Air-show pilots learn the art of the big deal.
Most of us, to paraphrase Will Rogers, never met an air show we didn't like. Twenty-six million of us went to air shows last year, but with a few exceptions (such as Pepsi), the advertising potential of that sort of crowd has been lost on corporate America — until now. Business executives are discovering the selling power of air shows and that, in turn, is bringing change to the air-show industry, but not without controversy.
Air-show performers and business executives are beginning to discover one another, if somewhat warily. For the performer, sponsorship may be bittersweet: It provides financial security that means some can devote all their time to air show performing, but at a cost. Performers often find sponsorship means losing the freedom to pick their own shows and even their days off. Some veteran performers, while recognizing the benefits of sponsorship, worry that it detracts from air shows as professional entertainment: A few new performers use flashy gimmicks as a shortcut to success — circus acts, some veterans call them. They hope to attract big sponsors without having to pay their dues, veterans warn.
The best way to see the "business" of air shows is to attend the International Council of Air Shows (ICAS) convention, marking the end of the old air-show season and the beginning of the new one. It has all the trappings of a business convention, except the 230 exhibit booths house mostly performers, not products. Air-show promoters attend so they can "shop" for acts.
In many ways, the air-show pilots seen there are equals: They all perform a variety of crowd-pleasing maneuvers such as square loops, seven- turn inverted flat spins, vertical knife-edge spins, torque rolls, zwerbel turns (in which the aircraft rises vertically, momentarily hangs on the propeller, and comes down in a flat spin), lomcevaks, and knife-edge flight. They can all "pull" or "push" an impressive amount of positive or negative Gs (usually six to 10 positive and four to six negative). But there are also important differences: Some have huge corporate sponsors to pay the bills.
One promoter strolling the aisles of the annual ICAS convention at the Reno (Nevada) Hilton Convention Center last December stops before the booth of Mohr Barnstorming. "Are you as good as they say you are?" he asks John Mohr, who has drawn crowds in the Midwest for 18 years with his unmodified-Stearman act and, this year, a Stearman-to-helicopter transfer of a stunt man. Mohr points to a television monitor running a videotape of his act as if to say yes, I'm that good. But Mohr, based in Wisconsin, would like to be known nationally and looks down the convention aisle to Northwest Airlines captain Julie Clark, who flies for Mopar Chrysler Motors auto parts, and wonders if he should also be shopping for a sponsor. It would mean a loss of freedom to choose his own shows and time away from his job at Northwest Airlines where he is a captain, simulator instructor, and check airman on DC-9s.
In the next aisle over, performer Jan Jones stands in a booth filled with aerobatic competition trophies. Her act, called Red Thunder Airshows, is based in Chicago.
Husband and international aerobatic judge John Rux tried unsuccessfully to interest her in flying until he took her to see Patty Wagstaff, the reigning United States aerobatic champion, in an air show in 1989. That looked like more fun than her motorcycle, so she learned to fly, tried aerobatics, got good at it, entered competitions, won, and began performing in air shows — all within two years. Her dream is to use air shows to earn money needed to devote more time to competitive aerobatics, much like Wagstaff has done.
Jones would like to find a sponsor, such as BFGoodrich Aerospace and Michelin, which sponsor Wagstaff, but first she must become better known. "It's a chicken-and-egg thing. I'd love to have a sponsor come into my booth and say, 'Yeah, you're signed up.' That would mean I wouldn't have to worry about the insurance software [she currently sells]. Realistically, I have to become more of a known quantity," she said. Jones took a big step toward that goal when she performed for the first time at Sun 'n Fun in Lakeland, Florida, this year. She has already established herself as a popular performer in Canadian air shows and plans to polish her Canadian French vocabulary so she can address crowds in both French and English. But she and Rux recognize there is a down side to sponsorship. "The problem with sponsorship is that suddenly air show performing goes from a part-time job to a full-time job — seven days a week," Rux said. "Interestingly, your boss is no longer the air-show promoter, it is the sponsor, and sometimes those two have conflicting goals."
Over at the Sean D. Tucker booth, it is a different story. Instead of hoping to attract sponsors, he is turning them down. Instead of booking air shows, he is paring them back. He will accept a huge load of 31 performances this year. MCI has taken over the advertising space on his wings for 1994 and wants him to hit just the largest shows. With MCI, it's a "biggest bang for the advertising buck" issue. Tucker planned to go to Sun 'n Fun, but there was no room on the MCI schedule for it. He wanted to return to Japan this year, where the crowd went wild last year over his sideways-flight maneuver called the Harrier, but MCI did not need exposure in Japan.
Although a number of the maneuvers Tucker does have contributed to his reputation, it is the Harrier — named after the AV-8B vertical takeoff and landing attack jet — that sets him apart from other performers. He "flies" on one side of the fuselage, allowing him to appear to move sideways — nose aimed at the crowd. "The wings stall at 63 knots, but the fuselage stalls at only 30," he explains with obvious glee. (During the performance in Japan, a strong headwind straight down the runway during the Harrier maneuver made it appear to the crowd as though Tucker's Pitts S-2S was hovering.)
