In an exclusive interview with The Red Bulletin magazine, Red Bull Air Race champion Paul Bonhomme tells us how he was inspired to take to the air.
White Waltham, a cosy airfield west of UK capital London. Time was already standing still here 30 years ago, and it’s no different today. The soft grass on the landing field, the tower that looks more like a high-chair than a flight-control centre. Today it is the home of the West London Aero Club. White Waltham has been Paul Bonhomme’s playground since 1977. “I first came here for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee airshow and I was 13 at the time. My dad brought me and my brother down here. It was the most fantastic airshow. It had everything, it had a Harrier, the Rothmans Aerobatic Team, it had a VC10 airliner, flying up and down, it was just brilliant.”
Bonhomme was already into planes at that stage in his life. His father was a pilot, first for the Royal Air Force and later an airline captain; his mother was an air-stewardess. But, says their boy, “it was that airshow which cemented my fascination with flying”. White Waltham drew him in like a siren. He would go after school and at weekends. “I would clean the planes and wait to be taken up in one in return.” Eventually, the pilots would let him start the engines, then fly and finally land.
'Once you start flying, you learn forever. You have to take it step-by-step' – Paul Bonhomme
Bonhomme can’t remember exactly taking his first flight. He first landed a plane, probably, with his father by his side, and got his pilot’s licence in America when he was 17 (the exchange rate to the dollar was good at the time) and has continued to learn ever since. A flying friend suggested that progress at the controls of a plane was a question of making and reaching goals slowly but surely. “You hear people saying, ‘Oh, I learned to fly in 1981, I don’t think you ever stop learning.’ Once you start flying, you learn forever. You have to take it step-by-step. Don’t expect it all at once.”
Nevertheless, success came quickly to Bonhomme. Early in his career he was a flying teacher, piloted an air-taxi for jockeys, flew people home who fell ill on holiday in the Greek islands, sat behind the controls of a Boeing 737 for Welsh airline Awyr Cymru and, in 1988, at the grand old age of 24, was working as a pilot for British Airways. And when he wasn’t flying professionally, he was doing aerobatics…
Read what happened next in Bonhomme’s career in the latest issue of The Red Bulletin – which you can find online at redbulletin.com – including an incident at one airshow in particular that he’ll never forget…
For more on Bonhomme and his Red Bull Air Race colleagues, and for information about this year’s series, go to redbullairrace.com
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