Embraer Legacy Pilot – Tennessee

As a young man growing up in Tennessee, Douglas Owenby had a genuine fear of flying. He could not imagine being high in the sky, inside a metal tube.  When Doug was studying advertising in college, his brother moved to Louisiana and invited Doug to visit him on spring break.  Doug decided the most efficient way to get there was by air. So, very reluctantly, he boarded a commercial flight at the Knoxville airport. And when it took off, so did Doug’s career in aviation.
“Once it broke through and rose above the shallow cloud layer and I saw the sun, I knew what I wanted to do,” Doug recalls of that memorable flight.
It set him on course that yielded a commercial license just one year later, followed by a career that has included doing everything from fueling aircraft … to serving as a demo pilot and flight instructor … to circumnavigating the globe at the controls of a business jet. He has been a part of JetPro Pilots’ team for the past five years.

“When I got my commercial license in the early ‘90s, private aviation was a very difficult place to find work,” he explains. “It was so slow and so bleak that I left aviation for about 1 1/2 years.” He worked other jobs before easing his way back into the cockpit, initially as a pilot for an airborne radio traffic report, then “flying checks” for financial institutions at night.
“You learn a lot when you fly by yourself,” he reflects. “You encounter real-world problems and you’re the one who has to deal with them.”
Doug found steadier, full-time work for a while, but uncertainties of the business caught up with him again.

“When I was furloughed from a job I’d had for nine years, I got into contract flying,”  he says. “It took me all over the world.”

In the spring of 2012, Doug joined Embraer aircraft as a demo pilot, flying mostly short legs to show off the aircraft. He flew four types of Embraer business jets, and considers Embraer’s Legacy 500 his primary aircraft.  Then, following a tip from a friend, he signed on as a personal pilot for a movie star for three years before the company that hired him dissolved.

“I’ve been contracting ever since,” he relates. “And now I’m a full-time contractor.”

Doug operates his own flight business, World Pilot Services, LLC, from his home base in Knoxville, in addition to flying JetPro Pilots assignments.

“It has worked very well for me,” he says of his time with JetPro. “It’s one of the best crew-placement services to work for.”