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PROFILES
Chuck Newcomb
October 9, 1997
Chuck Newcomb’s passion for airshows is like a mechanic’s
passion for airplanes—he loves to remove the pieces that don’t
work, to analyze them in detail, to fine tune and overhaul the broken
parts, to put them back together, then see them fly.
Over the last 22 years, he has produced 100 plus show events, helped
standardize air and ground safety procedures, contributed creative
money-making ideas, and has helped the airshow industry grow in leaps
and bounds, from barnstorming to big business.
Before that, he studied economics, trained in banking and had a successful
career in Naval Aviation. For three years, from 1972 through 1974
he was the Blue Angels’ Events Coordinator. He already had a
penchant for tallying numbers and seeing the details.
As Events Coordinator, he had a long checklist to follow and a multitude
of masters to serve. He was responsible for orchestrating where the
team went, what they did when they got there. Instead of getting ruffled,
when chaos erupted and order dissolved he remained focused and relished
solving problems. “There were always 100 balls in the air,”
he says. “I found I really enjoyed becoming consumed by getting
the job done.”
He was good at handling the details and had an affinity for the airshow
environment, so as the 1974 Blue Angels tour wound down he weighed
his options. “I found myself in a management role, atypical
for a lieutenant in the Navy and it was just fun,” he says.
“Then I looked at the landscape of airshows, as I knew them.
It was a tiny keyhole, relative to all the parts necessary to create
a successful event. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time.
I thought I was looking through a picture window to the world.
“What I didn’t know was, it was only a keyhole to one
room. But, in that room, I saw what we would now describe basically
as the air and ground operations piece, or the airshow side of an
event—I get airplanes; I deal with airspace; I deal with support
of all the same—that stuff.
“In that room, because of my experience week in and week out,
I felt I knew its contents very well. I was confident I could bring
something to the airshow party. We’re not talking brain surgery
here—it’s common sense, attention to detail. So, that
was the starting point—finding over the three year period this
coordination role, finding it really fit. Keep all the balls in the
air, and the more, the merrier. It was all-consuming.”
He was on the fast track in the Navy, but he gave it up for the unknown,
the rough and rugged world of little airshows and some shaky deals.
But, he had found his niche and he recognized it by a delicious feeling
of timelessness. “Life is wonderful when you can find something
that does that to you, when there is no clock,” he says. “You
are just doing. It doesn’t make any difference what day it is.
You are a lucky person, when that is what you do with your time.”
Airshows did that to him—not the glitzy, glamorous front line-side
of things, but rather, the planning and the running side—the
stitches in the seams that holds them together.
So, knowing he could run airshows, he left the Navy and dived into
his first airshow the summer of 1975. The pool was small then. ICAS
was young. He became member number 65.
The superstars then included the Bede Jet Team, the Red Devils, the
Army’s Silver Eagles Helicopter Team, the Golden Knights, Walt
and Sandi Pierce. Chuck hired them all for his first airshow.
It was on the Fourth of July in Dallas, Texas at the Lancaster Airport,
south of town. “When the airshow happened, it was hotter than
a son-of-a-gun,” he says. We had a room set up, where people
were falling over. Fortunately, nobody died—because you also
had to walk about a mile to get into the place from where we parked
the cars.”
Mind-numbing heat was not their only problem. The volunteer group
was well-intentioned, but inadequate. The runway was short and skinny,
so half the acts had to stage out of Redbird Airport, ten miles away.
Burner Beardsley, came in to help. He sold program ads and did a
parachute jump. The smoke canister on his boot got too close to his
backside and lit his pants on fire.
The restaurant, however, was a rousing success. Business boomed.
The chef was a hero with the airport owners—until Monday morning,
when they discovered he skipped town with all their concession stand
money bags. “So much for me knowing how to run airshows,”
he says.
In spite of it all, Chuck was in his element and he knew it. Sponsors
from potential shows in Denver and Dayton came to Lancaster, checked
him out, and offered him jobs. The Green brothers, who owned Lancaster
Airport, signed him up again for the next year.
Then, over Labor Day, he ran the Cleveland show, his first major
airshow. They paid him $2,500 to be the on-scene coordinator—not
bad, except it cost him $2,600 to be there. “On top of that,
there was a monsoon for three days,” he says. “It wiped
out the show. The only thing that got airborne that weekend was a
T-28. It took off and flew into the lake.
“That was a pretty terrible summer, but sometimes you don’t
recognize how terrible it is. You have an attitude of ‘What’s
the worst thing that can happen to me? Great, so you don’t give
me a paycheck. Big deal. I don’t recall being frightened of
what was to come.
“Today, because there is more to lose--more assets, more people--
its different. It’s not a one-man band anymore. If we can’t
have a reasonable shot at making a particular outcome, now, I don’t
want to do it. In that early stage, in the learning process, you just
eat and kill anything. You had a passion for this thing and you weren’t
going to be dissuaded.”
