Jump in and Jet

“Five years ago, I bought a really nice Cessna Citation Mustang out of the Bay Area and have been flying it around ever since,” said Brad Lund, a real estate investor and jet owner from Southern California. “It costs a little bit more to operate per hour than a turboprop, but it’s been quite affordable all things considered. I’ve grown into it very nicely, and because I fly single pilot, I can just get up and go.”

Lund’s first introduction to aviation came as a child and was a prologue to his real estate career.

“My dad was not a pilot but dabbled in aviation a little bit. He took lessons on and off and would take me to flying events like the Reno Air Races. I decided I wanted to get my license and got it in 1994 when I was 24 years old. I was just out of college and newly married. I didn’t have a lot of money, but I got serious about it and decided I would bang it out fast and get it done. I remember laying down $3,000 in cash to get my pilot’s license, which was a lot of money for me.”

Learning to fly opened a whole new world for Lund, especially within his home state. Times were good at the beginning of his flying career.

“I started my career as a real estate broker and eventually bought several apartment buildings. There was a deal that I was working on where I sold an apartment building, and the guy didn’t have enough money to pay me. So, he said, ‘Hey, would you be interested in taking an airplane on trade for some of the seller financing?’ I agreed and picked up a nice 1969 Cessna Turbo 210 and flew that around for several years. I really had a good time with that plane and would fly my family back and forth between Northern and Southern California all the time.”

Lund was enjoying the freedom that aviation afforded him and his family, as well as its benefit to his growing real estate portfolio. But several factors soon sidelined him from the cockpit.

“I had a couple of scary experiences with turbulence. I remember a time I was flying out of Santa Barbara and the turbulence was severe. My wife was crying as my two kids were in the backseat screaming. I imagined we’d all end up dead, so I considered giving up flying entirely,” said Lund.

“Then in 2008, during the big real estate bust, I basically lost everything and had to start over. I sold the plane to pay some debts, moved to Southern California, and ended up divorced. I was basically starting all over again from scratch. I rebuilt by buying self-storage facilities and created a chain of properties called ‘Purely Storage.’ After having a few properties under my belt, there came a need and an opportunity to lease a plane from a guy at the John Wayne Airport (KSNA). It was a 2004 Lancair Columbia 400, which I flew for several years.”

Initially, while Lund was growing this new business, he didn’t have the luxury of leaning on the time savings of private aircraft.

“When I first started out buying these self-storage facilities, I used to drive to all of them. At one point, I was driving a Prius all over California. In time, I thought I should be driving a better car and bought a beautiful BMW 7 Series. I got so busy that I hired a driver and was sitting in the back seat working the whole time. I was usually gone two, three, or four days at a time, staying in hotels and paying all the expenses for my driver and me.”

“The Columbia 400 then helped me get around to see properties with ease, and I flew it for several years. It was a great plane. The business kept growing and I would use the airplane to fly around to more and more self-storage facilities often in different directions.”

Lund really liked the aircraft, but one aspect made him consider making the move to another bird.
“The Columbia 400 was a little costly to maintain. Every year something would go out and need to be fixed, whether it was a turbocharger, a cylinder head, or something else. My annuals were crazy money and I thought, ‘For this much maintenance, I could be flying something nicer.’”
With all of the great options to ascend to in his aviation journey, which aircraft was the then 1,000-hour pilot leaning towards?

“I was originally looking to upgrade to a Piper Mirage. But then I thought, ‘Well, why don’t I just skip that and go straight into a Piper Meridian?’ But when I went to finance a Meridian, the lender said they didn’t like financing the plane because their values were all over the place. The lender asked whether I had considered a TBM or not, but I looked to discover they were crazy money. Then they asked if I had considered just skipping into a jet and suggested the Citation Mustang as an option,” Lund recalled.

“When I purchased my aircraft, Mustangs were about $700,000 less than available TBMs. Of course, jets cost more to operate, but $700,000 buys a lot of jet fuel! When I first sat in the Mustang, I thought it was way more plane than I needed. But I pulled the trigger on a 2009 model anyway.”

The aircraft has been a crucial aspect of the company’s growing operations.

“Today, we have 33 locations in several western states: California, Nevada, Arizona, Washington, and Texas. With the Mustang, I can leisurely depart by nine in the morning, fly up to Sacramento to see a couple of properties, stop in Fresno and Bakersfield on the way home to see a couple more, and still be home before dinner. Time is money.”

Lund remarked how the transition into the Citation 510 went remarkably well, and he enjoys the annual training to stay sharp in the cockpit.

“I did my jet transition and type rating training in my aircraft at a place in Long Beach called Aero
City Flyers. I highly recommend them. They deal with a lot of Mustang owners and maintain many of them as well. My initial type rating training took about a week. Now every year I go back for my recurrent training, which is basically a day of classroom and sim training and then the check ride. It’s not too hard, and it’s good for me. And they’re right here in my backyard, so it’s convenient.”
These dedicated times in the plane have allowed Lund to become better acquainted with its operations and more appreciative of its capabilities.

“I have been pleasantly surprised by many things in the Mustang. It’s a slightly slower jet that some people have even referred to me as ‘The Fisher Price of Jets.’ But it does 340 knots true all day long – double the speed of the Columbia 400 – and almost always exceeds the POH. Sometimes as I’m flying home and on arrival into Southern California, there will be other commercial jets on my tail and the controllers will move me a few degrees off course to allow them to pass me. But for my mission, the Mustang is phenomenal,” Lund proudly noted.

“My missions are usually a thousand miles or less, so a typical flight for me is an hour to two and a half hours long. It burns around a hundred gallons an hour until you get to altitude. Then once you get to altitude, where I typically fly in the mid-30s, it burns about 80 gallons an hour. Turboprops would be more affordable if you were only flying an hour or less, but the Mustang affords me so many other luxuries over a turboprop: the look, ride, comfort, cabin size, performance, deicing capabilities, getting over the weather, having two jet engines, and so many other things.”

Even with how much he’s enjoyed flying his Mustang, Lund came to miss low and slow flying.
“The negative of the Mustang is that you’re flying from Point A to Point B and it’s IFR flying everywhere you go. I had to buy another plane to get the sensation of flying back to do the low and slow thing again! I bought a CubCrafters Carbon Cub FX3 a couple of years back and absolutely love it too! It’s nice to have two planes. I have one that flies quickly from A to B and another for playing around on weekends.”

You can follow all of Brad’s flying adventures on Instagram at @raddadbrad.