The Bell 429 Makes a Difference for Business

Good morning, Napa Tower, helicopter November 665 Papa Victor, executive ramp, request presentation departure northeastbound. 12 years ago I started flight training and began my journey from there, but six years later started getting to fly the twins and do the instrument flight work, which is a big deal here in the Bay Area with the fog that we get every morning, and the 429 is a perfect model for the mission. I'm Christian Palmaz -- I'm a Bell owner and pilot, and I get to fly the Bell 429. We have three companies in California -- the winery, Palmaz Vineyards, a cattle ranch, the Genesee Valley Ranch up in the High Sierras, and in addition we have a material-science research company in Silicon Valley called Vaktronic Scientific. The helicopter allows us to take these three locations, geographically far from each other, and just make them feel like a short drive away, which is an excellent tool for being able to effectively manage these three different locations. I think the defining moment when we decided to just buy our own aircraft was the flexibility of not having to think ahead and schedule flights, just being able to decide that morning, hey, let's go here, let's do this, or I need to be here for this meeting -- having that flexibility was the ultimate decider for us. You can leave the house, be here in 10 minutes, prepare the aircraft, get it outside, and you're in the air within 30 minutes. Typical flights will be three or four times a week moving back and forth between one of our three locations -- so we're either going to San Francisco to pick up somebody from a connecting flight, going down to the South Bay to visit our Vaktronics, or up to the ranch to go visit the cattle operation. Flying the aircraft around the congested environment of the Bay Area is the best time-saver, because if you are just driving to the South Bay from the North Bay it can take three hours, and at the wrong time of day even more -- that might mean you're spending roughly six hours of your day in the car, which adds up to quite a bit. The aircraft is particularly well suited for challenging IFR conditions. One of the best features about the 429 is at speed -- it's so fast, and most of the time with aircraft that can go fast, you're taking a penalty in the ride, the vibration picks up and the ride quality goes down, but the 429 stays smooth and the hover speed is at 148 knots -- incredibly quick and efficient. I know the aircraft was built for much more demanding situations than what we do with it. A big part of the benefit that helicopters bring is that ability to not be dependent on runways -- the runway independence doesn't just matter at the airport, it also matters greatly off-airport, being able to have a private heliport with all the capabilities: the hangar and the support there allows us to operate directly to where we want to go, so not having to add an additional drive from the airport really allows us to effectively manage that property. Being able to fly the aircraft myself really unlocks its most usefulness -- I don't have to rely on a flight crew; I can quickly prepare the aircraft, plan a mission, fly it, and get back home. Since we really need the aircraft to do a lot of things, we found that the 429 allowed us to take what we needed and do it quickly and do it at a lower cost -- it really is the aircraft that unlocks aircraft in this segment.