start on your stock.

[00:18:24] And during that period, Doug Parker from US Air tried to do a hostile takeover of Delta. And it made the value of our claim worth about 61 cents on the dollar and the union sold that to some hedge fund. And then the company said to the pilot union,

[00:18:38] if you agree not to challenge us in court for ending the defiant benefit, we'll give you 50 million in note money. Some of these figures may be off, but that's what I remembered. So we had 61% of $2.1 billion dollars and we had this note money. So the union came up

[00:18:55] with a formula based on your age, what aircraft you flew, how much you made, what seat you're in. You got a payout. So I was 48 years old, right seat, 767 ER. And my payout was roughly $156,000. And that was going to replace whatever the defiant benefit was going to be.

[00:19:16] And so sometime shortly thereafter, they changed from 60 to 65. And they took that money, whatever your payout was. I think some of the senior captains payouts were like 350,000. And so they filled up your 401k and defiant contribution to the government limits the first two years. So you didn't get

[00:19:35] taxed all with it. And then on the last year, they paid out whatever was left over in your claim money and you had to pay tax on that. I think that for me was about 80-some thousand. Then as much as people knock our union, here's what they did

[00:19:50] that was really they lobby Congress. And before George W. Bush left office, he signed into law that gave everybody a one-time opportunity to put the entire amount of their claim and note money into a Roth IRA with no limitation. So I took that 156,000 which I had. I put

[00:20:10] it in a Roth IRA and I bought 300 shares of Apple at 136 and some of bucks. And that worked out well. That worked out very well. And I eventually with all their splits and growth, I got to a point where I had 22,000 shares of Apple. Now I'm not a

[00:20:31] genius when it comes to making stock picks. But you'd have to be sleeping under a rock the last few years to not know what companies like Apple and Amazon and Google have accomplished. And so as time has gone by, I was able to build that Roth IRA up.

[00:20:49] I'll be honestly two and a half million dollars. It's tax-free the rest of my life. And then the other part in the 401k, which I don't have to make any withdrawals till I think 72 or 73. I probably shouldn't even have to ever touch it. And so I've taken to

[00:21:04] heart what that captain told me and I would have every

[00:22:09] I'll start that at 65. And my wife started taking Social Security at 62. I'll wait till 70, which will again will maximize what I take out. And if for some reason I pass away at 68, my wife bumps up to whatever mine will be. And then I can have the PVGC money

[00:22:24] at a 50% or 75% or complete total paid to her depending on what I decide in case I pass before her. So. I love that this is a very important thing that I pass before her. So. I love that this is, it's like, how do you get rich? Slowly.

[00:22:42] And with lots of diversification and with cash management, that really is the secret sauce. And I love that this is a really unsexy story. It's not like you were investing in cryptocurrency and doing all this crazy stuff. It's like, you know, Keith, you just saw opportunities to slowly

[00:22:59] have base hits all the way throughout your career and put away money. And that's sort of what we eyes about. Well, it was also a basic operating system, right? It was like, take half your pay raise and invest half and lifestyle half, right? And live within your means.

[00:23:14] That was the OS of your career and it worked out tremendously. And also, I like the CRM approach of like you built your team by getting a financial advisor that helped you help diversify what you had in your portfolio as well. So, I like the expanding the team.

[00:23:31] I like the OS of the operating system of basically just 50% pay raises. This is what you're going to do with it. Live within your means and eventually that nest egg grows and now you've got passive income streams coming off of those investments that you've made over your career.

[00:23:45] People always ask, and my first officers would always ask how much do you think I need for retirement? A million two million? And I would always tell them that's not the right question to ask. The right question to ask is how much debt do I have?

[00:23:58] Because I think most financial advisors would suggest you withdraw 4% a year from your retirement nest egg to make that last over time. So I would tell the first officers sit down with your spouse or by yourself. You're going to turn 65 and ask yourself, what is my complete living

[00:24:18] expense every year? And if you determine it costs $80,000 to live, vacations, taxes, groceries, a Starbucks every week, whatever. If it costs you $80,000 to live, you need 2 million dollars. 4% of 2 million is $80,000 a year. And when I would have these discussions, I would say at age 65, you probably should have

[00:24:41] bought all the toys you've wanted in life. Hopefully you're not on your third marriage and you've got 3-year-old running around that you're going to have to fund college for in 20 years. That's a different episode. Maybe you've had your home paid off. I was fortunate where I could

