Show off

She is in perpetual motion, moving through a hangar at Quebec’s Gatineau-Ottawa Executive Airport (CYND) from project to project, person to person, task to task, observation to observation, concern to concern. As head of Third Strike Wingwalking and owner of an old and needy 1940 Stearman, she has a shoulder and a half full of responsibility, and that includes the lives of the pilots and people she employs as well as the satisfaction of the audience she will perform for this afternoon, hanging upside down in aerobatic maneuvers at 500 feet agl.

Three hours later, the transformation is remarkable. Carol Pilon is now stunningly beautiful. Sleek in a red and black spandex bodysuit, hair floating around her head and shoulders, makeup artfully applied, and a slash of brilliant red lipstick, the wing walker is ready to take her stage. All trace of exhaustion gone, the haggard airshow act owner is now a hawk.

Most know of Pilon (Pee-lon) because of her nearly 25 years as a dramatic and daredevil wing walker, performing her act first with Jimmy Franklin Airshows and now with her own ambitious and groundbreaking team, Third Strike. As a young woman she was not only fearless, but driven, rejecting any notion that she could not be what she wanted to be: the best wing walker in the world. It took her nearly 10 years to get up on the wing, and it will take much more than time and exhaustion to get her down.

“It was February 2, 2001, on a beautiful California day and I was finally up on the stanchion at 5,000 feet. Just the beautiful blue sky and me and the airplane, and, man, I thought I was a rock star. This is where I was supposed to be. And then I realized I still needed to get back down.”

“The freedom, it’s not just the freedom that I’m soaring through the air. It’s the freedom that I’m totally responsible for my own survival. I’m soaring through the air.  I’m totally responsible for my own survival.Pilon says she was “an explosion, a nuclear warhead” when she was a young up-and-comer in the industry. “God, I was so self-absorbed. I saw myself as this shining airshow princess; my head was huge,” she says. “My hero was Jimmy Franklin. I thought he was the best pilot. So, I married him.”

The couple divorced just a year later when Pilon objected to a routine Franklin was planning with Bobby Younkin. The two pilots were killed in their “Masters of Disaster” airshow in 2005.

Pilon set about changing the industry, which had always been the pilot who owned the aircraft and ran the show. By sheer force she started her company and purchased the aircraft she first wing walked on—her red 1940 Stearman named “Royal Rhapsody.”

“I am driven to succeed, but I thank God I am not 20 anymore. This has been a full lifetime, and I love being a mentor. Walking is no longer a burning need.”

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She’s the boss

Kelly Garvin is a wing walker on the Third Strike team, who was taught and mentored by the star. “Carol is an icon. She found a way and created something from nothing. She is like a sister, she is a huge wealth of knowledge, I am always learning from her,” Garvin says emphatically.

“Don’t put me up on a pedestal; that’s too far to fall,” admonishes Pilon. But she says, “I could turn out a wing walker in a week or 10 days. I want to teach them everything in a safe place to perfect their artistry.”

At the Aero Gatineau show in September, Pilon was mentoring a young woman from northern Canada. Laurie Breton is an aircraft mechanic and thinks she, too, would like to be a star like Pilon. And Pilon has her hopping all weekend, from teaching her how to construct the stanchion on the top of the airplane to handing her tools. Pilon watches every movement Breton makes, correcting how she carries the tools, where she steps on the aircraft. Every movement is an instruction. When Pilon barks at the fuel lineman for being late, she uses it as a teaching moment. When being interviewed by media representatives, she tells her team when, why, and how to smile, respond, and pose.

“It doesn’t really matter their size, but I think a wing walker needs strength and agility. Of course, the leaner you are, the faster you can move. I hope they’re not looking simply for fun. This is a commitment.”

When asked if she’s ever scared, Pilon deflects from the obvious: “Yes, I’m scared every time the engine starts. It used to be because I wanted to get everything right, but now, I have the responsibility of other people’s lives. It’s a huge mantle to carry. Fear is a very big part of my life, but it is something I control because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning. At some point, you just have to use fear as energy to move forward; it’s that simple. Become powerful through it.”

Wing walking, she says, is the ultimate freedom. “I’ve long thought that freedom is something that you ultimately earn, and the only time you can be free is when you are accepting ultimate responsibility,” Pilon said. “They are different sides of the same coin and are one and the same.”

Pilot and wing walker Joe Bender joined the team in May 2023. Pilon has been his mentor and teacher since he started flying airshows in Virginia in 2011. He, too, equates wing walking with freedom and, ironically, says he is “at ease and relaxed” when on the javelin during the duo act he shares with Garvin. “I like laying on the javelin; it’s like an easy chair. Being the pilot means more responsibility; I enjoy wing walking more.”

“Yeah, I’m the boss but when I am walking the wing the pilot is PIC. He runs the whole show. He is in command,” Pilon says. “But when we’re back on the ground, I’m the boss again.” She flashes a rare grin.

Show center

Back on the ground, the Pilon I met that morning is back. She’s both weary and wired. She snaps at Bender, Garvin, and pilot Stefan Trischuk, to stop chatting and join her on the flight line for meet and greets, photo ops, and handing out publicity cards. She smartly waves Breton to join them: “You’re with us this weekend, right?”

But waiting along the fence line are a group of people who make Pilon soften. It’s her mother and father, brother, aunts, an uncle, and her boyfriend. Her mother tells me I am not to print this, but says her daughter may have been difficult as a schoolgirl. You did not hear that from me. The affection of the family is palpable. This is their pride and joy, this crazy girl who flies at convention and hangs upside down from aircraft. Her parents ran the neighborhood grocery store for more than 30 years in the town she grew up in. They’ve sold it and are enjoying a much-deserved retirement.

“I’ve kept in shape by working eight to ten hours a day in my parents’ store, lifting pallets and unpacking boxes and putting things on shelves. It was a physical job that I did when I wasn’t wing walking. I’m not doing anything now; I may have to actually join a gym,” she says.

It seems the airshow circuit is like most intense things—lots of waiting punctuated by moments of exhilaration and terror. Pilon takes apart the Stearman after each airshow and trucks it in pieces behind her notoriously fickle pickup truck. She says she barely breaks even and now sees the way to continue to make her mark in the industry is to make strides to increase airshow pay. “We are all competing for the airshow budget,” she says.

In her downtime she’s found an interesting way to relax yet make a side hustle: She creates artwork from broken and spare pieces of the aircraft. Using barnboard as the canvas (“I am, after all, a ‘barnstormer,’” she quips), she creates mixed media artwork, sometimes as paintings, others as sculptures. When her father asked how much she made from her first sale of three pieces, he told her to “go out and take that airplane apart and make more.”

Pilon thrives in pressure situations when she needs to deliver. “I like it when you put it heavily on my shoulders,” Pilon says. “That’s when I kind of shine and that’s where I go to find the freedom. When you do it successfully it’s the best feeling in the world.”