Airplane Repo The TV Series

Twin_Flyer

Twin_Flyer

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Twin_Flyer
I saw a thread on the Red Board yesterday, so I watch an episode and some clips last night. Lots of made for TV drama and semi-truths about our aircraft. So It got me to wondering, how often do they get it wrong. :hairraise: Anyway, I thought some of you may enjoy the series. :eek:



Three adrenaline-seeking repo men push themselves, and the law, to the edge to capture multi-million-dollar luxury jets. Thrill-seeker and ace pilot Mike Kennedy scours the Florida night in search of a Learjet that might just crash and burn. Family man Ken Cage and tattooed partner, Danny Thompson, chase an elusive Baron 58 aircraft across the rugged Arizona desert. Wily cowboy, Kevin Lacey, pursues a Cessna airplane into rattlesnake-filled rural Texas straight into the drawn pistols of the Texas police. It’s good old American know-how meets cloak-and-dagger, where dangerous heists mean big paydays and even bigger risks.

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/ai...sode-guide.htm
 
It is more fake than Flying Wild Alaska, Amish Mafia and Devils Ride. There is literally no realism to this series what so ever. Aircraft repos take days/weeks to complete, there are ferry permits to obtain, and rest assure that nobody is busting in hangars to steal aircraft because the last time I checked, that is against the law.

Edit - all the emergency situations are made up as well, actually one was self inflicted (Citation Mustang pressurization issue).

I love watching the show for laughs but it is about on par with the garbage that Discovery puts out these days.
 
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Matthew said:
I think that was the folks from the v.1.0 show. That was a totally different bunch from the v.2.0 clowns now.
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Nick Popovich was, and is the real deal. I guess the old show didn't have enough drama... Now they film fuel trucks and call them security vehicles.
 
Inverted said:
Nick Popovich was, and is the real deal. I guess the old show didn't have enough drama... Now they film fuel trucks and call them security vehicles.
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I don't think Nick had enough tattoos and didn't pound his fist into his palm often enough for the demographics.
 
Matthew said:
I don't think Nick had enough tattoos and didn't pound his fist into his palm often enough for the demographics.
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Very true. I am still convinced that the pair of repo guys where one of them is the biker guy, are not even pilots. I know the biker guy isn't, but the repo guy isn't either. I have never seen him pilot an aircraft.
 
I thought Nick Popovich was kind of an ass-clown as well. His show was equally stupid.
 
The few airplane repo jobs I did all our guys looked like accountants and lawyers. Because they were.
 
JHW said:
The few airplane repo jobs I did all our guys looked like accountants and lawyers. Because they were.
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Maybe the guy on the repo show is a tattooed, death metal T-shirt wearing, anger management challenged, accountant?
 
rbridges said:
wait a second, are you guys implying that reality shows are not 100% genuine? No way.
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I'm so disappointed, say it ain't so...:eek: I was thinking of getting out of the tech world and trying an adventure filled life as a REPO Man....:goofy: Hummm, I'll have to find a good tatto shop.:yikes:
 
Inverted said:
It is more fake than Flying Wild Alaska, Amish Mafia and Devils Ride. There is literally no realism to this series what so ever. Aircraft repos take days/weeks to complete, there are ferry permits to obtain, and rest assure that nobody is busting in hangars to steal aircraft because the last time I checked, that is against the law.

Edit - all the emergency situations are made up as well, actually one was self inflicted (Citation Mustang pressurization issue).

I love watching the show for laughs but it is about on par with the garbage that Discovery puts out these days.
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They also took off and landed at Telluride while saying it was a different airport. The whole time, with both engines.
 
FWIW I've had two people so far tell me they want to learn to fly after watching Airplane Repo.
 
DanielH said:
They also took off and landed at Telluride while saying it was a different airport. The whole time, with both engines.
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Exactly. The Lear 55 also didn't have the hydraulic problems they claimed. They said they had to blow down the gear, but showed them landing with the flaps down. You cannot blow the flaps down.
 
Next on Reality TV, "Lizzard Lick Aircraft Recovery" The bestesed of the bestesed.
 
Art VanDelay said:
I thought Nick Popovich was kind of an ass-clown as well. His show was equally stupid.
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His show is the one where the lady felt like she had to make up a BS story about trying to get a look at some celebrity's airplane, instead of just telling the cop that the reason they were parked outside the airport fence at night was that they're repo agents. :rolleyes:
 
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jesse said:
FWIW I've had two people so far tell me they want to learn to fly after watching Airplane Repo.
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That goes along with the old adage, "There's no such thing as negative publicity."

I also am reminded of something my musician friends say at pops concerts: "It smells but it sells."
 
