Rocky Mountain High


Powers had a more downhill path in mind. “I’d been to Colorado a few times on vacation and I decided to go to the University of Colorado and ski — mostly ski. I’d grown up skiing on flat land and I wanted to ski those mountains!” Powers teased his parents, “They had 50 states to raise me and they picked the flattest one,” he says. “When I graduated high school, it was like I received my parole,” he jokes. During those “parole” years, Powers says he lived like Chris Farley’s character in “Tommy Boy.” Those were some fun years, but he had to purchase his ski lift passes and pay his tabs; he found sales jobs to help pay his way through college. Those jobs became his practical, marketing education.


A Room with a View


In one such job, he was bored behind a desk in a real estate office when he saw something out the window that changed the course of his life: a Huey doing utility work lifting towers and poles. “I thought: You know, that’s what I want to do to make a living, that doesn’t look boring! How could you ever be bored doing a job like that?” He decided to become a helicopter pilot, but first he still had a few wild oats left to sow. Before becoming a flying man at work, he sold all his possessions to travel “a land down under” (this was during the mid-’80s). He and his trusty backpack toured Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia for a year and a half. When he returned to America, the first thing he did was enroll in a Minneapolis flight school in his native Midwest, a region he still appreciates. “Midwest people are some of the greatest people you can meet,” he says. Back then, the cost of living was relatively cheap in the Twin Cities, and he stayed in the same flight school to earn his CFI and build up hours as an instructor.


To start his aviation career in earnest, he flew off to Maryland to run a flight school for Montgomery Aviation just outside Gaithersburg. “The seeds of aviation were planted by my father,


but never really


germinated until I was in my 20s,” he says. “He’d wanted me to fly for an airline.” Actually, Powers ended up marrying an airline


so, in the end my father was happy our family finally had an airline pilot.” That “mixed marriage” caused some humorous confusion: “Our young daughter thought all girls became fixed-wing pilots and boys grew up to fly helicopters.” He jokes,“I guess she was right, if you can drive a car, you can fly fixed-wing.”


NYC


His wife took a position with Continental Airlines in New York City, so Powers moved his career to NYC’s airspace, flying turbines for New York Helicopter/Island Helicopter Corp. However, he really wanted to work for Liberty Helicopters because it flew AStars, Dauphins, and TwinStars. So, Powers made a power play: “I actually flew to Liberty for my job interview in an Island Helicopter while I was on duty. Liberty hired me, I think, because I had the guts to arrive for my interview while on duty for Island.” Back then, Liberty had only three or four pilots and Powers got to grow with Liberty as they grew. “Pat Day mentored me along the way and became my most active supporter,” he says. Powers was appointed Liberty’s training director and frequently found himself down in Grand Prairie, Texas, supervising Eurocopter’s training programs for every new Liberty hire. Then one surprising day, Eurocopter’s chief pilot and director asked Powers to stay in Texas and work for the OEM that would later rebrand as Airbus. They said to him, “You’re here more than our instructors and you’ve seen everything over and over again.” Day gave permission for his protégé to leave Liberty. “He supported my career advancement and I’ll always appreciate that,” says Powers. Therefore, in the mid-’90s, Powers began to work at Eurocopter (now Airbus Helicopters) as a factory pilot. He says, “It was the best job ever (other than flying around New York before 9/11) and I thought I’d finish my career at Airbus.”


pilot he met in Maryland. “I was married to a Delta captain for 20 years,


Then the Powers got pregnant and the rotorcraft pilot returned to New York to help support his wife and baby. He got a job with Excel Air Services and flew as a twin-engine corporate pilot. Suddenly, the 9/11 terrorist attack caught everyone by surprise. On that fateful day, Powers’ helicopter got grounded at a helipad in Boston and he couldn’t fly it back to New York. The regulatory response to 9/11 changed New York’s airspace...and


not necessarily for the better. “I was chatting with buddies at Air Methods and they offered me a job in Utah.” Powers took the opportunity to escape post-9/11 New York. “My wife could fly for the airlines out of Salt Lake City, so we moved,” he says.


Powers stayed in Utah flying helicopter air ambulance (HAA) for the University of Utah until 2004 before being called back to Eurocopter/Airbus to become its regional sales manager for the western U.S. In 2008, he left Eurocopter/Airbus for a short move East where he spent extra time with his daughter. While there, he and his wife kitesurfed daily on the North Carolina coast.


After that brief break, Powers headed all the way to Santa Rosa, California, to become the chief pilot for Reach Air Medical where he learned from another mentor, Vicky Spediacci. In 2011, he then returned to


Eurocopter/Airbus after his former colleagues there, who had since risen to executive positions, offered him a lucrative opportunity in sales, where he became a top producer.


Giving flight demos in the H130 for Airbus


rotorpro.com 15


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