Jonathan Spano, now 48, wanted one thing as a boy: to fly for the U.S. Navy. The dream died the moment he learned the service's pilot eyesight requirement — roughly 20/20 as a minimum standard — was one he could never meet. He wore glasses as a kid.
Rather than wait on a bureaucratic exception, Spano turned to the market. Growing up in what he called a 'very blue-collar' family in California, he and his brother started setting out cones and barricades for a crane company their father worked for. In 1995, the teenage brothers launched their own side hustle: traffic safety equipment rental, permits and 24/7 emergency dispatch, all bundled under one roof — a service gap they'd spotted that no single competitor was filling.
'The plan was never to build a national company,' Spano told Fortune. 'It was really a way to just make some money, and it just continued to grow.' It grew from an office in his great-grandmother's garage into Traffic Management Inc, which now operates more than 50 locations across the United States. Spano says it is the largest privately held traffic control company in the country, generating over $1 million a day in revenue.
That revenue, not a Pentagon waiver, is what eventually put Spano in a cockpit. Two decades into running the company, its finance chief suggested buying a small plane as a tax write-off and a faster way to reach a growing list of locations. Spano bought a Cessna, learned to fly it, and used it to cut travel time across California as the company expanded from two offices to 20.
One aircraft led to another — bigger, faster, eventually a private jet — each costing him a few hundred thousand dollars. He also bought a helicopter for around $2 million and partnered with Hollywood aerial coordinator Fred North to mount camera rigs on it for film and commercial shoots.
It was North who set up the pivot that made Spano a name in aviation circles beyond trucking cones: 'They're making another Top Gun film,' Spano recalled him saying. 'You should try to modify your jet to carry the same cameras that we do on the helicopter, and if you can pull it off and get it done, you could work on and fly your airplane in this next Top Gun movie.'
Spano spent roughly 18 months and, by his own estimate, well into seven figures modifying his Embraer Phenom 300 to carry two camera systems and clear FAA certification. The effort paid off: flying alongside veteran film pilot Kevin LaRosa Jr., Spano flew what he described as 'a large portion of the jet-to-jet aerial sequences, including all of the aircraft carrier sequences' in Top Gun: Maverick.
No committee reversed the Navy's eyesight rule for Spano, and none needed to. The market did what the standard could not: it let a capable operator build capital on his own terms and buy his way into the sky. That is the story capital allocation is supposed to tell — merit, risk and reinvestment outperforming a fixed bureaucratic gate. Spano's jet now carries film cameras over aircraft carriers not because a regulator changed the rules, but because a taxpayer-free, self-funded business earned the right to write its own.
