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Flight instructors taking off for new opportunities
By Kathleen Dayton
Staff Writer
Linda Benson can rattle off the names of at least a dozen former flight instructors who once worked for Proflight, the aviation school at Charleston Executive Airport on Johns Island.
They’ve now gone corporate.
Flight instructors are usually airline pilots in the making, Benson said, just waiting until they have logged enough hours in the air to snag a job with a regional or national airline. Or they are landing jobs as pilots for businesses.
As an increasing number of airline pilots retire from the big carriers, airlines have begun relaxing requirements and are hiring younger pilots with fewer hours of flight time.
“It’s making it very hard to keep instructors,” she said. “When I first started here in 2000, we kept instructors until they hit 1,500 flying hours. That was the point the airlines would take them on. My last instructor who left here left with 431 hours. That shows you how many more small airlines and commuter airlines are popping up.”
Benson has lost several flight instructors to local corporations, such as car dealerships, in need of pilots to fly corporate planes. She recalls instructor Mike Nutter, whom she described as “a good one who got snapped up in a hurry.”
“He was a good instructor and we just lost him too fast,” Benson said.
Nutter now flies a small jet used by three private owners, all Lowcountry businessmen.
“As far as single-engine planes and business jets, there’s more in town,” Nutter said.
Preston McClay, another corporate pilot and former flight instructor at Proflight, said demand for pilots is growing as a lot of major airline pilots retire.
Jim Pencharinha, general manager of Coastal Aviation at Mount Pleasant Regional Airport, said pilots are moving up from regional airlines to fill the vacancies in the major airlines, creating other vacancies.
“They’re moving pilots up from the regional airlines, and the regionals are moving pilots up from the instructor pool just to fill a vacant position,” he said.
A strong economy, along with new security issues that arose last summer when a terror plot was uncovered at a London airport, have also helped increase the number of companies that are either buying planes, chartering planes or buying a share in a fractional ownership company.
“A lot more businesses are getting into ownership programs, whether it is fractional or outright ownership, basically because of the security issues and delays caused by security issues,” Pencharinha said.
Coastal Aviation began as a flight school five years ago and also supplies pilots to companies that have aircraft but don’t have pilots on staff.
Smaller planes also can take business travelers closer to where they need to be, Pencharinha said.
“We can fly them to a small airport that’s within a few miles of their business destination,” he said. “Whether it be a supplier or a meeting with another part of their company, it’s good business. Actually, it’s very efficient. Our prices are usually what a walk-up ticket would be at an airport. We’re very competitive with last-minute purchasing on airlines.”
Edna Young, owner of Palmetto Air Service, another flight school at Mount Pleasant Regional Airport, said there has always been some percentage of students who start flying with the idea of using a plane for business.
“Many planes are owned by a partnership, because it’s a better use of your money,” Young said.
Some business owners are taking to the skies not only because it makes good business sense, but also because they have always had the urge to fly.
Steve Wenger, owner of Stephen Duvall catering, said he loves flying and owns a plane with two other businessmen, Rex Atkinson of Atkinson Pools & Spas and Scott Dow of Dow Inc., a construction and construction consulting company.
“I’ve seen Rex have meetings in three different cities in a day and that’s something you just can’t do with commercial airlines or driving,” Wenger said.
Wenger’s catering business is also growing, making the plane more of a necessity.
“My catering company is spreading to the point where we’re working all over the Southeast now,” Wenger said. “One neat little place where we’re going for a meeting is Mountain Air Country Club in Burnsville, N.C. They are distinguished by the fact that they have a landing strip on top of the mountain where the resort is. It’s a five-hour drive, or we can fly it in less than two hours.”
Wenger and his partners also lease their aircraft through Coastal Aviation’s charter service, which makes owning the plane less costly.
“We’re hoping if we do well with it, we can cover most or even all of our expenses,” Wenger said.
A love of flying has also turned into a business asset for Paolo Dalla Zorza, an Italian who was formerly a veterinarian and who now owns Paolo’s Gelato on John Street.
“I was coming in the summer flying planes here just for fun,” he said. “I thought, it’s so hot and there was no gelato in the Southeast.”
Dalla Zorza has another gelato shop in Atlanta as well as a gelato supply company that services 5,000 outlets across the country, including Whole Foods Market and casino hotels such as The Venetian and Bellagio in Las Vegas.
The businessman said he will keep his Piper Cherokee for shorter trips but is about to buy a bigger plane so he can reach clients in the West and in Canada. Dalla Zorza feels the $100,000 he put into it is a smart investment for his $1.2 million business.
“I never thought I would think about buying a second plane, but it’s a necessity since the business is growing so fast,” he said. “Plus we do trade shows and we can put everything in the plane without dealing with shipping. I decided to buy the bigger plane to make deals with important people and to be there at the right time to make the deal. The deal with The Venetian is something like $70,000 and I can’t afford to lose it.”
Kathleen Dayton is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at kdayton@charlestonbusiness.com.
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