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Mad about Mooney

By Rosa Lavender The Daily Times Published June 12, 2002

John Felderman might have flown more Mooney airplanes than any other person in history. The 80-year-old test pilot worked for the local aircraft manufacturer for 14 years, from 1964 to late 1978, the years the Mooney plant was at its height of production.

“I flew one-third of the Mooney planes that have been completed in the Kerrville plant,” Felderman said.

Felderman returned to the plant last week to reminisce with some of the 100 employees who have returned to work at Mooney in recent weeks.

Mooney airplanes have the best safety record of any civilian aircraft models, but one of the estimated 3,500 planes flown by the veteran pilot ended in an accident.

In 1967, Felderman landed a Mooney with an engine on fire, a remarkable brush with death followed as he crawled out of the plane with burns on his face and arms. Moments later the plane burst into flames.

“They told my wife at the hospital that I shouldn’t have been there, because of the plane exploding after I landed,” Felderman said. “The newspaper reported it as a crash landing, but in fact it was the best landing I ever made.”

The plane slid 385 feet along the ground before Felderman jumped out while fire consumed the fuselage.

“I was in the hospital for 38 days,” Felderman said. “But I had no skin grafting, and 101 days afterward I returned to work at Mooney to test fly the same model of plane that burned.”

Felderman grew up on a farm in South Dakota near the town of Dolan. Dolan was home to former vice president Hubert Humphrey. In fact, Felderman said Humphrey once sold milkshakes to him at the local drug store counter.

In spring 1940, following high school graduation, Felderman went to work for Bell Aircraft Company in Buffalo, N.Y., installing landing gear on P-39 aircraft. He attended night school to get his civilian pilot’s license.

After he gained his pilot’s license he transferred to Moore Field in McAllen for advanced flight training in the fall of 1941. He achieved a commercial license in only five months and then moved to Garner Field in Uvalde.

“I was the youngest flight instructor in the United States at age 19, when I began training four cadets to fly,” Felderman said. “I taught those four and 71 more pilots to fly before the school closed at the end of the war.”

Felderman was sworn into the military during World War II, but was never deployed overseas.

After the war ended in 1945, he returned to South Dakota to fly a crop-duster airplane for the next 14 years.

Flying spray planes is the most hazardous type of flying, Felderman said. The average time for a spray pilot is two years. They constantly fly over or under high line wires, some 10 to 15 feet off the ground and often have accidents.

“I logged 9,000 hours flying crop dusters,” Felderman said. “I figure I’ve flown over a half million high line wires in my life.”

Felderman said he quit flying for awhile in the early 1960s.

“Then an old friend who was the head of the test pilots for Mooney invited me to come fly with him,” he said.

Felderman’s wife was from the Camp Verde area and the couple came to the Hill Country to visit relatives each Christmas.

“Finally, in 1964, I decided to fly a Mooney and pretty soon we moved to Kerrville, and I became the head pilot for Mooney shortly afterward,” Felderman said.

Most of the 14 years he tested Mooney aircraft he flew solo.

“I have flown more single-engine retractable four-place airplanes than anyone in the world,” he said.

Felderman said other companies produced more planes than Mooney, but had more pilots.

After spending 62 years of his life in or around airplanes, he has calculated that he’s spent the equivalent of three years in solid time in the air or eight years at eight hours a day.

“Mooney was a great place to work,” he said. “I remember back in 1974 when 300 employees produced one aircraft every 11 hours at this plant.”

Felderman left Mooney in 1978 and has not flown much since 1980.

Felderman lost his wife a year ago after 58 years of marriage. The couple had two daughters. Both daughters helped him celebrate his 80th birthday on May 17. Felderman plans to leave later this month in his motor home to visit his three brothers in South Dakota.

“I told my brothers if they’d buy a spray plane I’d come up there and spray for them now,” he said. “I was blessed with great reflexes and great eyesight — that’s the reason I’m still alive.”

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