[00:24:58] buy a second home. I've paid those both off. I'm still my primary home is the one I bought when I was a brand new second officer in the fall of 91. And so my girls just say, why can't we have this big house like our friends do? I said,

[00:25:10] because that's just not how we're going to live. You have a nice home, you're comfortable and you're going to go to nice schools and we have this place up in the mountains. You can go ski at and hike at and stuff. We don't need a 5,000 square foot home

[00:25:26] where you're thinking, gosh, what's the electrical bill going to be for this one, this mark? So I would always tell the first officers everybody's different. If you've got 17,000 pilots, you've got 17,000 different opinions, you've got 17,000 different ways to save and invest, but think about what your debt is

[00:25:44] going to be and go off of that. That doesn't include Social Security. It doesn't include PBGC money if you're somebody who's eligible for that. Yeah, and I think when you say debt, I think we think loans or at least that's where my belief is. I think

[00:25:58] that just really it's add up all your expenses. What are all your expenses going to be when you retire and what will that need be for how much cash your portfolio effectively produces when you get to retirement and if you can that's what the show is literally

[00:26:13] all about. It's about generating passive income streams so that you can cover your expenses and with the profit of being able to do some fun things right in life and have more financial freedom, so you're not stressing the furlough. You're not stressing the airline bankruptcy. You've got

[00:26:29] that protection that's going to keep you going right and keep your family going and the smaller you make those expenses the less revenue you need to produce to make your life work. Pay off your credit card every month unless it's some sort of an emergency there's never

[00:26:44] a reason to have a finance charge of whatever 20% on a credit card and there's never unless again every family is different but try not to borrow against like that. So yeah. We did an episode on that. There's definitely strategies around that but but that's the difference.

[00:27:05] I gotta ask so you're the kind of guy that save don't live within your means don't have the big fancy house but here you are renting a wide body to fly everybody. Why? Talk to us about that a little bit. I think it's cool that right. What's your

[00:27:22] that's like a left brain right brain your two extremes right? Going back to covid. I have my friends that were close to retirement ready to retire. One of my buddies was flying international. All the international was grounded. So his Finney flight was a flight to Orlando and back.

[00:27:44] And I told her I said you know what I'm not doing that and the chief pilots there were so many people retiring as things started up back to normal. The chief pilots a friend of mine works in the charter division in scheduling and I called her up.

[00:28:02] I said hey Nancy I've flown a lot of charters through the years NBA teams NFL teams could I charter my own jet for my retirement flight? She goes I don't see why not I don't think anybody's ever done it before but I'll tell you what next time

[00:28:18] you have recurrent training why don't you come over to the office I'll introduce you to our director of the charter division and I said my birthday for turning 65 will be June 7th of 24 and I want to charter my own A330 for my final flight. He looked perplexed

[00:28:37] he goes nobody's done this before I said I'll be the first. As time went by we talked about it they gave me a number which I thought was way too high and I said look I'm not the Seattle Seahawks here I'm a fellow employee so can we

[00:28:52] look at it from that perspective okay we'll look at that and so when I was waiting for the email with the number I was thinking okay what's my limit here how far am I willing to go the number came in under my limit I said alright let's

[00:29:11] do it. So my first thought was do I want to go to Maui and I looked at the runway length about what 8500 feet 7000 how much is it 7000 6995 hey this guy wants to take a 330 into a short lag so then I was at Kona I said oh my

[00:29:31] gosh Kona's got 11000 feet of runway plus the Delta layover hotel is this Hilton Waiakola resort perfect we'll go to Kona a year and a half of planning and working with the caterers seated 56 each there's my 112 the crew would have their own transportation because it's a Delta layover

[00:30:01] I would get paid to fly the trip I would get a free room because I'm a pilot flying the trip and I'm also paying for the trip itself you can't fly an ocean crossing and a domestic in the same way I would get paid to fly the trip

[00:30:26] and I would get paid to fly the trip itself you can't fly an ocean crossing and a free room and a free room and a free room and a free room and a free room and a free room and a free room that could fly the trip if

[00:31:06] the trip was free and free room and a free room and a all the beer and wine and spirits, what everybody wanted. It was available. So that's where that started. And it got a lot of attention as time would go by. And it was fun.

[00:31:32] I remember I was on a layover a few months before the trip. And I would talk about it with my first officers and stuff in Seattle. And so we're going from the hotel in Long Beach to LAX. I was getting ready to go to Japan.