Airshows had been entertaining crowds for 66 years by 1975. Display
planes had streamlined from Bleriots and Wright Flyers to Bede Jets
and Pitts. Aerobatic flight had evolved from Nesterov’s loop-the-loop
to Charlie Hillard’s torque rolls. But, the shows themselves
had not changed too much. Most of them were bare-bones primitive,
no different from the first one in 1909--airplanes fly, people pay
to stand in the sun and watch. That was it.
The business side of airshows was crude art in 1975. But, things
were about to change and Chuck’s entry into full-time airshow
production would help change them. “I recall being very enthusiastic
as I was winding down in the Navy, riding in the back of the airplane,”
he says. “We were going places and talking back and forth with
guys about what would work.
“People were really supportive, and a lot of conversation went
on about what would make a good airshow and how could we make things
better. I had this perfect airshow made up on slides.” He sat
Charlie Hillard down in a motel room one night and went over it slide
by slide. “As always, Charlie was very patient and encouraging,”
he says.
In the beginning, he only saw small pieces of the whole airshow picture,
but he loves details, analysis, and putting things in order. Soon
he had perspective on adjoining elements. What he learned, he shared.
He learned there were a lot more pieces of the airshow puzzle, than
what he first saw when he looked at the air and ground operations
side. There are five other gigantic pieces—administration, finance,
marketing, facility and manpower—all exciting, complex and challenging.
“If you look at those components, add them all up, they make
a whole. You can spend a lifetime trying to get those right,”
he says.
“Early on, marketing meant only the public side of an event.
I’m going to sell you tickets and you’re going to buy
a hot-dog and a program, park your car and buy a souvenir. There were
virtually no other revenue sources.
“We started adding chalets, boxes, special seating. This was
the beginning of building the corporate side of the revenue stream.
People went to school on us. We’d be retained as consultants
and talk to people about, ‘Here’s what works and here’s
what doesn’t.’
“If you go back 10 to 15 years ago, there wasn’t a lot
of corporate involvement. I’m not talking about painting your
name on an airplane. I’m talking a major component of revenue,”
he says.
With his affinity for business-thinking Chuck was among the first
to successfully pursue this type of corporate involvement. “Now,
30 to 50 cents, or more, of every revenue dollar comes from corporate
involvement. The things you have to offer them are simple. They boil
down to entertainment, advertising, exhibits and sponsorship,”
he says.
“The whole idea of corporations being involved in events has
grown dramatically. Twenty-five years ago you didn’t have a
lot of the involvement in athletics that you have now,” he says.
“We were on the leading edge of capturing that.” They
are also on the leading edge of educating groups who want on-going
airshows in their community.
Behind every airshow, there is someone who loves airplanes. Their
enthusiasm is an essential ingredient. Chuck drives home two important
concepts with them so they know what they are getting into. For starters,
it is a hard way to make money. “You only have about five hours
to do business each day, and you only have two days in 365 to do it,”
he says.
That’s a fairly straight-forward concept. The other thing he
teaches show sponsor is, understanding The Mission. “The first
part of the mission is to deliver the best airshow we can. The second
part is to make the event financially self-sufficient: create surplus
revenue from the operation. The third part is to build a reserve fund
from that surplus,” he says. “Then, once that’s
done, the event-sponsoring organization can distribute the remaining
funds, do ‘Good Works’ or whatever.
“The role of our company is to generate surplus. It is the
role of the organization that hires us to distribute that surplus
as it deems appropriate.’”
Not understanding the mission leads to big problems. “If you
could emblazon those four principles on the mind of organizers, you
would have lot healthier airshows,” he says. “What well-intentioned
people would like to do it to give it all away to their community.”
Understanding the mission enables groups to balance their desire to
be philanthropic with the necessity of being financially sound.
“One of the things I have done, that I think has been important
is a real good job of learning the reality of the economic side. I’ve
had an interest in wanting to know how many people really paid admission—the
no-kidding number. Wanting to know how many cars did I really park?
Not how much money did I collect. What are the per capitas that I
can expect?—and build that information over time. There are
some fundamental principles that surface. Then, all you have to do
is crunch the numbers,” he says.
“We go through a lot of trouble to match ticket to money. We
audit tickets on the front end, well before the show, and audit them
out the other end, and account for everything that is missing.”
Jenny Newcomb, his wife, is Director of Finance. She prepares every
show’s books and records for an independent audit. The time
and trouble involved are worth it. “We use audits to eliminate
suspicion,” he says. “Nobody suspects you are working
for minimum wage, when in reality there have been times when you worked
for less than minimum wage, we all have. Because of the nature of
the business—lots of cash changing hands—people think,
‘Let me see, if they all paid me $10 a piece and, wow, there
are 100,000 people, that’s $1million. And, Gaw, all you are
doing is putting up some fence. So, we do the audits to have the picture
clear. Very simply, we will not operate an event that doesn’t
include and independent audit conducted in accordance with generally
accepted auditing standards.”
No one who has ever known or worked with Chuck Newcomb has ever doubted
his honesty, integrity or character. So, what happened in 1984 was
particularly bizarre, like a random rifle shot by a lunatic sniper.
