In fact, about 85% of his customers are individuals. “I think they want to commemorate the people who stood up for our rights and our freedom.”Ĭlark’s customers vary from museums, such as the Palm Springs Air Museum and the Cavanaugh Flight Museum, to the Commemorative Air Force, to individuals. “Nobody wants to glamorize war,” he adds. “In just a few years, the World War II guys are all going to be gone,” he said, noting, “it’s amazing that people continue to be interested.”Īnd as time goes on, planes from other wars, including Korea and Vietnam, are getting more attention from collectors and aviation enthusiasts. He notes there’s something special about sitting under the wing of your warbird at an airshow and having a World War II veteran come up with his children and grandchildren and say “I flew this in the war,” then start telling stories about his experiences. You can’t put a price on that.” North American F-86A Sabre “But the return you can’t measure is the camaraderie of going to airshows and hanging out with pilots and the interest of the general public. “The dollars are easy to measure,” he said. #WARBIRDS FOR SALE PLUS#He adds that it helps that the warbird market has “turned out to be a relatively stable place to invest money.” Most owners find that they get their initial purchase price back when they are ready to sell their warbirds - plus a whole lot more. He notes that many see this time in their lives as a “window of opportunity” before they get too old or lose their medicals. “People are tired of not doing what they want to do,” he said, noting that a lot of his customers say to him, “I’m 50 years old and I’ve worked all my life and now I’m in a position to do the things I want to do.” One reason, he believes, is pent-up demand. But now Clark says he’s seeing things start to pick up in the U.S. That global reach helped Courtesy Aircraft continue its brisk sales during the recent economic downturn. “It was then shipped to the African continent where it was reassembled and now it’s flying over there.” “It had been in Atlanta and after it was sold it was disassembled and went to Dallas for some upgrades and avionics work,” he recounted. “The Huey is g……r……e……a….t!” the customer wrote, attaching several pictures of the Huey in flight and him in the cockpit.Įven after all these years, Clark seems amazed at the journey that aircraft took before arriving at its new home. One was from a customer in Namibia in South Africa, who had just bought a Huey helicopter. “We have customers all over the world,” he said, noting that just on the day we talked, he had 23 emails from customers in Australia, South Africa, the Czech Republic, Brazil, New Zealand, and Canada. While it’s a “small, narrowly defined segment of aviation,” it’s also a community that stretches around the globe. One of the best things about selling warbirds, he notes, is the people he gets to deal with every day. This Douglas AD-4N Skyraider is just one of the warbirds in Courtesy Aircraft's inventory. Over the past 35 years, he’s sold close to 3,000 aircraft, while logging more than 6,500 hours, including more than 1,500 hours in high-performance ex-military aircraft. In the early 1980s, Mark bought the company from his father and moved it to a 13,000-square-foot facility at the Greater Rockford Airport. By the 1970s, thanks to Mark Clark’s interest, the company became involved in the warbird market. His father started Courtesy Aircraft in 1957 as a Cessna aircraft dealer, adding Piper and Champion sales in the 1960s. It helped, of course, that Clark grew up around the airplane business. By the time he was 18, he had begun flying T-6s and managed to sell the first of thousands of warbirds he’s sold over the years. Whatever it was, it was just a few years later that Clark earned his private pilot’s license. “It’s all pretty interesting.” Courtesy Aircraft's Mark Clark (Photo by John Slemp) I think it was the sound, the power, and the history,” he continues. Maybe it was because I was able to do what a lot of people aren’t fortunate enough to do. “It’s hard to say,” he said, “but it gave me a different perspective on the world. That 35-minute flight set the course for his career as a broker specializing in warbirds.īut when you ask Clark, owner of Courtesy Aircraft in Rockford, Ill., what it was about that flight that changed his life, he says what many pilots already know: It’s hard to quantify just what it was that sparked such a passion. When he was just 14, Mark Clark bought a life-changing ride in a Mustang.
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