Audio: Aerobatic pilot Paul Bennet talks to Australian Aviation

He flies his precision Wolf Pitts Pro aircraft for his death-defying stunts, but also has a fleet of warbirds including a Wirraway, Avenger, T28 Trojan and Yak-52.

Here, Bennet – who has won multiple awards and even works for CASA – talks to Adam Thorn ahead of the Central Coast Airshow, held at Warnervale Airport in May 2022.

You can listen to the audio, above, or read the transcript below.

Transcript generated by Otter.ai.

Adam Thorn (AT)

Right now, I’m joined by Paul Bennet, a name you will know from his flying air shows. Now, I’m joining you at a very unique time, a day before the Central Coast Air Show. Paul, what are the stress levels like? How are you doing?

Paul Bennet (PB)

It’s probably not ideal today. We’ve had rain last night and a bit of low cloud and what have you. But anyway, we’re getting it done. So hopefully, we’re on the homestretch of the set-up and ready for good weather and a good day tomorrow.

AT

How’ve things been? Obviously, we had COVID. That stopped a lot of things. How many shows have you done now post-COVID?

PB

We’ve been flat out every weekend, pretty much except for last weekend. So, we’ve been on the road a lot lately. And we’ve really battled, to be honest, with the weather. We’ve had so much rain, we’ve actually been pretty lucky with most of the shows. The only one that really got affected was Warbirds Over Scone, which, unfortunately, would have been probably the biggest airshow for this year in Australia. But we put on a good show on Saturday. So that all went pretty much to plan, but it’s a pity we didn’t get the two days in, but everything else, we’ve done heaps of other shows, and everything’s worked out really good. It has been tough getting from A to B. And we’ve had to go there several days early sometimes just to make sure that we got there weather-wise, but one of the big things for me is that we never let anyone down. When you book us for an air show, whether we’re helping organise it, or whether we’re displaying at it, we’re always going to turn up with everything we said we were going to bring if that means we’re gonna leave three, four or five days early. Well, then we will.

AT

Obviously, we talked a little bit about the weather and obviously, weather affects all flying but for what you guys are doing, which is obviously very intricate, how much does that affect you?

PB

We’ve found a lot of good days to practice. And we practice this week, we practice last week. So I go in and I’m lucky because Glenn [Graham, a fellow Paul Bennet pilot] works full time for me. So we get to practice almost every day. Certainly, our solo stuff, not so much the warbird stuff. But even lately, I’ve been lucky enough to be flying the warbirds every week. The Kitty Hawk or the Spitfire or both or the Trojan or Avenger, I’ve flown them all this week. So that’s pretty convenient for practice. I guess it’s a little bit hard with the Sky Aces because Glenn Collins doesn’t work full time for us and Jesse, he’s got his own business interests. So we don’t have those guys full time. But yet, we still put in a lot of work to make sure that we’re on top of the game. We’d like to be practising right now, to be honest, but just a little bit worried about the scutty cloud.

AT

How many shows are you doing every year?

PB

Feels like it’s every weekend! And normally we do about 25. Yeah, it’s sort of more than I guess most. But I guess I’ve got other business interest as well that this is sort of what we enjoy doing the most I guess is the flying and you know, the stunt flying and the formation aerobatics, all of it really, we love it. And we do as much as we can, we’re not complaining that we’re on every weekend.

AT

Every weekend. It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of pressure, it’s a lot of stress, you’re at the mercy of the weather. Do you still love it? Because you’ve got this extraordinary job.

PB

Yeah, it’s easy to take it a little bit for granted. Sometimes, people say how lucky are you? You’re going off flying a Spitfire again, But yeah, I do love it. And I probably wouldn’t change it for anything. It’s just sometimes it gets a bit tough on the family side, when you’re always flying, you’re always away. And sometimes it gets a bit tough on the other business interests, because you’re away for a week here and there or weeks on end sometimes and you got to sort of stay on top of the emails at night and all that but harder, the harder you work the luckier you get. They told me.

AT

So, you do everything. How do you juggle all of that?

PB

Yeah, time management. I’ve learned over the years to try and manage it as good as I can. And I mean, I think it’s one of those things that you never get perfect at but the more you do it, the better you get. And, you know, like our airshow business has grown. I mean once upon a time we didn’t have a trailer at all, then we had a trailer with gear in it. Now then we had a semi, now we got to be double, like it’s just one thing. One thing, it just gets bigger and bigger. And then in the early days, we used to carry all our spare equipment in the back of the Avenger. Now we got several trucks that carry everything. So, yes, it’s turned into a big deal, that’s for sure. But we like to do everything to the best of certainly my ability or our ability and put on the best show we can.

AT

I promise I won’t keep you any longer. I know you’ve got a lot to do, but just briefly how did you get into this? Because you’re the only show in town when it comes to doing this up and down in Australia? How did that come about? How did you make that decision? Because this is not a, not an easy thing to start up, I would imagine.

PB

No, it’s not. And I guess it started with a bit of a concept and I guess it starts by once upon a time I started doing airshows by flying RC model jet, as well as my S-1 biplane, that’s how it all started. And then, then it just progresses. And then I ended up getting a fleet of warbirds and buying more stunt planes and, and then that led to sort of Glenn working full time for me. And we started off by, he was the main guy doing the adventure flights and our adventure flight company and sort of just one thing leads to another and you just naturally grow. I guess it just seems natural for everything to get bigger and bigger and bigger. It’s been a hard road, but I’m glad we’ve done it and persevered with it. Now it pays for itself. And we end up now with owning 18 airplanes, and it’s a successful business. So you’re right, it is not what most people do, and probably most are not most people, I guess. But we wanted to make it easy for the airshow industry to be able to hold our show so they can ring me up. And pretty much we can do everything. We can do the ticketing, we can do the promotion, we can do the signage, we can do the fencing, we do everything to do with the whole airshow, we’ve got the ground coordination, that’s another company that works for us. We can take the risk and collect the money, they can pay us an appearance fee, and we’ll give them the money. Take your pick. Yeah, the business models worked really well. But it is a lot of hard work.

AT

It’s interesting, because we have this kind of lack of professionals in the industry pilots for ground handlers, everybody, you’re more than anyone, the person going out there getting kids interested in flying is that still like a big part of what you do? Because it feels like you’re the attraction.

PB

Yeah, and that’s the big thing for me is getting the next generation into aviation. I didn’t start by having heaps of money, or my parents didn’t have heaps of money to work hard to be able to get there. I couldn’t start flying as young as what I would have liked because I always knew I’d love it, but I couldn’t start as young as I like because we didn’t have any money. So I had to work hard for a few years and put a few bucks away and that’s how I got started into flying and I went for a ride with a friend of mine had recently gone solo in a Pitt Special S2A and that was on a Sunday afternoon after flying RC and then that was it, next on Monday I was there at the Aero Club trying to get my licence. And really, we joke about that now, how many millions that has cost me, but I haven’t stopped since so that’s just how it is. And it’s just grown into a big thing.

AT

Well, I think on that note, I will let you get back to work. Thank you so much for taking the time too, that is very much appreciated and good luck for the weekend.