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JHW said:
The few airplane repo jobs I did all our guys looked like accountants and lawyers. Because they were.
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Yup. Ive witnessed a real life aircraft repossession. Attorney for the lien holder and a sheriff's deputy showed up (on a weekend, no less!) and put notices of repossession on two aircraft belonging to a flight school. They told me they were going to hire someone to fly them out but their info seemed to indicate that the aircraft may not be flyable... must have been good info because one of the aircraft was sitting in about a million pieces in a maintenance hangar. The other was actually flyable.

It was pretty funny to watch one of the instructors talking to the sheriff... "but... a student has that airplane scheduled for a cross country later!" :rofl:
 
did they tune into the next show and change their mind to wanting to be gold miners?
 
Inverted said:
It is more fake than Flying Wild Alaska, Amish Mafia and Devils Ride. There is literally no realism to this series what so ever. Aircraft repos take days/weeks to complete, there are ferry permits to obtain, and rest assure that nobody is busting in hangars to steal aircraft because the last time I checked, that is against the law.

Edit - all the emergency situations are made up as well, actually one was self inflicted (Citation Mustang pressurization issue).

I love watching the show for laughs but it is about on par with the garbage that Discovery puts out these days.
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:yeahthat:
 
Inverted said:
I love watching the show for laughs but it is about on par with the garbage that Discovery puts out these days.
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I used to work at Discovery. If you think what makes the cut is bad, you should see some of the crap they can't get through legal.
 
Inverted said:
It is more fake than Amish Mafia
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Wait you mean there is no Amish Mafia:D

I love watching the show for laughs but it is about on par with the garbage that Discovery puts out these days.
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That is not a very high standard these days :mad:
Does Discovery have any good shows any more?
 
I think that's the show where an avionics shop pulled out the avionics because they weren't being paid, so the repo "pilot" just HAD to get the airplane off the airport and fly it to another airport that night. So, he pulled a Garmin Nuvi-like automotive GPS out and used that for navigation, even though it followed roads.

What? Was this filmed before iPads and ForeFlight were invented?

Then he had no radios to turn up the pilot-controlled lights, so he called the FBO on the phone and told them to turn up the lights, as he had trouble finding the airport. When they asked why, he yelled something like "Just turn on the ******n lights!"

My IQ took a double digit hit just for watching that stupid show.
 
nddons said:
Then he had no radios to turn up the pilot-controlled lights, so he called the FBO on the phone and told them to turn up the lights, as he had trouble finding the airport. When they asked why, he yelled something like "Just turn on the ******n lights!"

My IQ took a double digit hit just for watching that stupid show.
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Yeah...what kind of pilot doesn't have a handheld radio in his bag and a Garmin 396...seriously...if I were out grabbing airplanes that I have no history with, those two items would be pretty damned important.
 
In other shots you see him using an iPad. This is all fake drama for the unassuming civilian to gasp and awe at the dangerous job these guys have.
 
Inverted said:
In other shots you see him using an iPad. This is all fake drama for the unassuming civilian to gasp and awe at the dangerous job these guys have.
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I saw an aquaintance comment on Facebook last night how she LOVED the show and since I am a nice guy, most of the time, I didn't make any comments. :D They say in either the opening or closing credits that it is all "re-enactments or re-creations" with actors etc...
I do wish they would show N numbers so us pilot types could look up who's plane was getting repo'd! ;)
 
Nice one I saw last night where the pilot and cameraman had to cross a frozen lake and camp out over night in "wolf country" to repo a Super Cub in a hangar in the middle of BF Alaska. :rolleyes:

Final scene was the Cub flying off with the camera man still on the ground. I assume he is still there since the pilot had "never flown" a ski equipped airplane before despite learning to fly in Alaska and felt it was a treacherous takeoff and was in deep fear of crashing. Obviously, he wouldn't chance it twice. :rofl:

Geeze, this show keeps getting more and more absurd.

Cheers
 
Hmm, and let's not forget that they just happen to have cameras mounted externally on the aircraft and internally before they happen to repo the birds. Yea, right.......
 
like I wrote in the other thread about this subject…

There are worse “reality shows”

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Just think of it as a fantasy show!
 
I watched it a couple times . .and not much on it was believable. It's not even a good fake reality show.

RT
 
I enjoy how "EVERY" plane they repo always has someone chasing them down just as they are wheels off deck.
 
I do wish they would quit reinforcing the myth of "highly secure airports." That just encourages the public to believe that securing a public use airport to that degree is possible without destroying its usefulness for private transportation.

It also bugs me that they keep jumping around from one repossession mission to another, instead of following each one through to its conclusion before going on to the next one.
 
I just like looking at the planes... thats good enough for me!
 
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