For three years they were in the INDY Car Racing business. They took
what they learned in airshows and transferred many of the elements
to racing. They were extremely successful. Sometimes success triggers
jealousy, resentment and, even malice, from people who aren’t
willing to do what it takes to be successful themselves. This seems
like the only reasonable explanation for what happened.
An investigative reporter with the Plain Dealer in Cleveland started
a false and malicious campaign against Chuck. “There were 52
articles on the front page in the space of about a year to a year
and a half. It was a major deal in a major newspaper. It drove us
out of the racing business. It started in July of 1984. By December,
I’m the Titanic,” he says.
“We filed a libel suit against the reporter and the newspaper.
A libel suit is tough to pursue, because to be successful, you must
prove that what was printed about you was false, was printed with
malicious intent, and that you were damaged in a substantial way,”
he says.
“We are playing against the First Amendment and all those things
the publishers wrap themselves in. They have all the money. They can
outlast you, out-argue you, outspend you. It’s David and Goliath.
The average bear is unable to wage that fight.”
But, they did wage it. It took six, torturous years to get to trial
and eight painful weeks to present their case to the jury. When they
did, they won.
“Man, in that situation, do you ever get to find out what you
are about,” he says. “I was personally attacked in the
place that I think is one of my strongest assets. That is my integrity.
But it really takes you to your roots--knowing that you have a clean
slate. The things that were the most valuable to me were not the trappings
of success. They were people and family. None of the other things
were very important.
“I can still picture the moment of truth, after eight weeks.
You are standing there on your own. Everybody’s standing. The
wife is behind you, close friends are standing, and the judge is going
to read the verdict. I can still hear the camera shutters going off
over there—35 mm cameras with a motor drive.
“All those cameras, and not a picture was in the paper the
next day. There was, however, below the fold, front page, a short
story, simply stated, like the Friday night high school football score:
Newcomb Beats Newspaper—Score: 13 ½ to 0.
Airshows continued, as usual, throughout that six-year ordeal. The
Cleveland Airshow staff knew and valued Chuck. The charges were so
improbable to anyone who knew him that they seemed ludicrous. The
shows ran impeccably. The spectators came, watched and went home happy.
He understands what the crowd wants. Sometimes they want power, smoke,
fire and thunder. Other times they just want to see a two-headed cow.
Over the years, he has turned up a few of these—some marvelous,
some absurd. The first one was back in Lancaster, their second year,
in 1976. It was a man in a Super Hero suit—The Human Fly. Before
the show The Fly paraded around under his mask and body suit, strutting
his stuff. At show time a crane hoisted him up onto the back of a
DC-8 airliner, where a crew wired him in place. Then Clay Lacy fired
up the big jet engines and zoomed around with Mr. Fly onboard. Needless
to say, that Fly was not strutting when his wobbly legs came back
to earth.
The best two-headed cow, was the one he booked in 1991. It wasn’t
kooky, but it definitely was novel. History’s perfect timing
gave the airplane two heads and everybody wanted to see it. The airplane
was, the MiG 29, and the moment was, the fall of the Soviet Union,
one week prior to the Cleveland Airshow.
Naturally, the Russians canceled. Then, they reconsidered. Then,
they canceled, again. “It was grand drama,” Chuck says.
“We sent a TV camera to Alaska. Airplanes show up, and they
are turned back to Russia. A week later, they come back,” he
says.
The night before the plane arrived, people lined the airport fences.
The paid attendance exceeded any other year, and they didn’t
have a jet team. “The value of the two-headed cow,” he
says.
Then, there was the time a spectator brought his own cow and Chuck
had to ask them both to leave. “In Memphis, I am walking through
the crowd, and I see this guy with a giant, pet boa constrictor, with
a six-inch diameter, and he is selling Pet the Snake,” Chuck
says.
“My first reaction was—‘What in the world is going
on?’—that being about is it harmful or not? Then somewhere
down that same list was—Wait a minute! If people are paying
to pet the snake, I want some of it! ‘Get out of here and take
your snake with you!’”
Another time, the big snake was a six-mile long traffic jam. A well-intentioned
volunteer was stopping every car to ask them what they wanted. As
politely as he could, he removed her and the traffic unraveled in
ten minutes.
He likes being low-key, behind the scenes, responsible for details
that make the airshow run. The same is true for his place in the airshow
industry. He served on the ICAS board for ten years—1980 to
1990. In 1991 his company wrote the manual, designed the course outline
and ran the first Air and Ground Safety Seminars, which has helped
standardize the industry. In 1990, he was awarded the ICAS Sword of
Excellence for his enormous contributions to the airshow world.
Airshows continue to be fun for him. “I want to be part of
them as long as they are, and as long as they are compatible with
family, and as long as I enjoy them,” he says.
“Once you push yourself back from all the details and the business-side,
and making all these things, pieces and parts, work—what a wonderful
group of people—from the aviators on down, even the audience,”
he says.
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