Earning his wings - Westfair Communications

Lewis Liebert wants to take himself and his business to new heights.

For Liebert it will take about 50 hours; the business will take a bit longer.

Liebert”™s business model is passion-based; he wanted to learn to fly an airplane, so he started a flight school. Well, perhaps it wasn”™t that simple; there was the bad experience at another school and extensive research.

Performance Flight opened in mid-March at Westchester County Airport. Liebert”™s intent was to create a school that featured top instructors ”“ his have an average of more than 3,000 hours of flying time ”“ and late-model high-end aircraft. He didn”™t want cheek-by-jowl cockpits in weather-beaten planes in his fleet.

He researched what was available and found the Cirrus airplane, which has large windows, oversized doors and a roomy ”“ by small-plane standards”™ ”“ interior. It also comes with the latest technology, from a terrain awareness warning system (TAWS) and an anti-icing system to XM Satellite weather tracker and SkyWatch, which alerts a pilot to other air traffic. But its biggest selling technology is that it comes with a full-plane parachute. Known as CAPS, for Cirrus Airframe Parachute System, it deploys a 55-foot canopy in a life-or-death emergency.

Liebert”™s stable of planes also includes other Cirrus models as well as a 2007 Diamond Twinstar for those seeking to fly and get rated in a multiengine plane.

And on the ground in the offices of Performance Flight in Hangar M off Tower Road he has a Cirrus-specific simulator that looks like the cockpit of one of the planes making the transition as fluid as possible.

So how did a former publishing executive ”“ Rink magazine ”“ who dreaded flying ”“ he says he enjoyed it more growing up ”“ end up starting a flight school?

For Liebert it is another startup among a number of businesses that he has created or worked in since his days at Clark and Rutgers universities.

Liebert, who probably caught the entrepreneurial bug from his mother, Mary Ann Liebert, publisher of dozens of magazine titles, has been an emergency medical technician, the head of a company that built custom computers and was involved in Internet development, all while working for the family publishing business.

About two years ago, he broke from publishing and became vice president and general manager of Television USA, which was presided over by Peter O. Price, president and CEO of The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Television USA produced the Forbes Enterprise Awards, which recognized small businesses for their ideas and innovation rather than their profits.

While the job was great, Liebert wanted something else.

“I”™d been an entrepreneur for so many years, I needed more autonomy and flexibility.”

Driving into Manhattan each day and getting stuck in traffic, Liebert began looking into opportunities in the transportation industry. He considered the water taxi service, but upon investigating found that investing in a boat and the ensuing cost of operation and maintenance was too costly.

Aviation never crossed his mind as a business. It was ironic that as a child he enjoyed flying; when he had to do it 40 to 50 times a year for business, he began dreading it. He knew flying was the safest mode of transportation “proven over and over again” and soon got over his fears.

One day he told his wife, Emily, he wanted to learn to fly. “It was a shock to her and myself.” He went to a flight school and took the ubiquitous “exploratory flight.” He didn”™t care one bit about the entire customer-relationship experience. He still wanted to fly, but not at the flight school whose name he didn”™t wish to reveal.

Taking the adage, “if you want something done right, do it yourself” to heart, he began researching ways to create a flight school that would make the entire experience from being greeted at the front door to flight to leaving as refreshing and memorable as possible.

He said he wanted to create benchmarks of quality, not just in equipment, but in instructors. He admits his school is a bit more expensive, but says it”™s worth it. He said he is attracting more affluent recreational and business fliers and has about 20 students.

A fan of grass-roots marketing, Liebert said he has placed posters advertising the school in shops in Armonk and Greenwich and has a Web site, www.performanceflightny.com.

His personal flight training is still coming along. “Some people want to learn to fly, not many start a school to do so.”