Heels over head: execs turn to air combat for life lessons and thrills.

So there I was, flat on my back at 8,000 feet, bearing down on a "bogey" a thousand feet below.

It wasn't a video game. My cheeks were pulling down, my lunch pushing up.

There I was, in a "Top Gun" flight suit sitting in the pilot's seat, learning how to succeed in business (while really trying) at 200 mph, nearly upside down, somewhere in the skies over Cape Cod.

On a cloudy late September afternoon, I was flying with Ric "Mango" Carrington, an ex-Marine fighter pilot, in a 260-horsepower Marchetti tighter-trainer. We were attacking Ron Lalli, an aviation industry CEO, and John "Pigmy" Paganelli, an ex-Navy jet jockey, in the same model of the propeller-driven, aerobatic plane.

I pulled the stick towards me. The aircraft dove--as Carrington, equipped with dual controls, watched to make sure I didn't do anything really stupid. We came up behind Lalli's plane, and I squeezed the trigger. A burst of "fire" echoed in my headset. Lalli's aircraft smoked. I had a "kill."

Call it the hottest business incentive tool since freebies to Hawaii. At at least a half-dozen flight schools across the country, an increasing number of top executives and other adventure-seekers are lining up to become combat pilots for a day. For prices of up to $[,000 a day, they're briefed in flight safety and air combat strategy on the ground, thrust behind the cockpit controls alongside an instructor in the air and debriefed on the experience after touching down.

Unrelated as they may seem, aerial dogfighting and high-stakes business have more than a little in common, flight-school participants and officials say. "Pilots and business people have to be both cooperative and competitive," says Lee Abernethy, owner of an air combat program called Fighter Pilots USA of Chicago. "Pilots launching ala attack have briefings and training and do their homework. But in the sky things change on you real quick. It is the same in business: You may know your product and the customer, but once you are engaged head to head, you've got to be able to react."

In some cases, companies use the air combat for corporate team-building or camaraderie. My opponent, Lalli, the 68-year-old owner and CEO of three high-tech, aviation-related firms--Litron, PTI Industries and Overhaul Support Service--wasn't building a team or rewarding his top salespeople. He was swooping, diving and firing in ah Italian-made fighter plane simply for kicks.

During one of our dogfights, Lalli veered his plane up when I expected him to dive, thanks to some strategic coaching from his copilot, Paganelli, who has 32 years of experience. Lalli swung around behind me and zapped me before I could figure out where he was. That quickly, Lalli had scored his own "kill."

We were flying with Air Combat USA, a Fullerton, Calif.-based school that says it has flown more than 25,000 "guest-pilots," as it calls them, since starting out in 1989--without ever having to use a parachute or having ala engine quit. It is one of the largest programs of its kind in the country. After their dogfights, each of the participants receives a video of his or her escapades.

You don't have to be a pilot to participate. Indeed a pilot's license may be a handicap, the experts say, because normal pilots spend most of their time avoiding the aerobatic tricks offered by flight schools such as Air Combat USA. In fact, without special training and equipment, these maneuvers are illegal--and with good reason. In a mandatory pre-flight briefing, as students you're taught that if you "pull too many G's," you--run the risk of graying out your eyesight, falling victim to tunnel vision and blacking out. You also learn a lot of other neat stuff. Lose sight of your combat opponent for even a few seconds, and, as I learned with Lalli, chances are he's right behind you, poised to shoot. Pull back sharply on the stick, and your head will suddenly feel as if it weighs 80 pounds. Also vital]y important: Remember to pull the D-ring on the little parachute if you have to bail out.

Mike Blackstone, CEO of Air Combat USA, says at least 15 percent of his business comes from corporations. Companies such as Molson, PepsiCo, Hilton, Computer Associates and dozens more have either sent executives to Air Combat USAs base in California, or literally hired the whole shootin' match to come to their localities.

And Abernethy was right; things do change in the dogfight.

"You can plan only the first maneuver," Paganelli said in the preflight briefing. "After that you're reacting to the other guy."

Abernethy says Fighter Pilots USA sets its sights almost exclusively on the corporate trade and almost always takes its show on the road. "We'll go anywhere. We'll more the operation to wherever the corporate clients have their events," he says. "We require a minimum of eight flights a day. We got out of the 'onesies' and 'twosies' business a long time ago."

Fighter Pilots USA recently flew 75 "missions" in two days for a single customer--The Savin Corporation, a technology company based in Stamford, Conn. The pilots for a day flew a fleet of World War II "Texans," 600-horsepower fighter planes in which the pilots sit in tandem. The flight school also has a Marchetti, a B-25 bomber and a P-51 "Mustang."

"The CEOs show up with their entourage around them, and you always know who the boss is," says Abernethy, the CEO of Fighter Pilots USA. "But when the boss gets in the cockpit and the canopy closes, what happens is they turn from teacher to student. It is quite interesting to watch the transition. When junior rice presidents do a number on the CEO, that builds camaraderie all around."

Glen Tullman, CEO of All Scripts Healthcare Solutions, put his top leadership team through aerial dogfights, with Air Combat USA. The aim, he says, is "to create experience that they would not otherwise have." Previously, Tullman's team went white-water rafting, observed Navy SEAL training and went on long, sometimes rigorous bicycling trips.

"In the other events, say, a football game, if you had a certain bit of athleticism, you would have ah advantage over some of the others," Tullman explains. But air combat, he adds, "involves strategy and a set of skills we don't normally use."

There even are some courses that will give you the organizational lessons and pep talks about how to be a combat pilot, without the airplanes. Among them is Atlanta-based Afterburner Seminars, which sends fighter pilots, in flight suits, to their customers' shops. According to the company's literature: "Your group will learn how fighter pilots attack their missions in both training and combat. ... Learn how fighter pilots plan for a mission using the 'Six Steps to Effective Combat Mission Planning.'"

Lalli and I prefer the full experience of sparring at 7,000 feet, even though both of us got sick on the very last dogfight, a rolling series of loops in which we chased each other like a dog at its own tail, but vertically, not horizontally.

There was a good reason for the illness, although neither of us realized it at the time. We were spending a lot of time totally upside down--without knowing it.

I asked my copilot, Carrington, after we landed, if we ever went fully inverted. "About six or seven times," he said.

Lalli said the only time he realized he was totally upside down was when "I was looking at you straight up through the top of my canopy, and suddenly I saw Provincetown below you.

"The reason I didn't notice," he said, sounding like a textbook definition of concentration, "is because I had my mind and my eye on you. I had my eye on my objective."

Getting sick, and getting the objective anyway (he zapped me!) is pretty good in any business.

"There I was," he said, "[at 8,000 feet] holding the sick bag in one hand and the stick in the other.

"It was awesome."

If You Want To Do It

THE COURSES usually run from $600 to $1,000 for a single flight, with briefings before and debriefings afterwards. Many of the schools have traveling schedules, bringing their aircraft to eight or nine regions throughout the United States. Among the schools offering flights or seminars in combat-style aircraft:

* Air Combat USA www.aircombatusa.com

* Fighter Pilots USA of Chicago www.fighterpilotsusa.com

* Fighter Combat International www.fightercombat.com

* North American Top Gun www.natg.com

* Stallion 51 www.stallion51.com

They let you fly the legendary aircraft, but do not specialize in dogfights.

* Afterburner Seminars www.afterburnerseminars.com