The Embraer team must have worked all night — by mid-morning of Day 4 they had cleared 80 of the 103 squawks on the Phenom 100. Mark Stear of JetQuik continued his due diligence working with Marcelo while Paulo ramped activities on the paperwork side of the process. The steps ahead were to sign off on the plane, close on the transaction, and then connect with the FAA in Oklahoma City where Wright Brothers Aircraft Title was holding our registration paperwork in escrow. (When I say “paper” work I mean it. The registration is a three part – three color — with carbon paper form). As soon as Embraer informs WB that the airplane has been accepted by the new owners, WB would deliver the paperwork to the FAA and the FAA would then issue a “flying time wire” that would then enable us to have ANAC – basically the Brazilian FAA — to conduct a conformity inspection that would result in a Certificate of Airworthiness which would then enable us to make a request of the ANAC office in Rio de Janeiro to issue an overflight permit which would enable us to fly over Brazil to Belem where we would officially “export” the plane from the country.
Believe it or not, this is a repeatable process. JetQuik has done it more than once. Decision #1 was whether to wait until the last squawk was resolved and jeopardize getting ANAC scheduled for Friday morning (Day 5) or to trust that the Embraer team would keep working on the squawks even if we went ahead with the closing. That was an easy decision — I trust the Embraer team completely. Getting the “flying time wire” from the FAA usually takes an hour or so. We completed the closing and got the documents to Wright Brothers in Oklahoma City at 12:07 PM. Around 4 PM the Embraer team said they would like to have a small ceremony to celebrate the acceptance of the airplane. It was only 10:07 AM in Oklahoma City so there was plenty of time to get the wire and contact ANAC to confirm the Friday morning inspection. An alcohol scrub removed the temporary Brazilian tail # and enabled N784JP to glisten. Everyone was feeling good. The ceremony included a short tour of Embraer’s museum upstairs in the delivery hangar, a nice movie about the Phenom, and some toasts among all.
We got downstairs to the office area — each customer group was assigned a very nice office with unlimited WiFi and long distance phone service and incredibly strong coffee — a bit after 5 PM. No wire yet and the FAA accepts no phone calls after 3PM. No problem. We will have it first thing in the morning, get ANAC to start the conformity inspection, get the overflight permit, and still get airborne late afternoon Friday, worst case. Captain Bill had reworked all the flight planning details. Got back to the hotel around 8:30 PM. Time for some Brazilian pizza. It was really good.
Day 5 would start with high hopes that we would be airborne before the end of the day. There were surprises in store for us.