Our Story. My story.

I didn't start in the cockpit.

I started on the ramp. As a mechanic. Hands in the engines, learning every system from the inside out before I ever sat in a seat. That's where my respect for these aircraft was born — not at altitude, but on the ground, in the cold, understanding what it actually takes to make a machine like this fly.

Most pilots never touch a wrench. I spent years with one. And when I finally made it to the cockpit — first as a Flight Engineer, then as a First Officer, then as Captain — I carried that mechanic's eye with me everywhere. Every aircraft I flew, I understood. Not just how to operate it. How it worked. Why it worked. What it meant.

One of the youngest 747 Captains in the world.

At 30 years old I became one of the youngest Boeing 747 captains in the world. I was flying long-haul cargo routes across the Pacific — Los Angeles to Tokyo, Anchorage to Seoul, routes that took 14 hours and crossed every time zone. Just me, the crew, and 400 tons of aircraft at 35,000 feet over open ocean in the middle of the night.

The 747 is not just an aircraft. It is an institution. The upper deck. The four engines. The way it climbs. The weight of it on takeoff. Nobody who has ever flown one forgets it. I certainly haven't. Every Contrail Models piece I build carries the memory of that aircraft and what it taught me about what aviation truly is.

22 years in the left seat.

I have been a JetBlue captain for 22 years. A320. A321. The aircraft I fly today. I have flown them from Fort Lauderdale to Boston, from New York to the Caribbean, from the first light of a Florida morning to the last approach of a long overnight. I know every quirk. Every system. Every sound a healthy engine makes at cruise altitude.

Along the way I served as Lead Check Airman on the Embraer E190 — as part of the airline's launch customer program with Embraer. Being part of a brand new aircraft entering service, training the crews who would fly it for the first time, understanding that airframe from the inside out — that experience shaped how I think about every aircraft I have flown since.

Twenty-two years is not just a career. It is a relationship with an airline, a fleet, and the people who make it all work — the mechanics, the dispatchers, the gate agents, the flight attendants, the first officers who became captains on their own. That airline runs in my blood. When I sign a Contrail Models piece with that livery, it is not a commercial arrangement. It is personal.