Inside Florida State's All-Out Recruiting Trip to See Karlos May

This is what an all-out recruiting trip looks like: Mike Norvell arriving at Ramsay High School by helicopter to recruit four-star 2027 defensive lineman Karlos May. WBRC's video shows Bell 407 N12HX on the practice field, and Birmingham City Schools documented the visit.

The school visit sits inside a much larger aircraft sequence: two aircraft, 13 movements, six days and roughly 3,245 nautical miles. Seminole Boosters aircraft N851FS left Tallahassee January 25, worked through south Florida and Memphis, and reached Birmingham late January 28. The next morning N12HX flew from Birmingham's airport to Ramsay, continued to the Thompson High School grounds and returned to the airport at 11:42 a.m. N851FS departed 16 minutes later, continued through Picayune, Mobile, Miami and Charlotte, and reached Tallahassee at 9:58 p.m. January 30. The timing supports a helicopter-to-jet transfer in Birmingham, but aircraft records do not prove Norvell rode the jet or every helicopter movement.

The numbers nearly line up. Florida State's March expense ledger lists three Seminole Boosters “Chartered Air Travel” reimbursements totaling $63,750. JetSweep's C680 model estimates $65,800 with fixed operating costs allocated for the N851FS movements shown here. The 3.2% gap is close enough to be useful, but not enough to tie those reimbursements to this journey: the ledger omits the tail, route and service date. FOIAball separately reported $52,600 in January helicopter spending. Bell's 407GXi benchmark puts the three observed local N12HX flights at about 23 gallons and $400 in direct operating cost. Those figures are not contradictory: one is a monthly vendor total; the other covers 31 tracked minutes and excludes positioning, pilot, insurance, overhead and profit.