I was a local delivery courier in Phoenix, Arizona.
Not exactly the origin story you’d expect from someone who’s handed off aircraft parts in Dublin, eaten duck head in Hong Kong, and stretched out in a lie-flat seat somewhere over the Pacific at 35,000 feet.
But that’s exactly how it started.
One day my company called and told me I needed to pick up an aircraft part and “OBC it” to Appleton, Wisconsin. I had two problems with that sentence. I didn’t know what OBC meant. And I had absolutely no idea where Appleton, Wisconsin was.
By the end of that day I was standing in a small regional airport handing a little box — a computer motherboard — to an Allegiant Airlines mechanic. He said thank you. I was done.
And I thought to myself: This job is easy. I get to fly for free and it pays a lot more.
I was not entirely wrong. But I wasn’t entirely right either.
What This Job Actually Is
OBC stands for On Board Courier. When a commercial airline has a grounded aircraft, every hour it sits on the tarmac costs the airline serious money. When a manufacturer needs a critical part delivered before a production line shuts down, they can’t wait for freight. They call a company like mine. My company calls me. And I get on the next available flight — sometimes with an hour’s notice — and I don’t come home until the part is delivered.
I’ve done this to Jakarta. Hong Kong. Taipei. Sydney. London. Dublin. Bucharest. Paris. Brussels. Madrid. Managua. Mexico City. And a lot of American cities in between.
It sounds glamorous. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s four days in Dublin chasing $300,000 worth of Ryanair fuel nozzles that Aer Lingus somehow managed to lose in their own baggage office. Four days of politely asking. Four days of being told to come back tomorrow. Until the fourth day when I stopped being polite — and fifteen minutes later those nozzles mysteriously appeared in a closet they’d apparently been sitting in the whole time.
That’s the job. High stakes, unpredictable, and occasionally absurd.
The Moment Everything Changed
My second trip to Hong Kong. I was delivering automotive parts and there were no coach seats left on Cathay Pacific out of San Francisco. The client needed those boxes. So they booked me in first class.
Lie-flat seat. Real meals. Blankets. Concierge service somewhere over the Pacific.
My first thought was: well, this doesn’t suck.
My second thought — the one that stayed with me long after I landed — was: how do I do this all the time?
That question is why SkyGoFly exists.
Why I Started This
I’m not a points guru. I’m not a travel hacker who’s been obsessing over airline miles since college. I’m someone who spent years in airports around the world, learned how the system actually works from the inside, and got a taste of premium travel that I can’t unfeel.
I started SkyGoFly because I know there are a lot of people asking the same question I was asking in that Cathay Pacific seat.
How do I do this all the time?
That’s what we’re figuring out together. Fare deals. Booking strategies. What’s actually worth paying for and what isn’t. The stuff the airlines don’t advertise and the travel industry doesn’t explain clearly.
I’ll bring the airport miles and the stories. You bring the curiosity.
Let’s go find some seats.
— Kenneth