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

"The CEOs show up with their entourage around them, and you always know who the boss is," says Abernethy, the CEO of Fighter Pilots USA. "But when the boss gets in the cockpit and the canopy closes, what happens is they turn from teacher to student. It is quite interesting to watch the transition. When junior rice presidents do a number on the CEO, that builds camaraderie all around."

Glen Tullman, CEO of All Scripts Healthcare Solutions, put his top leadership team through aerial dogfights, with Air Combat USA. The aim, he says, is "to create experience that they would not otherwise have." Previously, Tullman's team went white-water rafting, observed Navy SEAL training and went on long, sometimes rigorous bicycling trips.

"In the other events, say, a football game, if you had a certain bit of athleticism, you would have ah advantage over some of the others," Tullman explains. But air combat, he adds, "involves strategy and a set of skills we don't normally use."

There even are some courses that will give you the organizational lessons and pep talks about how to be a combat pilot, without the airplanes. Among them is Atlanta-based Afterburner Seminars, which sends fighter pilots, in flight suits, to their customers' shops. According to the company's literature: "Your group will learn how fighter pilots attack their missions in both training and combat. ... Learn how fighter pilots plan for a mission using the 'Six Steps to Effective Combat Mission Planning.'"

Lalli and I prefer the full experience of sparring at 7,000 feet, even though both of us got sick on the very last dogfight, a rolling series of loops in which we chased each other like a dog at its own tail, but vertically, not horizontally.

There was a good reason for the illness, although neither of us realized it at the time. We were spending a lot of time totally upside down--without knowing it.

I asked my copilot, Carrington, after we landed, if we ever went fully inverted. "About six or seven times," he said.

Lalli said the only time he realized he was totally upside down was when "I was looking at you straight up through the top of my canopy, and suddenly I saw Provincetown below you.

"The reason I didn't notice," he said, sounding like a textbook definition of concentration, "is because I had my mind and my eye on you. I had my eye on my objective."

Getting sick, and getting the objective anyway (he zapped me!) is pretty good in any business.

"There I was," he said, "[at 8,000 feet] holding the sick bag in one hand and the stick in the other.

"It was awesome."

If You Want To Do It

THE COURSES usually run from $600 to $1,000 for a single flight, with briefings before and debriefings afterwards. Many of the schools have traveling schedules, bringing their aircraft to eight or nine regions throughout the United States. Among the schools offering flights or seminars in combat-style aircraft:

* Air Combat USA www.aircombatusa.com

* Fighter Pilots USA of Chicago www.fighterpilotsusa.com

* Fighter Combat International www.fightercombat.com