[00:31:45] And this other young first officer was heading somewhere else. And so his flight was delayed, our flight was delayed. We're in the pilot lounge. And there's about seven or eight of us sitting around. And somebody says, you're retiring, aren't you?

[00:32:02] And all of a sudden that young kid goes, hey, you need to be like that guy that's chartering his own A330. I go, I am that guy. His eyes got real big and goes, what? I go, I am that guy. So it was really fun. That's great.

[00:32:16] Delta bent over backwards to make this work for me. And I asked for A330-900. I asked for the Olympic jet. They made everything happen. That's so cool. It's an incredible airline overall. I mean, just an incredible place to work and just a world class operation.

[00:32:34] It doesn't surprise me at all. It's really cool that they took care of you to do that. And obviously you paid them. But everybody wants to know how much it costs. And I know you're not sharing actual numbers, but can you give people a ballpark?

[00:32:45] I've always told people that it was a good year's salary for an international A330 captain of Delta. There you go. So those of you that are listening to this podcast, you probably figured that out. Yeah. But here's one neat thing. Here's one neat thing.

[00:33:02] When I signed the contract, it was at a set fuel price. And there was going to be a plus up or plus down depending on what the actual fuel cost was the day of the trip.

[00:33:13] So I'm getting a nice five figure refund because oil was a lot lower when I actually flew the trip. Oh, that's a nice bonus. Oh, nice. Okay. Okay. Who did you invite? Like you got the idea this thing sort of picked up steam. Who'd you invite?

[00:33:28] Tell us about the trip and you got a water cannon salute in LA, right? Is that because the news had gotten out they knew what you were doing? I'll get to that. I had friends from every aspect of my life.

[00:33:39] I had some of my grade school friends that I've known since we were six years old. I had high school friends. I had Air Force friends. I had childhood friends from the neighborhood. I had Delta friends.

[00:33:50] I had for my triathlon team, my coach and other friends that I've done marathons and Ironmans with were there neighbors from where I live today. It was just a big group of friends from every aspect of my life.

[00:34:03] And I told my wife, I said this could be just like a wedding. It could be like a retirement. I said at all. So it could be a funeral. So if anything happens to me between now and the trip, make sure you

[00:34:14] still go and just have all my friends there to celebrate. So I sent a, I had professional invitations made that I thought were just beautiful with the black and the gold and I had a hat and the epaulettes and I had those sent out.

[00:34:29] I had a couple of people that couldn't make it, which I understood you're not going to get every single person to come. But I had a standby list of a lot of people that wanted to go.

[00:34:38] And I ended up asking a lot of my friends, Hey, not that I don't care about your spouses, but I don't know them my whole life. Would you mind if your spouse didn't come so I can invite more friends that I've grown up with?

[00:34:49] Everybody was more than happy to do that. And so I had the 112 guests. I had the crew, two charter coordinators. We had a Delta mechanic for the entire trip, the four pilots, seven flight attendants. So there's about 134 give or take a couple total for the trip.

[00:35:07] So going back to Los Angeles, living behind the Santa Monica airport. When you come in on an airline from the West or from the North, there's a VOR at the bottom of the hill for Santa Monica and the planes

[00:35:20] would always come in and then head on the downwind for a right turn to final. And you're lined up with a two four right or two five left. I used to, as a kid, always see those jets overhead. And I just was always enamored with that.

[00:35:35] So flying out of LAX was going to really be neat for me because that's where it all started. And so I had my friends fly the Dallas LAX flight and I knew that last takeoff out of LAX, I was going to look at that window at the

[00:35:50] high school again and dip that wing one more time. So it finally came and the morning of we had a 7 a.m. 730 departure and I was trying to get everybody going because I had a special plan in mind that nobody knew about and I'll get to that

[00:36:09] in a minute. So by the time we got out to the jet on the ramp in DFW, they had decorated it with a lot of pictures and everything from my past and there are probably about 50 some friends that were in

[00:36:23] the gate area when I arrived with my wife and my mom and stuff. So it was very emotional and seeing everybody and people have flown in from back East California because they want to be on the entire trip. They didn't want to just get on in LA.

