Donald Howell of Southern Sky Aviation – Serious Angler with a Penchant for Flying
I have met so many fascinating people over the course of my fishing career, including my friend Donald Howell, who is a serious angler, but so much more than just that.
Donald began hunting and fishing at the early age of 5 years old and has had a storied career in the business community. He currently serves as the President and Chief Financial Officer of Southern Sky Aviation, a full-service private aviation company based in Birmingham, Alabama.
Donald and Pete met through their work on the Board of the Bass Fishing Hall of Fame, of which Donald is a past President and now the Treasure. I was headed down to Lake El Salto, in May of 2019, but Pete couldn’t join me, so I needed a fishing partner. Because of Donald’s business and connections, we figured it made sense to ask Donald to spend some time with me in the boat and see if flying and fishing (no, not fly fishing) in Mexico could be a match for both of our businesses.
The two of us hit it off, caught a lot of fish and I hope to fly with Donald to one of our next fishing adventures.
HPFC: Tell us about your background in aviation.
Donald Howell: My background in aviation is a long story but I was an advisor to companies in the aviation industry and owners of aircraft and ultimately, when I became an entrepreneur, I had the opportunity to lead an aviation company. Now I lead an aviation company, Southern Sky Aviation, where we are in the charter business, the aviation maintenance business and the aviation fueling business.
HPFC: Who is the typical client for your company?
Donald Howell: That depends upon the nature of their services, but we have many business travelers that use our charter services to get to and from locations in an extremely efficient manner. In the business world, everything is about being productive with your time. A lot of consumers fly with us or they have the financial means to do so and they like the direct nature of our flights. We were taking them from Point A to Point B directly, no stops in between. It is a lot easier traveling in terms of no mask requirements, no security lines, etc. If you're an aircraft owner, we offer maintenance services. And we also offer fueling for aircraft owners that are traveling in certain areas -- they may come by one of our fueling locations and buy fuel from us.
HPFC: Is there an ideal group size to go on your aircraft?
Donald Howell: The group size for us is anything up to nine passengers. We have many customers that travel individually. It may be a business owner and their management team or it could be a family. We have travel groups of all sizes but what we focus on are groups up to nine people. Anything over nine people, we have the ability to provide transportation. That would come from what we call “off fleet,” meaning aircraft that are not in our charter fleet, and we have the ability to broker out trips with aircraft up to the size of a Boeing 737, holding 150 people.
HPFC: Are there routes, destinations or distances that are particularly cost-effective to run a plane like that?
Donald Howell: Most people that are flying private aviation, they are not really worried about the cost-effectiveness of the trip. It is all about convenience, convenience, convenience.
HPFC: For someone trying this for the first time, what are the questions to ask to know that you're using the right company, the right plane and the right route?
Donald Howell: The number one question that you must ask is, “Is your company licensed by the FAA? And if so, please provide me with your air certificate agency number because I want to verify that on the FAA website.” There's a common problem in the United States of illegal charter. People that own aircraft. they are using those aircraft to generate revenue and carry passengers and they are not licensed by the FAA to use their aircraft to generate revenue. The big difference is that the licensed charter operators have to meet stringent training requirements for pilots and stringent maintenance requirements on the aircraft. Whereas those operators that are not licensed to fly passengers, they do not have to meet those stringent requirements. So that is extremely important.
The second thing is, “How long have you been in business?” Then you look at a company's website. You do a little Google research and typically through that if there's anything negative it will come out. Most likely, though, most of our customers are referrals, somebody that has used our service that has had a very good experience. They then refer other customers to us.
HPFC: For someone going hunting or fishing, bringing gear on a plane, particularly Internationally, has become such a burden. What sorts of limitations or restrictions are there on private flights?
Donald Howell: On private aircraft, it depends upon the number of people and the payload of the equipment and baggage that the group has taking. All aircraft have limitations so that is something that a pilot always has to be cognizant of because you do not want to overweight an aircraft, that puts everyone at risk. My personal experience is that we never have had a problem flying passengers, their baggage and their equipment to their hunting or fishing trip. The easiest thing to do is have their game shipped back to their house via third party.
HPFC: What are some of the destinations you have flown to fish or hunt?
Donald Howell: A common place that we fly to hunt is South Dakota, to pheasant hunt, every year. And the most common place that we fly to fish would be the Bahamas.
HPFC: What is a destination that you would like to fly privately?
Donald Howell: Using private aviation, obviously there are lots of places that you can go. One deterrent, and it's a great example, is I would love to be able to fly an aircraft in our fleet to Mexico to go hunting or fishing. The cost of the flight is not really that bad but the customs and duties fees that are charged by the Mexican authorities are almost as much as the cost of the flight. So sometimes flying internationally, customs and duties fees added to the cost of the flight can just be a deterrent from flying private aviation. You really have to monitor what countries you go into to hunt or fish and what are their customs and duties charges.
HPFC: If I had clients that want to use your services, how do they in touch with Southern Sky Aviation?
Donald Howell: The best place would be to go to our website, click on the charters page and our contact information is on that page. Either call our charter sales team -- they operate 24/7, 365 -- or there is a form that can be completed on the website and submit a request for charter services. Someone will follow up with that person after they submit that request.
HPFC: Well, one time in my retirement, I'm calling you to set up a charter flight.
Donald Howell: Tell Pete to break out the checkbook.
HPFC: But I control the checkbook.
We ended the interview laughing, just as we spent so much time laughing in the boat at El Salto. Donald and one of his colleagues are headed down to Anglers Inn El Salto with us in June. If you’d like to get to know them, and learn more about private aviation, please join us!
On our last trip, I was pleasantly surprised that Donald brought some signed fishing lures from a few of the Bass Fishing Hall of Fame inductees and presented them to the Anglers Inn staff. Check out the short video presentation from our YouTube channel:
