Heels over head: execs turn to air combat for life lessons and thrills - ceo extreme - guest piloting as team-building exercise

Chief Executive, The, Nov, 2003 by Robert E. Sullivan

So there I was, flat on my back at 8,000 feet, bearing down on a "bogey" a thousand feet below.

It wasn't a video game. My cheeks were pulling down, my lunch pushing up.

There I was, in a "Top Gun" flight suit sitting in the pilot's seat, learning how to succeed in business (while really trying) at 200 mph, nearly upside down, somewhere in the skies over Cape Cod.

On a cloudy late September afternoon, I was flying with Ric "Mango" Carrington, an ex-Marine fighter pilot, in a 260-horsepower Marchetti tighter-trainer. We were attacking Ron Lalli, an aviation industry CEO, and John "Pigmy" Paganelli, an ex-Navy jet jockey, in the same model of the propeller-driven, aerobatic plane.

I pulled the stick towards me. The aircraft dove--as Carrington, equipped with dual controls, watched to make sure I didn't do anything really stupid. We came up behind Lalli's plane, and I squeezed the trigger. A burst of "fire" echoed in my headset. Lalli's aircraft smoked. I had a "kill."

Call it the hottest business incentive tool since freebies to Hawaii. At at least a half-dozen flight schools across the country, an increasing number of top executives and other adventure-seekers are lining up to become combat pilots for a day. For prices of up to $[,000 a day, they're briefed in flight safety and air combat strategy on the ground, thrust behind the cockpit controls alongside an instructor in the air and debriefed on the experience after touching down.

Unrelated as they may seem, aerial dogfighting and high-stakes business have more than a little in common, flight-school participants and officials say. "Pilots and business people have to be both cooperative and competitive," says Lee Abernethy, owner of an air combat program called Fighter Pilots USA of Chicago. "Pilots launching ala attack have briefings and training and do their homework. But in the sky things change on you real quick. It is the same in business: You may know your product and the customer, but once you are engaged head to head, you've got to be able to react."

In some cases, companies use the air combat for corporate team-building or camaraderie. My opponent, Lalli, the 68-year-old owner and CEO of three high-tech, aviation-related firms--Litron, PTI Industries and Overhaul Support Service--wasn't building a team or rewarding his top salespeople. He was swooping, diving and firing in ah Italian-made fighter plane simply for kicks.

During one of our dogfights, Lalli veered his plane up when I expected him to dive, thanks to some strategic coaching from his copilot, Paganelli, who has 32 years of experience. Lalli swung around behind me and zapped me before I could figure out where he was. That quickly, Lalli had scored his own "kill."

We were flying with Air Combat USA, a Fullerton, Calif.-based school that says it has flown more than 25,000 "guest-pilots," as it calls them, since starting out in 1989--without ever having to use a parachute or having ala engine quit. It is one of the largest programs of its kind in the country. After their dogfights, each of the participants receives a video of his or her escapades.

You don't have to be a pilot to participate. Indeed a pilot's license may be a handicap, the experts say, because normal pilots spend most of their time avoiding the aerobatic tricks offered by flight schools such as Air Combat USA. In fact, without special training and equipment, these maneuvers are illegal--and with good reason. In a mandatory pre-flight briefing, as students you're taught that if you "pull too many G's," you--run the risk of graying out your eyesight, falling victim to tunnel vision and blacking out. You also learn a lot of other neat stuff. Lose sight of your combat opponent for even a few seconds, and, as I learned with Lalli, chances are he's right behind you, poised to shoot. Pull back sharply on the stick, and your head will suddenly feel as if it weighs 80 pounds. Also vital]y important: Remember to pull the D-ring on the little parachute if you have to bail out.

Mike Blackstone, CEO of Air Combat USA, says at least 15 percent of his business comes from corporations. Companies such as Molson, PepsiCo, Hilton, Computer Associates and dozens more have either sent executives to Air Combat USAs base in California, or literally hired the whole shootin' match to come to their localities.

And Abernethy was right; things do change in the dogfight.

"You can plan only the first maneuver," Paganelli said in the preflight briefing. "After that you're reacting to the other guy."

Abernethy says Fighter Pilots USA sets its sights almost exclusively on the corporate trade and almost always takes its show on the road. "We'll go anywhere. We'll more the operation to wherever the corporate clients have their events," he says. "We require a minimum of eight flights a day. We got out of the 'onesies' and 'twosies' business a long time ago."

Fighter Pilots USA recently flew 75 "missions" in two days for a single customer--The Savin Corporation, a technology company based in Stamford, Conn. The pilots for a day flew a fleet of World War II "Texans," 600-horsepower fighter planes in which the pilots sit in tandem. The flight school also has a Marchetti, a B-25 bomber and a P-51 "Mustang."