Did You Ever Want a Demo?
A demonstration pilot's life isn't all thrills - or is it?
Scott Toland, a part-time ultralight trike demo pilot in Southern California explains, "The trike's control inputs and system are very different from an airplane. You have no stick and rudder. Instead the bar is what you move and the wing above you actually twists and carves its way through the air."
Toland loved learning to fly the trike so much he earned his ultralight basic flight instructor rating and started giving all his friends introductory lessons. This behavior caught the attention of John Kemmeries, a trike dealer who promptly recruited Toland as a demo pilot. "Now I go to air shows as basically an indentured servant. John pays my air freight and gives me a place to crash in exchange for my help putting the craft together and showing the crowds what it can do." It is a good arrangement for this full-time Los Angeles, California, set and lighting designer.
For others, being a demo pilot is a full-time job, and its pay is comparable to other pilots, corporate or company, who fly the same or similar cockpit. As a general rule, the more complex (and expensive) the aircraft, the more the pilot earns. But to some demo pilots, money isn't everything.
John Hunter, demonstration pilot for Leza-Lockwood Corporation, which makes the Air Cam, among other aircraft, in Sebring, Florida, got started in much the same way. "I'd set a couple of records in the Drifter and Phil Lockwood knew about those, but in real life I was a stock broker in Boca Raton," he says. "During a slow day Lockwood called and asked me to help him solve a problem with a customer in Cancun, Mexico. He was having engine failures in his Drifters every 30 hours on average. So I went."
Eleven months and 900 air hours later the customer in Cancun was making money selling rides and towing banners along the beach, and had a new mechanic trained by Hunter. Hunter came home, packed up his family and business, and went to work for Lockwood full time.
He's never looked back. "A typical day starts with phone calls to catch up on my sales prospects, marketing proposals, and customer support. Then I might have an appointment for a demonstration flight, or a potential customer may come in without an appointment. It happens a lot," he says. Either way, Hunter's convinced that the best way to sell the Drifters, FliteStars, and Air Cams is to let the machine do the selling during an intro ride.
"I like to put potential buyers in the front seat of the Air Cam. The front is more comfortable, quieter, and has better visibility and more of a sense of control. I want the prospect to enjoy the flight, but at the same time I want to demonstrate the tight turns and steep climbs and extreme angles the airplane is capable of handling. I keep them informed on the intercom, telling them what I'm going to do in advance - and my voice is very calm, relaxed," Hunter says. "If they seem nervous I won't do anything too radical. The effect is to impress, not to make a prospective customer uncomfortable."
Safety is always paramount in Hunter's presentation of the aircraft. "I always fly so that if I lose an engine it is merely an inconvenience," he says.
Hunter demos the three airplanes seven days a week. "I'm usually here until sundown answering faxes and e-mails requesting information. It's a demanding situation because Leza-Lockwood is a small company in a growth mode. To balance things out I've got more than 1,000 hours doing demos and the thrill still hasn't worn off," Hunter smiles. Then he's back to work with a customer who's wandered in from overseas.
For Ray Maule a career as a demonstration pilot was a natural. After all, he grew up in the shadow of his parents, who established Maule Aircraft in Moultrie, Georgia. "My sister and I were building tailwheel assemblies in the 1940s," he says. Today his job, like Hunter's, is multifaceted. "I do the demonstrations, the test pilot work, and when I'm not doing that I'll walk around the shop and see if there are things that need to be looked at," he says.
It's definitely still a family affair. Maule's mother is CEO, and seven or more other family members, including wives, son-in-laws, and nephews fill many of the executive, sales, and pilot positions both in Maule Aircraft and in its flight training arm, Maule Flight.
Ray works as a team with his son, Brent, a salesman. When he demonstrates what a Maule can do, he hangs it on the edge. "We cover everything a person would like to see about the airplane - mostly at low speeds. I show how slow the airplane can fly, its slow-flight handling characteristics, how docile it is in a stall."
Moultrie's Spence Field has a 10,000-foot runway, and a 1,500-foot grass strip beside it. The setup is ideal for demonstrating the Maule's STOL design. "We'll also show the climbout with marks to show how high we are at the end of the runway. We'll take the airplane, with the customer, over to our nearby farm to show them how it handles the terrain there, as well. If they want a demo in a floatplane, we've got a 2,800 foot waterway next to the factory," he says.
When the customer's had enough, they head back to the factory. That's where Brent takes over. "He handles the actual sale of the airplanes," says Ray.
Toland, Hunter, and Maule love light aircraft and wouldn't consider flying the heavy iron. But if flying light singles and twins isn't your ultimate goal in life, you may want to move up. To do so, you'd best hold down a job or two in the corporate arena first. Those who know say that you try to work your way into a position where you're flying the airplanes you'd like to demonstrate, then apply to the company that builds them. Don't expect anything more than a polite acknowledgment, however, until you've got a college degree and some serious pilot-in-command time, to the tune of 2,500 hours total time and 1,000 hours of turbine experience.
