Boni Caldeira has what he considers to be the ultimate job - a position as US regional sales director in the mid-Atlantic region for Cirrus Design. He talks to Working Week about what the role entails
While Boni Caldeira's job title isn't particularly exciting, the work is - he gets to travel around the USA's eastern seaboard nearly every day in a new Cirrus SR22 GTS Turbo demonstrator, the company's four-seat, 220kt (410km/h), half-a-million-dollar top-of-the-line cruiser, complete with synthetic and enhanced vision systems.
A typical week for Caldeira includes two days of flying and three days of "office duties", which can include follow-ups from demo flights, delivering aircraft or visiting flight schools that use Cirrus aircraft as trainers.
Caldeira talks about how he captured what he considers to be his "dream job".
How did you get into the aviation business?
I was smitten by the aviation bug more than a decade ago when I saw first hand the advantages of owning and flying a private aircraft. I was working in the equestrian business and tiring of the frequent commutes by automobile up and down the east coast. I learned to fly at 26 and just kept going, becoming a flight instructor at 30 and launching into a full-time aviation career.
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When did you begin flying Cirrus aircraft?
One of my flight students in 2003 purchased a Cirrus SR22 and gave me a ride. The moment I flew that plane I said to myself: "I gotta figure out how to fly this plane more often."
Soon after I became an independent Cirrus standardised flight instructor, specialising in Cirrus transition and recurrent training.
I joined forces with three others to launch Open Air in 2007, an air taxi service based in Montgomery County, Maryland that uses Cirrus SR22s, a venture I later left.
Did your background help you win a job with Cirrus?
I figured the experience in starting Open Air helped me when Cirrus was looking for a regional representative to be based in Frederick, Maryland. What also helped was my ability to relay to customers a time management solution that made a life easier many years ago. If you have a travelling challenge, that's what this plane does for you.
Is there anything you don't like about your job?
I fly to all these wonderful places but often wish I could stay a while and smell the roses. For example, I need to get from Washington DC to the Cirrus factory in Duluth, Minnesota, and back on a fairly regular basis. On the way there I may fly over Burke Lakefront in Cleveland, low over Lake Michigan along the Chicago skyline, over Makinac Island and other incredibly picturesque places. I always think: "You know, I should just land at that airport over there and take a few hours to enjoy this place." I rarely have the time to do it though.
How has the economy affected your ability to sell airplanes?
There is as much, if not more interest in the Cirrus lately, especially now that we've added an enhanced vision system and flight into known icing approval. It's just that fewer customers are willing to act on their interest even though many of them are still financially capable of doing so.
It may be that buyers are holding their collective breath to see how bad the economy will actually get. If it performs slightly better than conventional wisdom predicts, meaning that it is still declining but not in freefall, many buyers may decide to go ahead and purchase.
One possible area of concern is that the anti-business aviation sentiment that currently has a stranglehold on the corporate community could trickle down and become a general aviation sentiment for the piston-powered sector.
Source: Flight International
