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.”…