When you finally do land that turbine demo job, don't expect to be home much. Cessna Citation demo pilot Nick Parrott says, "The only constant in this job is change - change in schedule, location, and destination. You must have the ability to adapt and maintain a positive, cheerful demeanor. A two-week trip can turn into a two-year trip when the attitude is bad. The job is basically 40 percent sales and 60 percent flying. Of the flying at least 30 to 40 percent of it involves instructional techniques such as aircraft familiarization," he says.
Parrott is quick to point out, however, that unlike the light aircraft demo pilots, he doesn't hang his aircraft on the edge during a demonstration. "We have to be careful. We don't have the luxury of someone who operates out of the same field every day. It takes a lot of advance preparation and the addition of a safety margin so we aren't ever operating at the edge of the envelope. We cannot misrepresent our aircraft. If what we are doing can't be done by the average pilot, we shouldn't demo it. In general, we're a careful, thoughtful bunch who think safety first."
We have two basic demonstration "rides," Parrott says. "When you demonstrate the airplane to a pilot, you have to sell him, teach him the airplane, and show what the airplane can do. It's usually one on one, and we fly a profile. After a thorough walk-around to explain the aerodynamics and systems, we take off and climb to show the airplane at altitude and high speed, then descend to middle altitudes for slow flight and stalls and steep banked turns, and finally return to the pattern for takeoffs and landings, followed by a post-flight discussion of systems or attributes."
On an executive demo, the principal is primarily interested in transportation. "He strictly views whatever he's looking at as a tool to get his job done," says Parrott. An executive is looking for a comfortable cabin and the fastest way to get from A to B. He'll ask, How big is the baggage compartment? Can we go to XYZ airport?
The pilots go out as a team, with the salesman in the territory playing team leader. Along with that come some pretty long days and some varying conditions. The benefits, though, are world travel - occasionally to exciting, exotic destinations - and the opportunity to fly many different Citation aircraft.
Parrott smiles as he describes a typical trip. "We left Wichita in a Citation Bravo, went to Goose Bay, Newfoundland, then to Reykjavik, Iceland, and stayed overnight. We went on to Paris for a demonstration, then to Rhodes, Greece; Dubai, UAR; and on to Mumbai, where we picked up the next leg of demo flights. We went to Porbandar (Ghandi's birthplace), India; Bangalore, India; over to Chennai; and back to Mumbai, before heading to Jhodpur and Delhi. From there it was on to Bangkok and Chiangmai, Thailand, then back to Bangkok. That was the end of the line for us. We changed crews and came home by airline via Hong Kong and Los Angeles."
Needless to say, Parrott is gone a lot. "It's just about the right mix of being gone and being home for me," he chuckles.
Tom Sifford, a Raytheon King Air demo pilot, echoes Nick Parrott's words. "When our chief pilot interviews, that's a big question," he says. Sifford is typically gone from his Indianapolis base three days a week, but he averages 50-odd hours of flight time a month. That means he does another two days a week flying demos out and back from home. "The up side of being on the road is that we enjoy meeting the great customers and new people," he says.
And what's the best skill a demo pilot should develop? "I think that flight instruction is a real good way to go - it develops the people-type skills and the sense to determine the customer's ability to absorb what you're going to tell him. You take a guy out of a Bonanza or a Baron who's looking at a King Air, and having those flight instructor skills helps you to keep the demo smooth and let the guy have a good experience even if he's not proficient," says Sifford. He recommends, however, that you supplement any aviation-oriented degree with something less specialized, just in case you end up selling furniture or cars down the road while the industry weathers a slump.
Cessna's Parrott agrees with Sifford. "I call the CFI a 'hamburger rating.' I've always been able to make a living teaching, and I've always loved it," he says.
Not all manufacturers need full-time flight departments like Cessna's. Socata, the manufacturer of the TBM700, uses retired corporate pilot Tom Cunningham 10 days a month to demonstrate the aircraft to potential buyers. Cunningham also does an occasional delivery, which can result in some pretty spectacular overseas flying in this single-engine turbine powerhouse. For him, it's an ideal retirement job.
"Full-time demonstration work isn't for me. I like having fun flying and there are very few jobs in aviation that I'd call fun. This is one of them," he says. "Typically a TBM700 buyer is stepping up from a Piper Malibu. I'm always in the right seat teaching pilots with varying experience levels. I've got lots of flight training experience and that helps. I go out on short-duration trips where I might demonstrate the airplane for a few private prospects and perform in an air show, then come back to this small town and have plenty of time for fishing and enjoying life."
Cunningham wouldn't think of going back to work full-time, which is good news for you. Socata has taken so many orders for new TBM700s that the next available delivery is into 1999. With business so good there may be room for another demo pilot. Leza-Lockwood's John Hunter says he would love to have an assistant. And Cessna's Nick Parrott put the call out quite bluntly. "Cessna has openings for qualified pilots in its demonstration department. it has never been so good as it is right now. Grab a resume and go, I say."
So, what are you waiting for?
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