Demo Pilot/Sales???

[cl65@350]

Anybody know any demo/sales pilots out there. Can you double up on those types of jobs if you have extensive experience in both? What does it pay and of course what is the lifestyle like?

thanks

 

[CL600Pilot]

Most of the salesmen I have dealt with are also pilots but generally don't demo airplanes - they're simply too busy selling them to fly them. I'm not sure but I think the light aircraft salesmen usually demo the plane but most of the turbine salesmen don't. The manufacturer's have a dedicated demo pilot staff and I believe the smaller independent sales operations usually use contract pilots to demo the airplane and sometimes (as in our case when we sold a Challenger) theflight crew that works for the company that is selling the airplane.

I used to talk regularly with a King Air demo pilot that worked for Raytheon - his comment was that that the pay was pretty good but he was ALWAYS on the road. Of course that was pre 9/11 when the new airplane market was booming.

CL