The Barn Stormer

Inside the glass-canopied cockpit of the vintage AT-6, a former military training airplane, Gina Moore is in her office conducting business with a smile.

Gina Moore’s yellow beauty of a flying machine sits in the takeoff position at the end of the runway. The engine roars as the throttle is opened. Its wheels begin to roll, gaining speed with every foot.

The noise of the 600-horsepower Pratt and Whitney engine increases—a guttural buzz, like a million angry hornets captured inside the revving engine. As the plane cruises past the small airport’s terminal, the beast breaks gravity’s bond, sailing into blue skies.

Inside the glass-canopied cockpit of the vintage AT-6, a former military training airplane, Moore is in her office conducting business with a smile.

Moore, 33, is owner and chief pilot of Warbird Sky Ventures, a ride-for-hire business that carries on the aviation tradition of barnstorming in 21st-century style.

“I don’t land in farmers’ fields to drum up business,’’ she says, referring to the barnstormers of aviation’s golden age—the years between the world wars. These daredevils would land surplus World War I airplanes in a pasture near a small town, cut a deal with the farmer for use of the makeshift landing strip, and give flights for $1 per person.

“I stick to airports,’’ says Moore, in between flights, sitting at a desk in her ground office in Gallatin, Tenn., a community of 23,230. She is believed to be the only female owner of a barnstorming enterprise in the country. “That’s what my insurance agent tells me anyway,’’ she says with a laugh.

From January to October each year, she travels to airports from Alabama to Minnesota, offering locals a chance to fly—and if they want, do a loop-the-loop—in a World War II-era plane designed to teach the basics of aviation warfare to prospective pilots.

“The AT-6 was called the ‘pilot maker’ because it’s a challenge to fly,” she says. “The major thing is you can’t see where you are going. The engine is higher than the rear cockpit, so you’re kind of aiming the plane as you taxi, especially if you are in the back seat.”

Another item of interest: The AT-6 is steered by a stick. The cockpit has no steering yoke like newer planes, just a metal rod rising from the cockpit floor. To turn right, the stick is tilted right. The same goes for turning left. To make the plane go up, the pilot pulls back on the stick. Pushing it forward heads the plane toward the ground.

“If you could fly this airplane, you could pretty much fly any airplane,’’ says Moore, whose craft was taken from U.S. service in 1958 and later served a stint in Spain’s Air Force before eventually returning to the United States under private ownership.

The AT-6 is one of many aircraft Moore has mastered during an aviation career that has gone up, up, up since her graduation with an aerospace degree a decade ago. For several summers, she towed advertising banners over Ocean City, Md.

She’s also taught aerobatics and has given rides on all kinds of planes. After college, she also worked for a commercial airline in the maintenance department. “I can’t imagine doing anything else because I’m having so much fun,’’ she says.

Bringing back memories

Moore is not quite sure what sparked her imagination to become a pilot—much less a modern-day barnstormer.

“It’s not like I was thinking about planes all the time, but when I was 10 or 12, I told my mom that I wanted to be a pilot. It looked like it would be more fun than a barrel of monkeys,’’ she says.

Moore completed ground school training after high school and continued with flight training while in college. She soloed in 1991.

“But I didn’t really get jazzed up about flying until I started aerobatics. That got me hooked. When I started aerobatics, that’s when I really got serious,’’ Moore says.

She was barnstorming for another company that featured thrill rides on an AT-6 when her boss decided to retire. Moore couldn’t pass up the opportunity to buy one of his planes, she says. Her mother, Neldia, joined her in Warbird Sky Ventures and began offering rides. Moore flies while her mother handles the business from the ground.

“I’ve been flying for four years on my own. I’ve learned a lot about the business side of things, but I’ve also gotten to do a lot of flying while meeting a lot of nice people,” she says.

“Ever seen a 93-year-old turn into a 12-year-old? I did. I never get tired of seeing people’s reactions, especially when they learn that I’m going to let them take the stick once we get into the air.”

Not surprisingly, a large group of her customers are former World War II and Korean War pilots who cut their aviation teeth on an AT-6.

“Oh, man it brought back so many memories to be in that cockpit again,’’ says George Gianopulos, 70, who lives near Dayton, Ohio, and was a Marine pilot during the Korean War.

“I landed AT-6s on aircraft carriers, if you can imagine,” he says, noting his children gave him a ride on Moore’s Warbird as a Christmas present. “When Gina learned I had a couple of hundred hours flying these things, we did some rolls and loops. I don’t know when I’ve had so much fun. I’ve flown with her twice when she’s been up in my area.’’

Another customer, Jim McGregor of Brentwood, Tenn., (pop. 23,445) was a B-24 pilot who flew many bombing missions behind enemy lines during World War II. At the age of 80, he flew with Moore just to see if he could still hold a plane “steady and straight after all these years.”

“Flying level and smooth was important in a bombing run so the bombardier would have the best shot at hitting the target,’’ he says.

“Flying with Gina was great fun. She said, ‘Let’s do a roll,’ and I said, ‘Okay.’ I told her one was enough at my age,” he says with a laugh.

For Moore, taking war veterans aloft is special, letting her glimpse the early days of the AT-6’s storied history—30-plus years before she was born. She hears their flying stories and imagines these old men as young men learning to fly by the stick.

Lindy Segall, a communications consultant and professional speaker from Austin, Texas, couldn’t wait for Moore to barnstorm his area, so he came to her home airport in Tennessee for his “flight of a lifetime.”

During World War II, Segall’s mother was one of about 1,000 women who served as Women Airforce Service Pilots. They did jobs on the home front, such as ferry new planes from the factory to the air bases, freeing male pilots to serve overseas. Segall’s mother trained on an AT-6 before advancing to larger aircraft. When he learned of Warbird Sky Ventures, the Texan was intrigued.

“I wanted to fly the plane that my mother flew, so on a crisp, cool October morning, I went up with Gina. It was an emotional moment for me because we had lost my mother about two years earlier. I felt she was there in the cockpit with me, riding on my shoulder,’’ Segall says.

“I did my first aerobatics with Gina. I wasn’t quite prepared for the power of the plane. When the ride was about to end, she asked me if I wanted to do anything else and I told her to do her favorite maneuver. There was a pause and she said, ‘Are you sure?’ I trusted her so I said, ‘Sure, go for it.’”

Segall’s still not certain what Moore did during the maneuver called “the avalanche.”

“But it was fun. I was screaming at the top of my lungs and it was all caught on videotape in the cockpit,” he says. “I’ll definitely ride with her again.”

Daring rides

A typical flight in the AT-6 is a 20-minute ride with some aerobatics for about $230. The price goes up with more airtime and more rolls and spins. The choice to do aerobatics is always up to the customer. Often, however, a passenger who, on the ground, asks for just the scenic tour, usually gets a change of mind once the plane is aloft.

“They get gassed up, all excited, and say, ‘Let’s do something,’ so we’ll do a roll, or a loop,’’ Moore says, noting that pilot and passenger wear communications headsets that allow them to talk—and laugh—during the ride.

“I like to hear them having fun,” she says. “That’s satisfying to me.”

Stephen Leon Alligood, who lives and writes in Tennessee, believes you haven’t lived until you’ve been upside down in an airplane, on purpose.

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