bob mays article
In the early 1960s Bob Mays was flying a Beech Bonanza and Commander 500 around the western United States hawking avionics for Motorola Aviation Electronics, and certifying Motorola�s new M4 autopilot in various airplanes. One of his M4 projects was a Commander 560F provided by Santa Monica Aviation. Mays had a good relationship with Santa Monica Aviation�so good, in fact, that they asked him to come and sell airplanes�Rockwell Commanders. He accepted, and the rest is Commander history.
Mays recently turned 80, and he�s still selling Commanders. Flying them, too, both as the owner of a 500S Shrike and also as a Commander pick-up, delivery, and flight-test pilot for Western Jet Aviation, an authorized Twin Commander Service Center at Van Nuys Airport, where Mays keeps an office.
Mays is the dean of Commander salesmen. Over the years he has sold at least 200 new and used Commanders, many of them three or four times over. And he�s still at it, still doing Commander deals.
What has made him so successful for so long? �He doesn�t know when to take no for an answer,� explains Walter Murphy, former Rockwell Commander factory sales rep. �And after he sells you something he�ll be around to take care of you. He�s just there for everyone. He becomes a part of your life.�
Murphy should know. He left Rockwell in Oklahoma to go to California and work with Mays for a few years selling Commanders. Today the two of them are still partnering on Turbo Commander sales.
Know Your Product
Jim Hansen, who worked for Mays for many years before starting Western Jet Aviation, also has a pretty good explanation for Mays�s nearly half-century run. It�s his focus on the basics: know your product, and know your customer. �He obviously flies the airplanes. He knows them. And he gets with the customer. He gets to know them,� Hansen says. �Bob has very good rapport with owner-pilots. He makes them feel like a family member. He�s a prince of a man, a gentleman. He goes over and above what salesmen usually do.�
Selling airplanes was not something Mays set out to do. After flying F86 Sabre jets at the end of the Korean War, he was discharged and returned to his hometown of Beverly Hills, California, to find work and raise his young family. He took a job at the same service station he worked at as a teenager��It was the only thing I knew,� he says�but when he saw fellow Air Force aviators moving into better-paying jobs, he decided he should, too.
He almost became a firefighter, but instead accepted a job at TWA. As the sixth-lowest pilot on the seniority list, he flew a lot of night runs in Martin 202s and 404s and Douglas DC4s. �We�d depart La Guardia at midnight and make seven to nine stops along the Ohio Valley before arriving in St. Louis the next morning,� he remembers. �The next night we�d fly back.� A year later, just before checking out in the Lockheed Constellation, he was furloughed.
Through a friend, Mays met Bill Lear, who ended up hiring Mays as his personal pilot flying a Beech 18. Mays also used the Twin Beech to demonstrate Lear�s new L-5B Automatic Pilot with LIFE (Lear Integrated Flight Equipment) that had been adapted from the F-5 autopilot Lear had developed for jets, and that had won him the coveted Collier Trophy in 1950. Mays toured the country demonstrating the autopilot/flight director system. �I got very proficient at saving guys from ground-looping the Twin Beech,� he says.
From 500 to 1000 FPM
Mays�s introduction to Commanders came when Lear leased a 680E from actor Robert Young to demo the L-5B/LIFE system to Allegheny, Piedmont, Ozark, and other regionals, and to train their senior pilots on the new system. He also used the Commander to call on a new and growing segment of general aviation�corporate flight departments. �All of a sudden I went from a 500 fpm-120 mph climb to 1,000 fpm-160 mph climb,� Mays says. �And it didn�t have a tailwheel. I flew it all over the country and really liked it.�
Lear sold his Lear Cal division to Motorola, and Mays subsequently went to work for them. At Motorola he was given an 11-state area to market the company�s avionics and certify the M4 autopilot in various types of airplanes. It was during this period that Santa Monica Aviation �convinced me to come and sell Commanders,� Mays says.
At the time the Commander lineup included the 500A and B, 560F, and 680F and 680FL Grand Commanders. �We were doing pretty well,� Mays remembers. Turbo Commanders and Jet Commanders came along a couple of years later.
Santa Monica Aviation was later sold and renamed Western Commander, Inc., with Mays a minority owner. The company relocated to Van Nuys, where it did business as The Jet Center. The staff of 20 grew to more than 150, making it the largest business on the busy field.
Mays became president and general manager of The Jet Center after company founder Jack Baumann passed away. �All through that time I was still selling and flying Commanders,� he says. �We sold more Jet Commanders than anyone, and certainly our share of Turbo Commanders.�
Performance is Safety
For Mays, �selling� was simply a matter of pointing out the Commander�s strengths. �First, the Commander is built hell for stout,� he says. �Second, it�s a very safe airplane. It�s easy to fly. It�s got great performance, and performance is safety. The fuel system requires no flight management whatsoever. Basically there�s nothing to do. Same thing with the gear. It�s a fail-safe system. If you lose the hydraulics you can still get the gear down.�
The cavernous baggage bay and the ease of stepping into the passenger cabin instead of climbing onto the wing or up an air stair door are other Commander advantages, as is the great visibility and the airplane�s stability in flight. �Women love it because with a high-wing airplane it�s like standing inside a ball instead of on top of one,� Mays says. �Besides that, how many birds do you see with wings on the bottom?� And if someone complained about the noise level in cruise? �I�d say, �OK, I�ll slow it down to King Air speed and then look how quiet it is.�
�I never knocked another airplane or person,� Mays says. �I did not believe in that. We did believe in taking care of the customer. That�s why I have so many friends and repeat customers. If they had a problem, we were going to take care of it.�
May�s ideal Turbo Commander customer was the same as today�an owner-pilot of a cabin-class pressurized piston twin who is looking to step up to the performance and safety of a turboprop. �If I could get a pilot-owner in the seat, I had a darn good chance of selling the airplane,� he says. �Most do a good job of flying. The hardest thing for them was steering. I always started my spiel the same way: �The two hardest things about a Commander are putting on and taking off the control lock, and learning to steer it.��
Cigar, Cigarillo?
Mays remembers several tough sales over the years, ones that took a long time to close. �One of most interesting was a trade-in from the owner of a Florida-based airline,� he says. �He had a JetProp 980, and he liked to smoke Cigarillos in the airplane. We took it in trade on a Jet Commander.
�Here we had a beautiful, well-kept airplane that smelled like hell. We tried everything�steaming, even hanging vanilla beans for days. The good news was Barron Hilton was looking for an airplane, and he smoked cigars. He bought it. The smell never bothered him at all. After Hilton sold the airplane it was time to totally change everything, including the soundproofing.�
Mays has worked with many celebrities from all fields. �Arnie Palmer was one of the really nice ones,� he says. �I had him in the left seat of a Jet Commander years ago in Palm Springs with his wife standing behind us. We took off and buzzed his friends on the golf course, then came back to the airport. He was a good pilot. Danny Kaye was an accomplished pilot, too. He bought a new Jet Commander with a beautiful custom interior.�
When The Jet Center was sold in 1997 to General Electric, Mays and Ken Tunison, another key executive, retired. �They wanted us to retire, and we needed to retire,� Mays says.
Mays didn�t retire, of course. He continued to sell Commanders, and does to this day. He attributes his longevity and success to knowing the airplane so well, and believing in it so strongly �What a great airplane,� he says. �A fantastic machine.�
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