[00:36:37] So we pushed back and it was neat because they did a water cannon salute on the taxi out of DFW. I hadn't even landed yet. And so they're already doing a water cannon salute. So my friend Jay and Pete flew the leg to Dallas to LA and

[00:36:54] what was neat is that I can go back and visit with all my friends and family for the two three-hour flight it took. So once we got there, Collette and I went out into the gate area at LAX. There's another 60 plus group of friends and family.

[00:37:08] So it was very emotional and I said, okay, I'd love to give all of you a hug right now, but we got to get going and you'll understand later on why and so we got everybody boarded and I don't know if you've heard of this group

[00:37:19] called Airline Videos, but they park themselves on the top of this hotel at LAX and they film takeoffs and landings of various aircraft coming in every day. And so I reached out to them and asked them, hey, could

[00:37:32] you take a video of my final takeoff out of LAX? Which they were able to do. All right. Hold on one second. This has got to be absolutely amazing for the captain. Charter, chartering his own A330neo, the team USA special livery.

[00:37:51] So if you guys should just join in, as the captain retiring to sign it to charter his own A330neo heading to Kona with his family and friends for the next 24 hours. I'll be heading back to LAX tomorrow. There we go. Shout out.

[00:38:16] Just give us a shout out. Captain, thank you. TV 7, me for now. I'm sure that caught Tater's attention. Captain have a great flight, family and friends. Off they go. Have a great time. Captain have a great time. Happy retirement. Enjoy. Has to be just an absolute day.

[00:39:33] He will remember chartering his own A330neo to Kona, family and friends. Thanks again, captain for the shout out. I'll have to go back and listen to that. Appreciate that. Thank you so much. Have a great flight. Listen, that's the guy.

[00:39:52] They took a great video of the takeoff, which was really emotional for me. And then for the five and a half hour flight out to Kona, my friend Jay said, Hey, I'll come up and sit in the left seat for an hour.

[00:40:04] Go back and visit with your friends and family somewhere. So it worked out great. I get to do that. We all got great meals. And then we finally came in and I always joke with my buddies. I was getting ready to retire.

[00:40:14] Make sure you get the landing prior to your last flight because if you make it really nice, you may not want to do another landing. You don't want to pound one in. Remember that forever. I came in and I thought I had a good landing.

[00:40:30] It wasn't one I was ready to walk away from. So I knew I was going to fly one more, but it was okay. People in back, they were all happy. They didn't know any different, but we got out and my friend Peter, who's a photographer, got a great

[00:40:41] group picture of everybody in front of the jet. We had everybody transported to the resort. And why I wanted to get everybody there and get going was because I'd rented this area out called the grand staircase and nobody knew this, but I was going to

[00:40:56] ask my wife to renew our wedding vows at the grand staircase. And so when I met her in August of 1977, I had just graduated from high school. She was getting ready to start her junior year of high school. I was wearing this yellow flowery Hawaiian shirt

[00:41:14] and it sat in my closet over the last 40 plus years and she'd all you, what do you got that shirt in the closet for? What are you doing with that shirt? I said, you know what? You never know. I may need this shirt one day.

[00:41:25] So I'm just leaving it there. Don't throw it away. I had my friend Ellen who had introduced Colette to me. They worked at a Foster's freeze ice cream. And so I was wearing that yellow Hawaiian shirt the day I met Colette. So Ellen was part of the group.

[00:41:41] I had her hold onto that shirt and when she came up onto the stage at the grand staircase, I took my shirt off and put on that yellow shirt. And of course everybody's looking at me like, why is he doing this?

[00:41:54] And then I talked about my career and talked about the trip and all my friends. And then I had Colette come up and we were in your in our vows. It was really a special moment. We had a great luau for it was a two or three

[00:42:06] hour luau. Everybody had a great time. And then the next morning we picked up and flew back and it's funny because you'll recognize this into 330. When you're on the calm panel, if you push the PA button, you've got to talk while you're pushing it.

[00:42:25] If you push it and let go, you're not talking about anybody. Which is a nice feature because the 7-6 you could get caught accidentally making PAs that you didn't want to make. That ended up happening. We're with approach control at LAX and I'm

[00:42:42] asking the first officer to say, hey, can you get two four left or two four right for us because there was some construction stuff. I wanted to land over there on the right side. Yeah. And so once we got that approval, I pushed

[00:42:55] the PA button thinking, okay, I can just let go and this PA to my family and friends. Hey, we're going to land on two four right. We're coming in over Catalina right now. And of course this is going out over approach control and the control goes

[00:43:11] captain you're not going to do that on your last flight are you? I was oh my God. 8872 heavy so Cal approach expect a visual approach to runway two four right today. I appreciate the help. I wish congratulations. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

[00:43:35] Do that on your last flight, sir. So I hey at least it wasn't on guard and you get a bunch of guys jumping all over you. It was a beautiful day in Los Angeles. We came in over Catalina one of my buddies, my best friend.

