Interview – Stuart Millar

SM: Yes that’s true. When I was. very young flying was very important – this is the 1930s – a totally different time and that’s where the action was. World War II came along and so like many young people I had the opportunity to serve and ended up a fighter pilot in Europe at about 19 years old, as most of us were in those days. That totally changed the way I looked upon life and what the world was about. I realised I was really determined by that youthful experience of being a fighter pilot after very much wanting to be a pilot in earlier years and having achieved it. So aviation always remained a part of my life, though I never made my living as a pilot after flying in World War II, though I never stopped flying.

To me, it became so much an important aspect of what I turned into and it might be difficult for young people who might never have the opportunity or even be aware of what there is, the unique thing of having the thrill and skill of commanding your own airplane. It seemed to me that industry in the United States and perhaps elsewhere in the world was simply tending to forget about the young people who weren’t even aware that this is one of the unique things they can do in life.

SW: You’ve emphasised the family aspect of the company, the fact that Piper is not part of a big conglomerate, does this intimate relationship you have with the company- as its sole owner – help keep the costs down and the interest level up?

SM: Of course it does. Remember, the subsidiary of a large company hires a very significant number of people simply to answer the questions from the head office, they don’t have a damn thing to do with building airplanes. So there’s that part of it. The second is that my basis of decision can be quite different from a publicly owned company which has a board of directors to achieve the necessary earnings per share or to cause the price of the stock to go up on the market – that’s why they’re there! So they have to make decisions and say what happens to our earnings for this quarter, what happens to our earnings for this year, how do our shareholders make a profit? So a subsidiary either has to create earnings per share now or create excitement about it later on. I can make a decision that may not result in profits for two or three years, or I can make a decision that might not look good to shareholders – if shareholders were there – who have no personal interest in aviation. This is important – I have to make decisions based on. what is right, not necessarily on what is profitable or what is expedient, because there is a difference. People get into these airplanes and fly them. That means they are subject to one of the forces of nature called ‘gravity’ and you’d better care a hell of a lot about an airplane if you going to build an airplane and ask someone to buy it and get in and fly it. That is a very real responsibility.

If you manufacture hoola hoops, outside of a few sore backs, there aren’t many people who’ve ever had a serious accident with a hoola hoop. If you manufacture shoes, it’s not likely anybody’s going to get injured if you do a poor job of manufacturing: But manufacturing airplanes is a totally different thing. Perhaps it’s more akin to a surgeon’s responsibility to his patient . . . . you have to care about that, you have to make decisions based on what is right, not what is expedient. Last year we had a problem with the Malibu, we had trouble with the engine and I said “don’t let anybody fly it and let’s give everyone free air transportation until Teledyne-Continental solves the problem”. I ended up spending a million and a half dollars for airline tickets, I could have filled up two Boeing 747s! Now that would not be a very popular decision if there were shareholders!

SW: If there were, the decision would not be made in the first place.

SM: That’s exactly right. So building personal airplanes is different to almost any other kind of business you can be in, because the person buying the airplane has to depend entirely on the engineering integrity and manufacturing integrity of the company that builds it. If an air ine buys an airliner, they have hundreds of engineers and they can go through all of the engineering data about the airliner, about its flight tests; if an air force buys it, they have more engineers than the company they’re buying it from! But if you or I buy an airplane, it had better be right.

SW: You’ve got some projects in the pipeline like a new aircraft in the Comanche class but also you’re now flying a Globe Swift with an Allison turboprop engine in it. Tell us about that. (The Globe Swift was a small side by side two seater with retractable tailwheel undercarriage and was very similar in size and weight to a Victa Airtourer. Some 1,000 were built between 1945 and 1951 and the usual powerplant was a Continental piston engine of between 85 and 125 horsepower. Piper now owns its design and manufacturing rights).

SM: It’s a beautiful little airplane. It looks just like a little P-51 without a radiator, it is gorgeous. We never put out more than 70% torque on it, we haven’t dared yet! I don’t know that we’ll ever build the airplane, but we will be building some airplane derived from the Swift, but not necessarily with an Allison turboprop . . . . possibly a Porsche piston.

SW: What about the Comanche replacement that you’re also developing?

SM: That will have a totally different fuselage, different airframe, there’s a totally different control system which will be fascinating and exciting and also a new set of instrumentation that will be different. It will probably be using a 300 or 350 horsepower engine and, with Roy LoPresti (a famous designer/engineer) cleaning it up, I think we’re going to see 270 or 280 miles an hour.

SW: Can you tell me about the new control system?

