Jetrader - July/August 2008 - (Page 8)

Q&A Former President of ISTAT and Founding Member Intrepid Aviation J etrader: How did you initially get involved in the aviation industry? Ron Anderson: I had just graduated from the University of Memphis law school and was sitting at the pool at my apartment complex with a law book and a six-pack of Coors, and a gentleman came walking by and saw the law book and the Coors and asked for a beer. He was getting a divorce and was asking me questions about divorce law in Tennessee. We talked for about an hour and became acquainted and I learned that he was the SVP Industrial Relations of Federal Express, which I had never heard of. This was in early June of 1974.He said that FedEx was looking for an attorney; why don’t I give them a call. So I did call the next day and went out to the airport for an interview two days later. I couldn’t ﬁnd their ofﬁces and stopped at a local service station (a mile from their ofﬁce), and no one had ever heard of FedEx. I ﬁnally located them and had a great interview but they had already offered the job to someone else. Tuck Morse, who was the General Counsel at that time, said that if for some reason the person did not take the job, they would be interested in talking with me. Two days later, Tuck called back and asked if I could start on Monday, and the rest is history. I became the second in-house lawyer at FedEx, joining on June 11, 1974. I fell in love with airplanes, learned to ﬂy and was asked ﬁve years into my legal career to take over a department that would buy and sell all the aircraft at FedEx and did that for 12 years. For the Last 17 years I have been the President and CEO of Intrepid Aviation. J: What were your biggest challenges when you founded Intrepid Aviation almost 17 years ago? RA: The company ﬁrst began as an aircraft broker, and as such, your challenges are to ﬁnd clients who will entrust you with their assets and ﬁnd people to use those assets. If they give care of their assets to a broker, normally it is because there is a very difﬁcult market, and when Intrepid was started it was after the initial downturn in 1992. We had a number of 727s to market for various banks. While it was a difﬁcult market, we had bought and sold close to 200 B727s at FedEx, so it was an airplane that we knew well. Secondly it’s always an issue ﬁnding money—both capital and operating expenses—and also ﬁnding good people to work with you. The good thing on the part of Intrepid’s history is that we have had very good people and have been fortunate to have capital when required. J: Feedstock for freighter conversions remains very tight due to the Airbus and Boeing delays we continue to read about. When do you see this change happening and when it does, which aircraft type(s) do you believe will become highly desirable conversion candidates in the market? RA: In the past, freighter conversions have typically been done to airplanes that were 15-20 years of age. The environment that we have today, with fuel becoming such a large percentage of the operating cost of 8 The ofﬁcial publication of the International Society of Transport Aircraft Trading

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Jetrader - July/August 2008

Jetrader - July/August 2008 A Message from the President Contents Calendar/News Q&A: Ron K. Anderson Challenges Facing the Very Light Jet An Up Close and Personal Analysis of Indian Aviation Inflation and the Upside Case for Aircraft Investors Aircraft Charts Aircraft Appraisals From the ISTAT Foundation Aviation History

Jetrader - July/August 2008

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