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Of CAVU’s three partners, only Bryan Hancock is a flier, and he’s had a love for it since his childhood.
"I was born and raised in Stuttgart," he said. As a child, he watched crop dusters swoop right outside his front door.
"I always wanted to fly," he said. "I started flying right out of high school."
His flight path later took him to Alaska, where he became a bush pilot.
Eventually, Hancock was flying Airbus A319s and A320s for United Airlines – until terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in 2001.
The event shook the air travel industry to its bones, and suddenly the big flight companies were cutting corners everywhere.
"I was furloughed from United when they downsized," Hancock said.
To bide his time, Hancock sold cars, soon falling into the aircraft parts brokering industry, first working in Walnut Ridge for Universal Asset Management Inc. of Memphis and eventually starting down the road to CAVU. Starting a new business wasn’t an easy task, Hancock said.
"It’s a lot more work to it than you think," he said. "It’s not easy, but it’s definitely doable."
Some of the challenges came from working with Stuttgart to get the warehouse built on airport property. Government regulations keep CAVU from actually owning any property on the airfield, instead having to lease it straight from the city.
"That was a pretty big hurdle to get past, but other than that, it was just getting the first airplanes to come in," he said. "Everything … fell into place after that started happening."
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