[00:43:54] We flew right over his house in Huntington Beach and came in and you know what it is. You've landed however many several hundred times and so all I'm thinking about is do not pound it in make this one nice and smooth.

[00:44:08] And so I gave myself a B on the landing. Well, it could have been smoother but everybody was happy and I could hear people applauding him back which made me feel good. And we came off of two four right taxi to cross and they made us go

[00:44:21] all the way down toward two five and then circle back and I was thinking to myself that's kind of a waste of time but whatever on that taxi back is when they had the water cannon salute and I found out later from my friend

[00:44:34] Nancy who is the scheduler in the chart vision. She's not somebody you tell no so a couple months earlier when I was in the pile lounge, I went in and asked the chief highest what's the chance of getting the water cannon salute now California water moratorium.

[00:44:50] They don't do that here. We haven't had one of those in years. It's okay. That's fine. Nancy calls up and gets the same reply from somebody at LAX now water. We don't do that. She's okay. So a week later she calls back get somebody higher up.

[00:45:05] I want a water cannon salute for Keith. He grew up here his high school by the runway him and his buddy were box boys at Safeway. I want this water cannon salute and the guy said all right, let me make some phone calls

[00:45:17] they had to get approval from the FAA the fire department. The LA board authority and they did it. So I got the second water cannon salute in nine years and I owe that to Nancy. We came off the jet and the chief pilot came down

[00:45:32] and one of the district chief pilots came in that I knew and read a nice letter to everybody got a lot of good hugs. You buy and then my friend Jay and Pete flew us back to Dallas and that was pretty much it. Wow.

[00:45:47] So I'd say it was worth it. It was worth it. And here's another neat thing that I did and the pilots that understand vacation and all that will understand when I knew that I was going to fly this trip in January of 23 and they had told me

[00:46:00] you're not going to get a jet in June because kids are out of school families are on vacation. Those jets are all over the world, but our slow time is in February. Do you want to go on a Tuesday Wednesday in February will make it happen.

[00:46:12] Remember earlier I told you my last flight in the F-16 was February 28th 1991 the last night of the Gulf War and just by chance my last flight is a Delta Pile was February 28th 2024 33 years to the day later. And that was that was neat to have that happen

[00:46:30] in January of 23. I did my five weeks of vacation to cover all of March in the first week of April in January 24. I've been my five weeks to cover the last three weeks of April in the first two weeks of May and then I took my

[00:46:46] vacation bank and bought 10 extra days, which is the limit. So essentially that trip ended on February 28th and I'm on vacation until May 21st. I've gone non-qualified for landing crew resources are going to try to send me to training. I said I'm not showing up.

[00:47:03] You want to keep it on the schedule. Good luck, but I won't be there and then I'll retire officially on June 7th. That's incredible. What a story. And there's one more important point with that. If you have vacation the way things work with Delta. If you have vacation

[00:47:18] that comes after your retirement, you still get paid out, but it goes into your 401k. In my case, it was all pre-retirement. So it gets paid to me and it counts for profit sharing for next year. So very nice. Yeah. And our vacation days are worth 415, I

[00:47:39] think a day right now. And if you look at for me personally, I always try to get 80 hours a month. 31 days of vacation is like 130 hours in April. So I'm getting some nice checks here during this vacation and I anticipate if things go well that next

[00:47:56] February I'll get another profit sharing chip. It's the best. It's the best career, isn't it? It's just the best career in the world. Life is good. And to the guys that complain, the guys that complain, get a life. Thank you. Quit complaining. Thank you. I know.

