Airplane Repo returns for Season 2
The second season of ‘Airplane Repo’ returns to Discovery Channel in August 2014.
After months of suspense and cryptic clues, ‘Airplane Repo,’ the popular documentary-style reality television show, has been green-lighted by Discovery Channel to return for an eagerly-anticipated second season.
If you aren’t already hooked, the show follows a gang of all-action bailiffs, who specialise in recovering private jets, luxury boats and other expensive assets belonging to super-rich owners that can no longer afford to keep them.
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At the heart of the show is the dynamic duo of Ken Cage and Danny Thompson, a smartly-dressed former-banker and an ex-bounty hunter, distinguished by his long hair and tattoos.
Cage and Thompson were introduced to each other by Discovery Channel producers, but the pair have become firm friends, with Cage continuing to contract Thompson for some of the higher-risk projects carried out by the International Recovery & Remarketing Group (IRG), his full-service repossession firm based in Florida.
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“There are synergies between hunting fugitives and hunting boats and planes,” Cage says of Thompson’s past profession.
“We still use him, both on screen and off screen,” says Cage. “He’s not afraid of anything; it was a pretty natural fit.”
Big surprises and a new female star
Having battled hard against people who are still convinced that much of ‘Airplane Repo’ is fake, Cage was delighted to tell Corporate Jet Investor that Discovery Channel will premiere the second season of ‘Airplane Repo’ on 22 August 2014 at 10 p.m eastern time, with the series running for a total of eight weeks.
“It is going to blow people away,” Cage says with excitement. “You’ll see lot of different kinds of aircraft.”
Production lasted from April until July and Cage admits that it was difficult to stay so tightly-lipped about the return of the show, especially when fans were bombarding him with questions through social media.
The show will also see the return of Mike Kennedy, a daredevil pilot, and Kevin Lacey, a self-described Texan cowboy with a real gift for flying.
This time around, Lacey will be joined by a young, female protégée, named Heather Sterzick, who is a former military pilot that specialises in aerial acrobatics.
Cage is particularly excited about a “surprise asset,” which he and Thompson find themselves confronted with during a particularly tricky mission, but he is careful not to give away any clues.
“I’m so excited, I’m not even telling my wife what we’re doing,” he says.
Airplane Repo fans help to build hype online
The stars of the show began a promotion campaign at the recent EAA AirVenture Oshkosh event – the largest air show held in the US – by filming short trailers to promote the show, before a thought occurred to them.
“We thought it would be cool to ask fans to do it as well,” says Cage. “One guy even faked his own repossession.”
The video clip, which was shared on the Ken Cage’s Facebook page by Anthony Ison from Lakeland, Florida, sees the fan pretending to protect his propeller aircraft from being strong-armed away from him.
“You thought that was exciting?” he asks, while safely sat inside the cockpit. “Wait until ‘Airplane Repo’ Season 2 premieres on Discovery.”
The price of fame
The success of ‘Airplane Repo’ has not changed the fact that Cage is still a serious repossession specialist. “Some of the difficult repossession stuff is now easier, because people know who we are; they know we’re legitimate,” he says.
Cage says IRG Group has recovered between 85 and 90 aircraft this year alone, as well as over 100 boats. Most repossessions take place in the US, but he and his team have also travelled to Jamaica, Mexico, Trinidad and Venezuela.
As a result of the pick-up in business, he has had to take on additional staff and has expanded IRG’s brokerage business, which is run as a subsidiary company (at the time of writing, the company’s website lists a Bombardier CRJ-200ER and a Beech Jet 400A for sale, amongst other aircraft).
“We’ve repossessed Gulfstream GIIs, GIIIs, a bunch of King Airs, you name it,” says Cage. “The important thing is that the corporate aircraft world is still affected by this.”
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Cage describes the addition of a camera crew during an aircraft repossession as “quite a bit more stressful.”
“It’s easy to hide one person or for one person to escape from a situation if it comes down to that, but a camera crew can make things incredibly complex, which puts a lot of stress on me.”
There is also the problem that the owner of the asset feel even more uneasy about losing their most prized possession.
“We have to convince people that we’re not trying to embarrass them,” says Cage.
International acclaim
Although Discovery Channel has not yet confirmed whether it will show the second season of ‘Airplane Repo’ outside of the US, the first season was syndicated throughout the world, finding fans in Europe, Asia and South America.
“It’s on in Italy right now,” says Cage. “The Netherlands are all over it and the reaction from the UK was just astounding.”
“In China I heard they dubbed me in Mandarin,” he laughs.
“Danny and I were in Las Vegas recently. We were waiting for a car, when a man tapped me on the shoulder and said that he loved the show. I asked him where he was from, as I could detect an accent, and he said New Zealand.”
“That is impossible for me to wrap my head around,” says Cage. “I didn’t even realise it was shown there.”