When Spirit Airlines went under, this Lexington native was called in to repo their planes

The bankruptcy of Spirit Airlines, a low-cost airliner that operated for about three decades before its sudden closure earlier this month, brought new business and new fame to one Lexington native.

When the airline shut down, Bob Allen, co-founder of the Arizona-based Nomadic Aviation Group, was called on to repossess the leased Spirit airplanes. Allen, who has now been interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, CBS News and CNBC, is a 1984 graduate of Tates Creek High School and a part-time Lexington resident.

His firm was hired to help retrieve Spirit’s planes last week. He told the Herald-Leader Monday that he and the company’s other co-founder, Steve Giordano, specialize in transactional flight operations. They do ferry and test flights, repossessions, custom operations for government, and private VIP flight operations.

The Wall Street Journal wrote Monday that Allen’s firm was pulled into the situation because “Aircraft leasing firms that own dozens of (Spirit) bright yellow jets were getting anxious as Spirit barreled toward liquidation.”

“They wanted their planes back,” the Wall Street Journal wrote.

“The first call came to Bob Allen’s phone at 6 p.m. ET on a Friday. The message: Get the repo men ready. “

Allen, who is a pilot, told the Herald-Leader his company was contacted by several lessors who had leased to Spirit. They wanted his company to transfer the planes from “where Spirit abandoned them to some storage airports located in Arizona.”

“The airplanes were scattered across about 12 airports across the USA,” Allen told the Herald-Leader. “We had to locate where the airplanes were parked at each airport, round up enough pilots to fly all of the planes, get the pilots to the airports, work through legal channels to get authorization from the airports and security to gain access to the planes, get ground equipment, fuel, and flight plans in place for them to depart. Then arrange to get the crews back home after delivery.”

Spirit announced its “wind-down of operations” on May 2, confirming in a news release that all Spirit flights were canceled.

“Unfortunately, despite the Company’s efforts, the recent material increase in oil prices and other pressures on the business have significantly impacted Spirit’s financial outlook,” the news release said.

Most of Spirit’s planes were leased, not owned by the airline, Allen said.

Allen was continuing to move planes Monday when he spoke to the Herald-Leader. As of Monday, his company had moved 25 aircraft that had been leased to Spirit. He has taken them to aircraft storage facilities in Arizona until the lessors decide what to do next with the planes.

Many of the pilots he’s hired to move the planes were previously Spirit pilots.

Allen, 59, grew up in Lexington and learned to fly at Lexington’s Blue Grass Airport when he was 16, he told the Herald-Leader. He worked at Blue Grass Airport for several years when he was young, with jobs from fueling airplanes to flying them.

Now, Allen spends winters in Phoenix, Arizona, and summers in Lexington, where he has several siblings.

“I am passionate about making aviation more accessible to communities that are not well represented in the industry,” Allen said.

Allen said he has a non-profit called LiftoffUSA.org, aimed at making aviation careers available to young people in underserved communities.

One of his other initiatives is Cockpit Casual: The Podcast. It streams on Spotify and Apple, and can be seen on video on YouTube. The YouTube channel is Cockpit Casual.

Allen also says he works on an AI platform called KittyHawk, which aims to help people and companies form fast supply chains through the aviation ecosphere.