Flight in the spotlight

Over my many years as a freelance aerobatic pilot I have been lucky enough to be involved in film and television productions and a host of special promotions for major corporate customers. This has sometimes involved flying aircraft new to me – often vintage or restored replicas – which was both challenging and great fun. Here are a just a few of my more memorable escapades!

“The Aviator”

In the latter half of 1983 I found myself in the queue at Flight Crew Licensing in Kingsway with Christopher Reeve, who was applying for an issue of a UK licence to complement his FAA ticket. We got chatting and he described his latest film project – a big screen adaptation of Ernest Gann’s novel The Aviator. The storyline centred around the 1930’s transcontinental US Air Mail Service using a variety of Government Surplus biplanes.

Chris was pretty determined to fly the aircraft himself for real in all the action sequences in the movie. But getting insurance agreement in Hollywood was proving prohibitively expensive – 17,000 USD per day with a shooting schedule from October 83 to January 1984. After further chats Chris introduced me to the Producers, and I found myself hired as the Aerial Co-ordinator and the airborne Supernumerary (translate as safety pilot) for all of Chris’ airborne sequences. The Producers were happy, Chris achieved his ambition, and the insurance policy became affordable!

Location filming started in Yugoslavia in the northern mountain range. The storyline required a complete dummy Stearman biplane, flown by Edgar Anscombe (Chris’s character), to suffer an engine failure and crash into the pine forests. This was achieved with gantries, crane towers, powerful winch engines and, of course, typical Hollywood ‘smoke and mirrors’. Having all this transported into the foothills of this remote mountain region was itself an astonishing logistics exercise.

The second location was in the Mojave Desert, not far from Palmdale and Edwards Air Force Base. This location doubled as the military Primary Training base, established the characters and set the storyline in motion.

The Aviator 1
The Aviator 3
The Aviator 2
The Aviator 4
Ultimate High 4
Ultimate High 3
Ultimate High 2
Ultimate High 1
Global Stars 4
Global Stars 2
Global Stars 3
Global Stars 1

Warbirds:

Whilst in the US in 1984 I had an opportunity to accept invitations to fly warbirds in California. I made my way from the Mojave Desert to Long Beach and started flying with an indigenous American called James Mott in his Reno Race spec SNJ-5 Harvard. It had an all-black paint finish with a red Indian headdress emblazoned on the fuselage!

This introduced me to the art of warbird aircraft operation and other petrolhead owners, not satisfied with “normal” vintage versions but examples such as the large and chunky T.28 Trojan. This one had a breathed-on Wright Cyclone radial engine delivering 1100HP.  It’s just as well that aviation fuel was less than half the price of the average in Europe!

During a memorable week of flying I enoyed check rides in the P.51 Mustang and unforgettable sessions in the two seat Sea Fury T.20 out of Chino in southern California – the fastest I ever flown in a piston engine aircraft.

Corporate promotions:

In 2004 I joined Mark Greenfield’s team at Ultimate High as a freelance aerobatic pilot and flew solo displays at numerous air shows in an Extra 300 sponsored at that time by B&Q Air Force.

Amongst their other sponsor partners was Mazda Cars who commissioned an energetic cinema commercial and promotional video. This involved myself and Steve Hiscock flying a synchronised duo sequence around a helicopter mounted camera hovering at 1200 feet above Mazda Sports Cars cavorting on the runway. The footage was set to a dynamic soundtrack and used at many trade exhibitions leading up to the UK hosted World Aerobatic Championships in 2009.

“John joined the Ultimate High Display Team in 2004, and we are delighted to be associated with a pilot of his immense standing in the display world.” Ultimate High 2004

Global Stars Aerobatic Team

In 2014 I joined the Global Stars 4-ship aerobatic display team for a formation display to celebrate the launch of the Skoda Octavia at Zhuhai International Airport in China. The concept was to stage a choreographed sequence at dusk with a mammoth outdoor video screen, all watched by an audience of Skoda VIP guests and journalists from all over China.

Operating in China is not an easy task and Global Stars owner Mark Jeffries had just six weeks to organise the logistics, airfreight the four aircraft to Zhuhai and assemble them in time for critical practice sessions. These sessions allowed the marketing company to assess what figures were available and to chose 5 set pieces which had to be performed to exact timing to be interspersed with set car sequences on the ground. A huge 9m x 49m screen displayed the formation action from previous days, giving the impression of live filming on the screen.

Team pilots were Mark Jefferies, Tom Cassells, Chris Burkett and myself.

Hero Highlights Spotlight