So You Want to Be An Airshow Pilot

What on earth (or above it) is the mental state of an airshow pilot? What drives a tiny handful of civilian aviators to spend their every spare moment and dollar in order to earn the badge to fly at "unrestricted" altitudes during a public aerial performance? And does unrestricted mean they can perform as high as they choose? No. It's just the opposite. It means they can fly as low as they choose, right down to the surface. Surface-level waivers are a requirement for such things as inverted ribbon cuts. Going below that level is generally fatal, but against the rules nonetheless.

I've had the opportunity to ride with more than 40 airshow performers over the past 14 years. These are generally called "media" or "VIP" rides, and don't take place during a live airshow. (It's not legal to carry passengers during a performance.)

My first ride, in 2004, was with the former four-ship Red Baron Pizza Squadron, sponsored then by the Schwann Foods Company. They flew 450-HP modified Stearmans. My pilot was Bill Stein, who currently mentors aspiring aerobatic competitors and performers. Bill is also an avid airshow pilot, has a surface level waiver and flies in both solo and formation acts.

But he is also a member of an even smaller club: a tiny subset of the 270 or so U.S. and Canadian pilots with an aerobatic waiver of any sort. (Fewer than half of those waivers are surface-level.) He's an ACE—an Aerobatic Competency Evaluator. An ACE mentors pilots not only in how to execute maneuvers, and how to entertain, but more so on how to stay alive. The process usually takes years, starting with practice at high altitude, and eventually transitioning to actually flying in a real airshow, doing aerobatic maneuvers no lower than 800 or 500 feet. Over time, that floor can be lowered to 250 feet, and if the aspiring performer is capable and committed, they can work on getting qualified down to the surface.

They might also spend nearly a half-million dollars on a custom-built "competition class" aerobatic airplane, designed to do nothing but aerobatics. Or they could work toward building an airshow act with a decent Piper Cub, in the $25- to $50-thousand dollar range. Or a $2-million-dollar-plus restored P-51 Mustang.

The surface-level waiver is not without controversy. Some of the airshow old-timers insist that it's unnecessary and not entertaining. Their arguments include the opinion that at a crowded airshow, only those at the crowd-line (or the fence) can see what's going on. But the more persuasive argument is their belief that low-altitude aerobatic flying is simply dangerous. They want the floor raised to at least 250 feet.

Waiver or not, why don't all pilots just fly higher? My guess: They want to entertain the crowd. They want to present the illusion of danger.

One of the masters of illusion was John Mohr, who spent years perfecting his act in a stock 220-HP no-electrical-system Stearman. When John flew, pilots rushed to the fence. Regardless of how many times they had already seen his routine, they stared in awe at how this guy flew. While the average observer thought his flying seemed dangerous, pilots thought it was impossible. They wanted him to finish the flight and taxi in, and were never sure it was going to happen.

Toward the end of the performance, John would do an inverted pass—in an airplane without an inverted fuel system. As he neared the end of the showline, the engine sputtered and became quiet. Fire came out of the exhaust pipes, and anyone who had not seen this before was horrified. What they would not have known was this: John waited for the sputter, introduced some primer, and the hot fuel lit up as it exited the pipes. He then rolled level, the engine came alive, he did a cropduster-style hammerhead, and ultimately finished the performance with a spectacular series of sideslips. The audience was blown away. The pilots in attendance walked away wondering whether the laws of aerodynamics had just been rewritten by John Mohr.

So how dangerous is this business? During the five years ending with the 2017 season, I counted 21 deaths of active U.S. performers who came to their demise either during practice or during an airshow. That's an average of four fatalities per year. That five-year total would represent about 8 percent of all current waiver-holders of any altitude (.077 x 270). If licensed drivers in the U.S. died at the same rate, we would have had nearly 15 million deaths on the road in 2016. In fact there were about 37,000 (.00017 x 221 million).

The good news is that there were no U.S. airshow-related fatalities in 2017.

Regardless, we all know that driving is simply not as statistically dangerous as aerobatics, or for that matter, flying a small airplane. But airshow aerobatics? It is in an unenviable class of its own. The kill rate is too high. Yet the adrenaline rush continues to keep this hobby alive. It continues to attract new blood.

Yet there are pilots (including John Mohr) who survived 30 or more consecutive years of airshow aerobatics. Are they just lucky? No way. They are the masters of illusion. Still, they do understand and accept the associated risks.

So do you want to become an airshow pilot? You'll need to get a Statement of Aerobatic Competency card (a SAC card). However, that's a bit more complicated than just an altitude waiver. You will need to demonstrate mastery of the maneuvers or activities you will include in your airshow performance at your waiver level. Here are the categories:

Comedy? I wonder how they judge that. Hilarious, Funny, Somewhat Funny, Not Funny Enough, Not Funny at All?

Anyhow, what you need to do is hook up with an ACE who can mentor you in one or more of the abovementioned skills, and eventually he or she will hand you off to another ACE for a second opinion, and then you might get a waiver to perform those maneuvers at a certain number of airshows at 800 or 500 feet, and later at more airshows at 250 feet, and ultimately as low as the surface. Anything lower and you're a statistic.

Jeff Parnau is a multi-thousand hour CFII and was the original editor of AVweb sister publication IFR, the magazine for the accomplished pilot. He is currently the editor-at-large atWorld Airshow News, a six-times annual full-color publication that celebrates the planes and performers in airshows across the globe. Learn more at www.airshowmag.com.