By Carolyn Webb
Two stickers in the cockpit of his Wolf Pitts Pro biplane contain some down-to-earth reminders for aerobatics pilot Paul Bennet.
The slogans, “Don’t do anything stupid” and “Fly good, don’t suck”, sit alongside hand-drawn sketches mapping out his routines.
It’s good advice for Bennet’s 19-year-old son, Jett, who now performs aerobatics in airshows alongside his dad.
Jett first went solo in a light plane on his 15th birthday. Exactly one year later, he started training in basic loops, spins and rolls in a Pitts S2A two-seat biplane.
“It wasn’t really that scary,” Jett says. “It felt like I was at home straight away. It was great, the best thing ever. I think it’s boring flying straight and level.”
The flying family will perform aerobatics on all three days that are open to the public, from Friday to Sunday, at the 2025 Avalon Airshow, south-west of Melbourne.
Paul Bennet Airshows, as the family business is called, has brought seven planes to Avalon from their base at Maitland, near Newcastle in NSW.
Paul, Jett and teammates Glenn Graham and Glenn Collins will pilot four Pitts Specials biplanes for their Sky Aces formation flying display.
In other sessions, Paul Bennet will perform solo aerobatics in his 1948 Sea Fury fighter and land a Piper Cub on the roof of a truck.
He will also launch fireworks off a Cessna 185 for a pyrotechnics display on Friday night.
Jett Bennet as a child in 2008.
But his pride and joy is his yellow and red Wolf Pitts Pro biplane in which he will do solo aerobatics on Saturday and Sunday.
He promises a low-level aerobatics display with forward flips, double hammerheads and torque rolls in “the coolest aeroplane ever built”.
One plane that Jett dreams of flying in airshows, but doesn’t yet have the experience to do so, is his dad’s Sea Fury, in which he would do “gentleman’s aerobatics” – mainly loops and rolls – “very easy stuff, you don’t want to over-stress the aeroplane”.
“It’s an unreal aeroplane,” Jett says. “But I need a bit more experience. I’ve only got 400 hours of flying. Dad’s got about 10,000 hours.
Jett and his sisters in a light plane.
“It’s a pretty big warbird. It’s got a lot of power [3000 horsepower] and you’ve got to be on top of the game. It all comes down to experience.”
Organisers expect hundreds of thousands of people to flock to the airshow, held every two years. There will be over 900 exhibitors from 28 countries.
Paul Bennet says it’s good to see exhilaration from the crowd “when you’ve just done things that people thought were impossible in aeroplanes”.
It was great to be flying alongside his son, but Jett had to prove himself. “If he wasn’t much good, he wouldn’t be flying with me,” Paul says.
“He listens, and he’s not ego-driven. He’s got a pretty level head. That really helps.
“He’s got good hand-eye co-ordination, he’s good at sport, he’s good on a motorbike and he’s good at flying.”
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