Rare Air: Work in the Stratosphere

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At air shows, Timofeev performs to the music of Tchaikovsky in what is described as an aerial ballet. He also works as a coach to top-level students wanting to learn from his years of experience that include service as a pilot in the Soviet air force’s air-show division.

He now has a staff of 10 and pilot students around the world, many of them wealthy businesspeople looking to improve at their hobby of flying. Timofeev estimates his revenue last year was $150,000. He describes himself as going from serious socialism to serious capitalism. “The good thing about capitalism is you can do a lot of things. But the bad thing is that if you start to do a lot of stuff, you have no time.”

Though the Gene Soucy-Teresa Stokes duo doesn’t have sponsors, they remain successful. “We make enough to meet our expenses,” says Soucy, a former pilot for Northwest Airlines who started flying as a teenager. For their two-person team, that runs from about $250,000 to $350,000 per year, he says. “Our rates are different because Gene owns the plane,” says Stokes. “He makes more, but I probably keep more because I don’t have the same overhead.”

Stokes prides herself on keeping travel expenses down and living simply. “I live on a boat in Houston, and that was paid off a long time ago,” she says. “And I’m careful about spending money while we travel.” One onlooker described Stokes arriving and unloading everything but the kitchen sink with the bags and luggage she pulled out from the plane. “I may not be rich,” she says. “But I live richly.”

When people depend on fees for their work, the matter of how fees are calculated at air shows can be contentious. “We feel that a high-end product justifies a high-end price,” says Cudahy. He explains, however, that the throngs of lesser talents willing to work for very low fees, or even just gas, create competition for the seasoned pros. He likens the situation to a pizzeria business model. “Someone selling pizza for $15 wouldn’t like it if someone else started selling pizza for $9,” he says. “That doesn’t necessarily make the $9 pizza unhealthy, though.”

Pizza analogies aside, says Cudahy, antitrust laws would forbid the ICAS from instituting a minimum fee as some of the top performers would prefer.

One way for pilots to distinguish themselves and elevate the quality of their show is to have a specialty in their act, whether it be ethanol or wing walking.

“My niche is patriotism, which is unfortunate because that’s so popular now,” says Clark, her keen business sense complemented with country-western warmth and red, white and blue manicured nails. “It’s like the song: ‘I did country when country wasn’t cool,’?” she jokes.

Clark’s nearly two decades with Mopar, which stands in contrast to the more common five- to 10-year sponsorship terms, ended last year. Since then, Clark approached Chevron, a perfect fit, at least when it comes to color schemes. Her Chevron pilot’s uniform arrived the day before the show as her crew scrambled to change the logo on her plane. “We’ll see how it goes; it takes time to build up your relationship with your sponsor,” she says. “The paint is still drying on the plane.”

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