Mike is the inventor of the original Aircraft Recovery System — the product the aviation world now knows as PlaneSkate.
But the road to building it started about as far from a boardroom as you can get: a ten-year-old kid at his first air show in Mason City, Iowa, deciding right then that airplanes were going to be his whole life. At fourteen, Mike rode his bike to the local airport every day for two weeks until the owner finally gave him a job washing planes and sweeping hangars, just to be around them.
He traded that work for flying lessons and earned his Pilot’s License on his 17th birthday. More than forty years later, Mike has logged over 31,000 flight hours, qualified in more than 40 aircraft, and built one of the most recognized careers in American air show aviation — a 2002 U.S. National Aerobatic Champion and a member of the 2004 U.S. Aerobatic Team, flying the Lucas Oil Pitts at more than 20 shows a year across the U.S. and Canada for two decades.
Alongside his flying career, Mike leads and operates West Metro Aviation in Buffalo, Minnesota — a full-service maintenance, restoration, and sales facility that’s become a cornerstone of the Minnesota general aviation community. It was on that shop floor, solving a problem he’d seen too many times on too many runways, that the idea for PlaneSkate was born.
Today, Mike leads PlaneSkate with the same philosophy that got a kid from Iowa into the cockpit in the first place: if you can imagine it, you can build it — and if it keeps a runway open and gets an aircraft home safely, it’s worth building right.
Joanne grew up in Maple Lake, Minnesota, and attended Saint Timothy's Catholic School through sixth grade — an early foundation, she'll tell you, that shaped both the academic discipline and the steady sense of purpose she's carried into every role since.
She went on to earn her B.A. from the University of Minnesota, Morris, taught and coached for several years, and then returned to school for her MBA at the University of St. Thomas, where she is currently a doctoral candidate in Leadership.For the past several years, Joanne served as Director of Operations at Nativity of Mary in Bloomington, where she oversaw a $4.2 million budget, managed payroll and HR for more than 70 employees, and handled the kind of behind-the-scenes work that keeps a complex organization running smoothly — finance, compliance, facilities, contracts, audits, and the dozens of details no one notices until they're missing.
She brings that same operational steadiness to PlaneSkate as Office Manager, making sure the day-to-day runs the way it should so the rest of the team can focus on customers.
Ask Joanne what she's most committed to and she'll give you a clear, three-part answer: her faith, the strength of family and friends, and the power of education. She has four adult children — two in the Twin Cities, one in New York City, and one in Florida — and spends most of her free time with family and friends, much of it outdoors or around a sport of some kind.
Jordan originally comes to us from Buffalo, Minnesota. He served in the United States Air Force for 6 years as a maintainer on the Lockheed HC-130J’s. This aircraft serves as a dedicated fixed-wing personnel recovery platform for the Air Force and Jordan’s extensive background with these operations brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to PlaneSkate. While serving in the Air Force, Jordan deployed twice and traveled to 14 foreign countries. Jordan met his wife while serving in the Air Force and in his spare time, he enjoys spending time with family, hunting, and fishing.
Seth builds PlaneSkates. He assembles each unit, manages inventory and parts sourcing, preps equipment for shipment, and coordinates delivery to customers — from the Buffalo, MN shop floor to the airport receiving dock. As PlaneSkate scales, Seth will also support on-site customer training, walking airport teams through deployment and maintenance.
Before joining PlaneSkate, Seth spent five years across sales and hospitality roles in the Twin Cities, including positions at the Four Seasons Hotel Minneapolis and as a sales representative negotiating commercial contracts in excess of $1 million. He brings the same standard of care to every PlaneSkate that leaves the shop.
Outside of work, Seth is training for an Ironman, boxes, lifts, and coaches track. He and his family run For the Girls, a nonprofit raising money for girls' sports in Minnesota. Above all, he values time with the people he loves.