Tucker, a California helicopter crop duster, is working on something still crazier at his Salinas home airport; he wants to fly backward, flipping the Pitts nose over tail and flying tail-first for 1,000 feet. How far will he go? His contemporaries have commented, "Sean, I like you, but you're going to kill yourself," he recalls famed air-show performer Bob Hoover saying during a face-to-face, toe-to-toe discussion one day. Because of that fatherly little talk, Sean now completes his dive and levels off before the first of three ribbon cuts 25 feet above the runway. Prior to Hoover's advice, he was still in a slight dive when he cut the first ribbon; he cuts one while flying knife-edge with the right wing down 90 degrees, switches to a left knife-edge for the second, and finally cuts the third while inverted.
It is hard to imagine this free spirit "strategizing" with the MCI board about his role in the 1-800-COLLECT marketing campaign, let alone sitting still long enough for the meeting. Like his frenetic act, he is constantly on the move in the convention hall, as though burning off excess energy. His booth seems quiet because the year's appearance schedule is already decided; videotapes of his performances attract a constant crowd, and his aerobatic instructor from 1973, Amelia Reid, drops by long enough to tell a reporter she was always afraid he would overstress her airplanes. (Her fears proved well founded: He brought one back damaged.) He took up aerobatics originally because he was afraid of stalls and thought he should be a better pilot than that.
The schedule is pretty much decided at the Toyota AirSports booth nearby, too, where TWA DC-9 copilots Don Johnson and Keith O'Leary are celebrating becoming part of the Toyota Motor Sales USA marketing team. Toyota is new to the air-show business this year and has stirred not a little controversy, but the business deals Toyota is arranging could create new air shows in 1995. Toyota "trades" Johnson's act to the air show in return for exhibitor space, which is used to display Toyota race cars along with the latest models from local dealers. Some in the air-show business, among them Johnson's mentor, Wagstaff, see that as setting a disturbing precedent of performing for free, pushing aside other performers who must charge because they lack such a sponsor.
While he now has "...everything I dreamed of in a sponsor," he also admits it has turned out to be more work than he had thought. "It's 98 percent paperwork and sponsor relations," he said. To win Toyota headquarters over, he and O'Leary presented three different versions of a 40-page marketing plan. Johnson and O'Leary must now negotiate with each local Toyota dealer at air-show locations to win their participation. Local dealers have limited resources and may prefer, for example, to host a local golf tournament. Johnson finds he is linked with other portions of the Toyota marketing plan; in October, he will provide the equivalent of the "halftime entertainment" during a Toyota-sponsored car race in Monterey, California. Toyota wants to sponsor only 15 shows this year, a good deal for Johnson and O'Leary, who must also fly for TWA. Is it fame and fortune at last for Johnson? He'll make a profit this year, but the fame may take awhile. When spectators at a Tampa, Florida, air show heard that "Don Johnson will be signing autographs," many of them expected to see Melanie Griffith with him, one spectator said.
The demand by a sponsor on a performer's personal time is poorly understood by those just entering the business, says veteran performer Charlie Hillard, one of three pilots on the Eagles Aerobatic Team; the others are Gene Soucy and Tom Poberezny.
"What it amounts to is, the sponsor is going to own you seven days a week," Hillard said. "In our case, we didn't want to be owned by anybody, and we wanted to set our own schedules. I am not in a position to go in on Wednesday to stand beside my airplane in a shopping mall and sign autographs — there is no way I can give that kind of time away. When we first started flying as the Christen Eagles [1979], we had full sponsorship from Frank Christensen, who was coming out with a kit airplane. He furnished the airplanes and everything connected with the act, including uniforms and travel allowance, but we booked any show we wanted to," he said.
Hillard said it is not always the best pilots who get the sponsors. "Some of the people coming up aren't paying their dues to learn their craft and are trying to get booked using gimmicks, seeing it more and more as a circus act. Occasionally, someone comes along like Sean Tucker, who is a terrific pilot. He shot right to the top of the list. There is no doubt he has the best solo act in the country because of his flying ability," Hillard said.
Daniel Heligoin and Montaine Mallet of the crowd-pleasing French Connection, who perform a duet in the sky using two CAP 10 aerobatic aircraft flying in close formation, say they are very happy for Johnson but prefer sponsors who provide a sum of money and allow the performers to choose the shows.
"We sign autographs, but if [personal appearances] become your whole job, there is no time to train," said Mallet. "We got into this because we enjoy flying. The best reward is when someone comes up and says, 'It was so pretty, I got goose bumps. I would like to learn how to fly.'" Some of those spectators may eventually end up at Mudry Aviation in Bunnell, Florida, where Heligoin and Mallet operate an aerobatic training school. The French Connection was sponsored for five or six years by Northstar Avionics, but Northstar was sold to Canadian Marconi, which now only sponsors the French Connection at the Experimental Aircraft Association fly-in in Oshkosh and Sun 'n Fun. Other French Connection sponsors include Mobil Oil and Atlantic Aircraft Engines.
"For the exposure air shows can give, sponsors should be knocking on the door. Instead, it is the performers who are knocking. Very few sponsors see it yet," Mallet said.
But with 26 million spectators a year now attending air shows, up from 14 million seven years ago, according to ICAS figures, it seems a safe bet that big-time sponsorship will be attracted to the air-show business in years to come.
Related Articles
