Businesswoman's Flying High In A Male-Dominated Industry

If you drive south on Airport Way to the north end of Boeing Field, you see a lot of grading for expansion being done. The first sign you see is Classic Helicopters.

The grading, in part, is for expansion of Classic Helicopter Corp. It has nine copters - six smaller R22s, two Bell Jet Rangers, one Hughes 500E. It also has a Lear jet.

This sizable operation was created and founded by Karen Walling in 1982. She is a dramatic success story.

I met Karen the other day when I was lucky enough to fly on somebody else's charter in a Bell Jet Ranger. Karen, around the Classic office, is bright, friendly, outgoing - and very much in charge.

A perspective is needed here. You see, the small-plane and helicopter business is almost totally male. We have women pilots - many good ones - but almost no owners and bosses, or what they call "fixed-base operators."

Women, as we know, become CEOs, managers, department heads, directors, in almost any other business. But flying has remained a man's world since Kitty Hawk.

So Karen is a rarity.

This high-energy, fast-spoken woman is the 90 percent owner of Classic Helicopter. She used to teach high-school English.

One day in 1973, Karen went to work for a friend who had just founded Robinson Helicopter Co. in Torrance, Calif. For a while she was Frank Robinson's only employee.

As the Robinson Company made more and more helicopters, Karen rose in rank. She became director of marketing. Then she got her own helicopter rating.

"I came to Seattle," she said, "because I had flown up here twice on demonstration runs. I liked the country. And about that time I wanted to get out and start something of my own."

So in 1982 she founded Classic Helicopter. She had two copters and one pilot. Now she has these nine helicopters and five pilots.

When I asked her, she said, "I've never had a problem with men in this business. What I find in dealing with men is that if you know what you're doing, if you're educated in your business, aviation men respect you. I've never suffered from being a woman."

Helicopters and airplanes - a terribly capital-heavy business. While Karen was building up Classic, literally dozens of similar companies were going belly up.

As any child can tell you, flying machines are not put together with beeswax and asparagus juice. They are highly sophisticated machines - metal, plastic, cables, radio gear and engines that should not (theoretically) quit on you.

"A used Jet Ranger will cost about $450,000," Karen said. "A Robinson, an R22, is $127,000."

She was lucky enough to get early private financing. Because copters and airplanes cost so much, she, like others, has to lease part of her equipment from wealthy owners. "We own five and lease four," she says. "We hope to add another turbine copter this year."

Classic usually has 35 to 40 students taking instruction. They come from Europe and Japan, "all over the place." Her best charter customers were timber companies, but this has slacked off.

"We're getting more calls from the motion picture and video people," she says. "More TV commercials and high-tech people. They come here because we have so many wonderful backgrounds."

"And how about women students? I asked.

"More and more," she said, smiling. "In my first eight years here I never saw a woman student. I think women were scared off because helicopters are so complicated and sophisticated."

In the industry, Karen Walling is known for running "a very clean operation" - which means attention to detail, maintainence and high standards.

In the event that any of you want to fly helicopters, I can tell you that private dual instruction costs $160 an hour. You can get your license (this is a guess) for about $6,000 to $7,000.

The big one, the Jet Ranger, goes for $400 an hour. That's if you just ride along. It's an experience like no other.

Emmett Watson's column appears Sunday and Thursday in the Northwest section of The Times.