Air Lease Corporation: Steven Udvar-Hazy

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 4 September 2023

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Before Steven Udvar-Hazy was out of high school, he started working as an airline consultant. You could do that sort of thing back in the 1960’s, if you knew the industry—which indisputably, he did. Born in Communist Hungary, Steven was obsessed with aviation at an early age, memorizing plane serial numbers and schedules for fun. In his early 20’s he started his own small airline in California. But he quickly learned the big money was in aircraft leasing, so at the dawn of the jet age, he started his own leasing company. Today he runs Air Lease Corporation, which has made him a billionaire, and given him the resources to finance the dazzling extension to the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum in Virginia - named of course, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.

This episode was produced by Kerry Thompson, with music by Ramtin Arablouei.

Edited by Neva Grant with research help from Sam Paulson.

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Transcript

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1:14.0	Hey, it's Guy here, and before we start the show, I recently heard a great business story from the Music World.
1:20.0	I was interviewing the rapper Maclamor, and he took me back to a time when record labels were offering a million of dollars.
1:27.0	And he had to make a choice, whether to stay independent with more risk and more reward, or take the upfront money and the security that comes with that.
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1:47.0	And now on to today's show.
1:53.0	Running an airline is a miserable thing.
1:57.0	It's 24-7, and everything goes wrong.
2:01.0	And I said, the guy that was making money off this project is the guy in Arizona.
2:06.0	Not you.
2:07.0	Not me.
	...

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