Husband and wife team’s special love of Ag Aviation

Their owner-operator business is one of few remaining, and their profitable business model is very different from any others.

Peter Burke caught up with them at an airstrip near Tirau, South Waikato.

Typically it's a clear, calm day in Waikato as the Spences arrive at a farmer's airstrip. John immediately readies his Fu 400 ZK CRF while Janet heads to the loader, getting ready for the day's work. Yes, John flys the plane and Janet drives the loader.

Unusual? Yes. They are believed to be the only husband-and-wife pilot-loader driver combo in Australasia.

John's love affair with aeroplanes began at age five when he crawled up a paddock on a farm, near Tirau, to watch a local topdressing pilot in action. Come lunchtime – when the pilot and loader driver slipped away – young John Spence climbed up on the aircraft for a closer look and he was hooked. When he left school in 1966 he set out to become an ag pilot. He first worked as loader driver, then got his commercial pilot licence and went looking for someone to train him as an ag pilot.

After several failed attempts in NZ, he headed to Australia where he got the necessary training flying Cessna 180s and Piper Pawnees. He then worked as a both a spray and topdressing operator. That led to his other love affair: he met Janet, then managing a hotel in Wycheproof, rural Victoria, and in 1993 the husband-and-wife team became a reality.

Today they compete against the big players in the industry such as Super Air and Whanganui Aerowork, owned respectively by the fertiliser companies Ballance and Ravensdown. Spence says this is a far cry from the days when there were lots of small-medium size operators such as Robertson Air Services, James Aviation and Fieldair, who were licensed to work in quite specific geographical areas.

"Now it's open slather and there is no such thing as licensing areas. The two major fertiliser companies thought they would buy the aeroplanes because they felt the guys wouldn't survive in the industry themselves," he told Rural News.

"But I reckon this concept has been detrimental to the industry: it would have survived with entrepreneurial blokes with experience. There would have been normal culling, and this is why you need business-minded people in the industry."

Spence says he's one of the business-minded people who have survived the highs and lows of the topdressing industry – here in NZ and in Australia, where he worked for many years, running several successful businesses.

"If you are not business-minded you fall by the wayside and many blokes have. They are good at flying, but they can't run the business," he says.

Spence attributes their success to the truly family nature of the business, and while not compromising on safety they keep their expenses to a minimum.

"We run everything ourselves: I do the flying and Janet drives the loader. I'm a bit different in my thinking from most," he explains. "I have learned from old masters – some very successful people in the ag industry. The key is not what you do in a day, it's what it costs to do it. The guy doing lots and lots of tonnes, he's probably got to do that because he's got lots of overheads such as wages, etc.

"We don't ferry the aeroplane around much. We leave it sitting on airstrips and until recently we camped a lot; we still do some, but not as much we used to with the caravan."

Spence says ferrying an aeroplane costs money and restricts its productive hours -- at least $20,000 lost income in the course of 100 hours.

For Janet the transition from hotelier to loader driver was good; she likes the open spaces. But her initiation into the job wasn't like most other loaders drivers who usually get three months training.

"I was given half an hour's instruction and told to do it, and I did it," she says. "I had no mechanical background, but I do know the workings of the equipment and when to stop and turn the things off if a hydraulic hose bursts or something like that happens."

Janet describes herself as "the understanding one" who keeps things ticking over quietly.

"I know intimately every strip we fly from and I know when John could be uptight on certain strips. There are really good strips, there are good strips and there are a few that are marginal in the wrong conditions. But we only work them in good conditions and when we get to the marginal strips my job is to keep him calm," she says.

To ensure their business is profitable, Janet has adapted to the almost nomadic, romantic lifestyle of camping out on farms instead of flying back to base at night.

"We have slept under the wing and in the fertiliser bin and cooked there as well. In the early days this was quite common because the aircraft were much smaller and carried less so the job took longer. Today, with the big aeroplanes, it's done quickly and most pilots go back home.

"We are extremely lucky in that we have good clients who have backed us and stuck with us – even accommodated and fed us; it's been amazing. In return, John has done an excellent job," she says.

Janet Spence, like her husband, has seen what has happened to the industry over the years. She shares his concern that it is hard for individuals to get into it easily: there are many impediments such as high compliance costs and too many rules.

"It's now at the stage where some of the new rules stress the pilot. John is 64 and he has survived because we are both very safety conscious and have our own safety management plan," she adds. "When it's windy, we knock off because neither of us can afford to get hurt because if we do the business is gone and we like what we are doing."

John Spence is critical of some of the comments made by the chair of the Agricultural Aviation Association, Alan Beck, who says the ag industry needs to be run by business people and not enthusiastic amateurs.

Spence says he and Janet believe a lack of regulation is leading to people – especially inexperienced helicopter pilots – getting into the business and not doing it profitably, which has the effect of dragging down the whole industry. He doesn't buy the notion that it's easy to get into the industry.

John and Janet Spence are smart, down-to-earth realists with an intimate knowledge of farming and ag aviation. They, unlike many others, have survived physically and financially and have a strong business. But the era they typify will eventually end and, as with so many small businesses, personal service will give way to impersonal, corporate service. Such a pity.