SM: I can’t say a damn word about that!

SW: It was worth a try! How about this new concept in training that you mentioned earlier?

SM: Most of us learned to fly when we were fairly young, but there’s a group of people out there who I want to sell airplanes to who never really thought about learning to fly, they don’t know if they want to. Now, if you go to downtown Sydney and look at some of those tall office buildings, in many of those buildings there will be plenty of people, say 40 years old who are quite successful – maybe they’re industrial or real estate people, maybe they’re investment bankers or something of the sort. I want to walk into that building and find those people; they already make two or three hundred thousand a year, its part of their success.

I want to sell them on the excitement and thrill and skill of flying and the business application of flying for their special needs. And I want to sell them a Malibu today, rather than expect them to take three months off to learn to fly and then operate an airplane. And even if they do it that way, the successful person comes into a training school, chances are the fellow who climbs into the right seat of a Cessna 152 is 23 years old-just a kid in his eyes – and before long he gets turned off by the whole thing and walks out.

I want to walk in, sell him the airplane and I want to train him all the way up to be an instrument rated pilot. In the courses we’ve designed but haven’t yet started in the United States, he spends one week in our training centre, then he goes back home for three weeks, goes with his new Malibu and the pilot/instructor with him. During that time, he uses the aircraft anyway he chooses, as well as flying under instruction in the airplane he bought with his pillow instructor next to him. If he comes from Perth, that’s fine!

After three weeks like that, he goes back for one more week with us where we take him through his examinations and so forth. It goes on like that for five months and, at the end of five months, we have an instrument rated private pilot who has been able to use his plane from the very first day he bought it. What I want to do is bring in those people who say “I wish I’d learned to fly when I was young” and also those who have the need for and the means to purchase an aircraft, but have never thought of it before.

SW: What you’re doing in effect is bringing the customer to the market rather than the other way around?

SM: Right. In the past the manufacturer has sat around hoping somebody learns to fly and then hoping that person someday has the money to buy an airplane. There has to be a better way.

SW: What else of the future. Will the Aerostar return to production?

SM: If I can find the slightest justification.

SW: Is there enough people out there to buy it?

SM: To buy enough. As I see it, to the end of the century there’s not going to be a year when the industry builds 15,000 airplanes. Piper has to learn how to make money building 100 or 200 or 300 of something, not 1,000 or 2,000.

SW: What about the forthcoming turboprop powered Malibu?

SM: We are aiming for initial deliveries before the end of 1989 and the price is just under $US700,000.

SW: You’re proceeding with that project even after Beech abandoned the Lightning?

SM: I don’t know why Beech threw in the towel. The Malibu is certainly a very profitable aircraft for us. We certainly expect the turbine Malibu to be so also. I would suggest the reason they might not have been interested is that they didn’t foresee a market for 1,000 of them. What would it matter to Raytheon unless there were 1,000 aircraft? What does it matter to Piper and Stuart Millar if there’s a market for 150? A lot.

SW: What about the future of the Cheyenne?

SM: We have built seven new Cheyennes. There is a major possible foreign use for the Cheyenne that may keep us in the market.

SW: If that doesn’t come off are we looking at a quiet Cheyenne line?

SM: A quiet Cheyenne line? Yes.

SW: Is there a jet in Piper’s future?

SM: I’ve continued to look at that. I’ve also looked at one Piper aircraft that might well become a small jet. But I’ve not convinced myself of the market for that type of aircraft. One problem is I can’t find a jet engine at a low enough price.

SW: With the Cadet, you brought back a trainer. Why?

SM: The trainer programme recognises that the aircraft used by major training institutions are getting up to the 7,000 hour range. Yet no one showed an interest in providing a training airplane to them. The Warrior is a highly respected training aircraft and I thought we should put one out at a price they can afford.

SW: Whose idea was it to bring back the Cub?

SM: Mine. I felt there had to be a low priced aircraft out there. It’s a superb little aircraft that you can buy for just over $US40,000. And if you can’t afford that you can buy one to assemble at home for considerably less. In coming to Piper my feeling was that we had to make flying affordable again. That’s why we reduced the price of spare parts by at least 50% and the price of aircraft by 20%.

SW: You have called for the production of 558 aircraft in the current year. What is your forecast for five years from now?

SM: I hope we will be a 1,000 airplane company by the end of the 1990s. I can run a very successful, very profitable company with 1,000 airplanes a year. Can you picture a time when one company had such a unique opportunity to become the world’s dominant supplier? That sounds like ego, but it isn’t. Everyone else abdicated.