Pilots: Skywriter Mark Sorenson

A 30-second burst burns about one gallon of oil and produces a smoke stroke one mile long. “I write upside-down and backwards,” Sorenson explained. “A message visible for 40 miles needs to be in the 12,000-foot altitude range. In stable air it hangs together 20, 30 minutes. You stay in position and let the letters move away like an old-style typewriter. As you’re drawing the letters they’re moving with the wind.”

Sorenson learned all that in 1993 when he was living in Florida and looking for a way to supplement his then-first officer’s income. Rosie O’Grady’s Flying Circus in Orlando hired Sorenson to draw a martini glass and advertise Rosie O’Grady’s. “That’s where I learned the technique of skywriting,” Sorenson. “I could spell ‘Rosie,’ I could figure out the rest of the alphabet.”

Like, “Will you marry me?” No names, either, to make it simpler. “I would get hired to fly over a Miami Dolphins game,” he said. “It was customary that the cameras would scan around and 15 people would think they were getting proposed to. There were lot of stories. One couple broke up, one got together.”

If it was meant to be, it was meant to be.

Today he has two airplanes outfitted to blow smoke. There’s his Yak 55, which cranks out a large stream and performs tight turns and makes crisp letters, but it’s expensive to operate. His other is a Just Aircraft Highlander, a Light Sport aircraft that flies slowly, but performs perfectly for small events. Plus, it’s inexpensive to operate. “You can skywrite with any airplane,” he says. “I used to skywrite in a 172.”

Still, skywriting remains his part-time job; Sorenson’s a full-time pilot for Southwest. “It’s a lot harder to sell skywriting than to skywrite. You can spend 20, 30, 40 hours a week to get your message out, to make it worth it,” he says. “In flying, you’re not a crop duster, you’re a farmer. You’re not a skywriter, you’re an account executive.”