Scenes from the field

He’s racked up thousands of hours—and many type ratings—flying just about every airplane in the Textron fleet, from Bonanzas right up to the latest Citation Latitude and Longitude. “I like the piston planes as much, maybe more, than the big ones,” he says. As a resident of both Germany and the United States (he lives in Wichita), his demo pilot assignments routinely take him back and forth across the Atlantic. His wife flies those routes, too—Monika Herr is a Boeing 747 captain with Lufthansa.

Several years ago Herr, a prolific photographer (he uses a Leica M10, Leica Q2, and his iPhone), began sending his pictures back to Textron staffers in Wichita. The employees there wanted to vicariously experience a little bit of an international demo pilot’s seemingly exotic lifestyle. The photo-sharing momentum built as other demo pilots began submitting their photos. Then pilot friends, FBOs, and others in Herr’s orbit sent him their own photos. Today, Herr’s mass-mailing list has some 900 recipients. And the list keeps growing. “It’s amazing what’s happened. Like, someone sent in a photo from Vietnam with a boat in it. Someone else recognized it. It was the boat that helped him flee South Vietnam in 1975, at the end of the war,” Herr recalled.

Now Herr shares a small sampling of his photos—and a few he’s collected—with us. Here’s hoping you like them as much as we do. Maybe you’d like to share some of your own ([email protected]; put “turbine photos” in the subject line). — Thomas A. Horne

Click on any photo to start slideshow.