[00:48:12] Hey, I tell you what Ryan and I can talk to this. Go get a real job. It's rough. It's rough out here. Yeah. Yeah. Flying airplanes. Right. When we had the bankruptcy, there were guys that were in their early 50s that thought Delta was going to go

[00:48:27] out of business. So they took three or four hundred thousand out of their 401k and just left. And I talked to some of those guys. I knew some of those guys. And they said, you know what? I made the biggest mistake in my life leaving. I found out

[00:48:41] that at 52 years old, you cannot find a job that pays you a hundred grand a year where you only work 12 days a month. They're out there. One friend, one friend went back in the military and he went to Iraq to fly drones for a year because he

[00:48:57] couldn't get a job anywhere at 52. And it is a great job and I don't even think of it as a job. It's a great lifestyle. It is. It absolutely is. What's next for you, Keith? Yeah. Yeah. What's the next chapter? It has to be emotional

[00:49:13] to hang up that uniform for the last time that you're on to the next thing. What is it? What's life look like? When I flew up to Salt Lake the other night, it was the first time I was on a Delta jet in two months. And

[00:49:26] I made the mistake a few weeks ago checking open time and I saw there was a military charter. You go to Tokyo, south of Japan, Anchorage. And I thought, oh, what a great trip that would be to fly. I thought, you know what? I shouldn't be

[00:49:38] looking at this. So I stopped looking at open time. And my wife and I look forward to driving around the country, seeing some of the national parks and places we've never been. We've got our home here. I can go skiing in the winter, hiking in the summer.

[00:49:52] I belong to a nice club that I can play golf with my buddies, twin girls, two grandchildren. So I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't miss it at times. You'll certainly miss the camaraderie in the cockpit and being able to go on a trip somewhere

[00:50:07] is always neat and exciting. But after 41 years, I'm okay. It makes a lot of sense. What a class act. Thank you for sharing your story with us. It's just incredible to hear it straight from the source and get to get all the details around it, the history and

[00:50:22] everything. Yeah. It's been a pleasure to be with you guys today and I hope those that are young. Can I tell another story? Yes, please. A lot of the guys were complaining about the lost defined benefit and lost pensions and all that. So I decided

[00:50:38] to take a fictional pilot, age 30 years old. And I put this pilot in the right seat of a 220 for four years, the 320 for four years, the 330 for four years and a 350 for four years. So they're going to be right seat for the first 16 years of their career.

[00:50:55] Move them over to the left seat, 220, four years, 320, 330, the last seven years, 350. All we had before this contract was 2019 pay rates. So for every one of the seats they were in, for whatever year it was, I gave them that pay at 80 hours a month. No green slips,

[00:51:13] no double time. I gave them 10% put into their 401k. I gave them a 5% profit sharing check each year. And I gave them a return on investment of a little over 7%. And you can Google 30-year return on investment. It's a little over 7%. So taking that individual at age 65,

[00:51:33] based on 2019 pay rates, that individual would have about 7.8 million for retirement. If they wanted to leave at 60, about 5.5 million, they wanted to leave at 55, about 3.5 million. So going back, if you're that 65-year-old and we'll just say now with the new contract and getting raises, not just stuck at

[00:51:54] the 2019 pay rates for 35 years, there's a lot of factors that go into it. But let's just say you had 10 million dollars. If you're taking out 4% a year, you're making 400 grand a year in retirement. You don't need to work again. Now again, the caveat is everybody's got a

[00:52:11] different situation and I respect and understand that. But the point was you're going to be okay. You can have a great career and you can save and live within your means and do well. Absolutely. I agree. I agree. Yeah, totally. And it just and it goes

[00:52:29] back to those fundamentals that you talked about right in the beginning, which is you get the pay raise, you start putting it away. And when you if you just do that and show up, it's a great career. And there's going to be bumps and hiccups along the way,

[00:52:42] but you just kind of got to work through that and know that people still need to fly airplanes. Eventually, it's going to all come back. I agree. Which is yeah, which is great. So Keith, thank you so much for your time and congratulations on such a great career

[00:52:57] and just something that is just so inspiring. The story, along the way, that just make being an airline pilot so so wonderful. Buying pizzas for your ground crew on a maintenance delay at an airport and just standing up and being the captain. Right? I mean, that's what

[00:53:20] it's all about. Just that's what makes the memories that we remember forever. Not just the complaining and the things that happen in the cockpit that everyone wants to just complain about or whatever. But it's those moments where people that's what this is all about at the end of

[00:53:39] the day. And I just really appreciate having people like you in our lives to be that example. I've had an incredible life, incredible career and flying with guys just like you. Made it all worthwhile and I'll miss that. I'll miss that part of it. Couldn't have set

[00:53:55] it better myself. Happy trails. All right. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Congrats on retirement again. I appreciate it. Thanks for coming onto All right, guys. And thanks for listening. And with that, we'll see you on the next episode.