Pilot who spent 100 days inside $2.5M private jet for MrBeast video reveals whether he kept the plane

The pilot who spent 100 days inside a $2.5 million private jet for a MrBeast video has opened up about the experience and what he did with his prize plane.

Armando Carrion didn’t even know who MrBeast was when he first signed up for the challenge.

But over the course of 100 days – and in front of millions of YouTube viewers – the pilot and dad-of-one threw himself headfirst in whatever challenges the YouTuber sent his way.

In an interview with Supercar Blondie, Carrion has spoken candidly about what got him through the 100 days and what he did with the plane after he won it.

Armando Carrion spent 100 days living inside this $2.5 million private jet – how did he do it?

It all started when Carrion spotted a post in a North Carolina pilots group, asking for a Hawker 800 pilot.

Given that his regular aircraft was undergoing a 12-week inspection, this freed up a lot of time for the pilot and with the go-ahead from his boss, he expressed his interest.

He didn’t even know who MrBeast was.

“I had no idea,” he told Supercar Blondie.

“I’m used to flying high net worth individuals and I fly private jets for a living, so I’ve flown quite a few of the race car drivers and some celebrities here in the Charlotte area, some football players. And I didn’t even think anything of it.

“Then my daughter was the one who saw the logo [on a document]. I had printed it out to sign it. And she said, is that Mr. Beast?”

Thinking he was being hired professionally as a pilot, it wasn’t until a week before the video started shooting that Carrion realized he was being considered as a contestant.

“And then the actual day that it happened, they called me on a Saturday morning and said, how fast can you be here in Greenville, North Carolina?” Carrion recalled.

“I packed a bag and I flew to Greenville and they picked me up. They took me right to the jet, did a test shoot and they said, ‘You’re the guy’.”

The prospect of spending 100 hours onboard a private jet sounds daunting, right?

No access to the outside world, no phones or entertainment, and no family.

It was a period that came with its own set of challenges.

“I had not seen any MrBeast videos I had not seen the stay to win videos. So I really didn’t know what I was in for,” Carrion said.

“The isolation and the being at peace with yourself, was the hardest part. There’s no music for four months like you just have to be at peace with your own self and your own thoughts.”

With only a few pairs of clothes in his bag, he had to improvise when it came to hygiene – washing his underwear in the bathroom sink and giving himself ‘bird baths’.

But despite these hurdles, Carrion said the thought of quitting ‘never once’ crossed his mind.

“From day one, I knew I would make it to the end,” he said.

“I knew I had it in the bag from day one. It was mindfulness, being present, being at peace.

“An everyday routine was what got me through.”

Thanks to his military training, he felt well-equipped to deal with isolation and captivity.

“Never in my life did I think I’d employ that skill set in a MrBeast video,” he remarked.

From exercising to picking specks up off the carpet, he found ways to keep himself busy.

This DoorDash challenge took things to a whole new level

Towards the end of the 100 day stretch, MrBeast threw another challenge Carrion’s way.

He was to be dispatched to 10 different cities across 10 days to pick up a different DoorDash delivery.

“I loved that challenge, they let me plot my own path, plot my own mission,” Carrion said.

“We planned to do it all in eight days, leaving two days for weather.”

At the end of the 100 days, MrBeast hit him with another whammy – an offer to stay on board for another 100 days, and earn $500,000.

With Carrion’s wife and daughter stood outside the plane waiting to welcome back to solid land, this left him to make a decision in the moment.

Ultimately, he decided to get off the plane.

Was it a tough call for him to make?

“There was zero debate in my mind,” he revealed.

“My daughter was 10 at the time. I had a lot of time to do math.

“When he made that offer, I realized I had 2,533 days from today until my daughter has the choice to leave the house when she turns 18.

“Almost 10 percent of the time I had left with my daughter? I could not justify that much time away from her for another half million, when I already had the jet in the bag that day.

“It was a no-brainer right off the bat.

“If I didn’t have a family, I would have stayed on the plane.”

What happened to the Hawker 800 once the MrBeast cameras stopped rolling?

Now that he’d won the private jet, we were curious to know what its ultimate fate had been.

“We sold it for around $2.5 million,” he said.

“One, I fly for a living. I didn’t want my hobby to my work also.

“Two, the costs to operate a Hawker 800 per year is $1.6 million, if you’re flying about 70 days a year, and that’s not counting the rising cost of fuel.

“Even if I charted it, I wasn’t going to make that much.

“Had I kept the airplane, it would have been a money loss. I don’t have $1.6 million a year to spend on a private plane.”

This isn’t the first a contestant on MrBeast has sold his winning prize – this guy did a similar thing with his Lamborghini Gallardo, on MrBeast’s advice.

These days, Carrion and his daughter watch MrBeast’s videos together.

He also had the opportunity to be a consultant for the challenge in which 100 pilots competed for a private plane.