By June Ramli
Perth, May 18: Australian aviator and Red Bull Air Race world champion Matt Hall brought his high-energy life story and safety message to the Cirrus Discovery Event at Jandakot Airport on Sunday, tracing his journey from a farm shed childhood to the top levels of military and competitive aviation.
Speaking to an audience of pilots, enthusiasts and owners, Hall argued that what many people describe as “luck” is in fact the product of planning, preparation and tenacity.
He said successful people are “well planned,” constantly improving their potential and ready to act when opportunities appear, rather than waiting for them to “drop anchor and honk the horn.”
Hall described growing up in a machinery shed without running water or electricity while his father built their house, and spending his youth riding horses, motorbikes and flying with his father, a weekend general aviation pilot.
By 14 he was training in gliders, going solo at 15 and progressing into ultralight flying and early to work, all while still at school.
Despite a clear ambition to become a fighter pilot after watching Top Gun, Hall said his school careers adviser dismissed the idea and told him a boy from a local public school and a farm background would never become an officer or fighter pilot.
Financial barriers also made a commercial licence seem out of reach.
A chance meeting with a World War II Spitfire pilot shifted his thinking.
The veteran, who said he regretted being “born too early” to fly modern jets, underlined to Hall that he already stood where others wished they could be: with youth, potential and opportunity.
Hall realised fear of failure – and of ridicule if he failed – was the real obstacle.
He applied to the Royal Australian Air Force and was accepted, later during his pilots’ course at RAAF Base Pearce and achieving the highest graduation score in RAAF history.
He went on to fly F/A‑18 Hornets, serve on operations, and complete Australia’s equivalent of Top Gun, the Fighter Combat Instructor course, eventually becoming chief instructor and contributing to fighter doctrine.
Hall recounted his later exchange posting to the United States to fly the F‑15E Strike Eagle and his deployment during Operation Iraqi Freedom, where he lost friends, came under missile fire and received medals for heroism supporting Marines on the ground.
He described it as both one of the proudest and saddest periods of his life, emphasising the enduring need for defence forces and the human cost of war.
After returning to a training environment, Hall said he became aware of the dangers of complacency in aviation, even at high levels of performance.
Seeking new challenges, he bought an aerobatic aircraft, began competing, and eventually acquired a P‑51 Mustang, unknowingly building the experience base that would position him for the Red Bull Air Race.
The turning point came when the RAAF sent him to Perth with a four‑ship Hornet formation to support the first Red Bull Air Race on the Swan River.
A conversation with race management led to an invitation to train, on the condition he first prove himself at the World Aerobatic Championships at unlimited level and finish in the top half of the field.
At that stage, Hall’s only benchmark was a second place in a two‑pilot New South Wales contest.
To close the gap, he sought six months’ leave to train in Europe, initially refused by his chain of command and discouraged by his parents.
He resigned his commission rather than walk away from the opportunity, eventually securing leave but mortgaging his house to fund the training with no guarantee of success.
He met the benchmark and, after 18 years in uniform, left the Air Force as a wing commander to become Australia’s first Red Bull Air Race pilot.
Overnight, he went from government employee to small business owner running an international race operation and managing physical, financial and reputational risk.
Hall told the Jandakot audience that his first full Red Bull season was governed by three simple goals: stay mentally and physically healthy, keep the aircraft safe and reliable, and avoid going bankrupt.
With his team focused on those fundamentals and “letting the results take care of themselves,” he became the first rookie to stand on a podium and finished third in the world overall.
The following season, in contrast, he admitted he became results‑obsessed.
Encouraged by others to chase the world championship, he replaced his proven, reliable aircraft with a late‑delivered, more powerful but unstable new machine, and overhauled a previously cohesive team. Early races were marred by mechanical errors, team conflict and operational mistakes, including one incident in which the aircraft could not be started on race day.
In Detroit, struggling with jet lag and illness and taking medication that warned against operating machinery, Hall pressed on into qualifying with a “must win at all costs” mindset, while still trying to train a new team manager and engineer on the job.
The result was a dramatic low‑level incident that nearly cost him his life and played out in front of global media – and, as he noted, his wife.
Hall said the aftermath forced him to confront not just technical and procedural issues, but his own mindset, and to apply the principle he summarised as “event plus response equals result.”
While pilots cannot always control external events, he argued, they must control their response by extracting lessons and changing behaviour, processes or attitudes to influence the outcome.
He framed aviation risk as a function of consequence and likelihood, with safety equipment and design features reducing consequence but pilot behaviour and margin management determining likelihood.
He said margin in turn depends on understanding threats, having clear procedures and maintaining the right mindset to follow them, especially under pressure.
He urged pilots never to keep “secrets” about their condition or concerns, and instead to involve their team in safety‑critical decisions.
He also described the progression from a cautious learning phase, to a complacent and judgmental “experienced” phase, and then to a mature phase where pilots accept their vulnerability, lean on their teams, and help others make sound calls.
The Detroit incident, he said, forced him back toward maturity.
Re‑centred around what he calls the real meaning of life – “long and happy” – Hall refocused his operation on health, safety, process discipline and trust in his team.
At the very next race in Germany, with his engineer and manager empowered to do their jobs, he returned to the podium.
Following a three‑year hiatus in racing, Hall re‑entered the championship in 2014.
Over the next several seasons he accumulated multiple podiums and finished second in the world three times.
The near‑misses were both an endorsement of performance and a test of resilience.
To keep perspective, he said he would mentally revisit his 15‑year‑old self, remind him he would one day be paid to race aircraft around the world like Formula One, and then confront the idea of quitting simply because he was ranked “only” number two.
Seen through that lens, he said, the disappointment of not winning outright became easier to absorb.
In 2019, with what he described as his “dream team” in place and an emphasis on “doing the ordinary extraordinarily well,” Hall finally secured the Red Bull Air Race world championship, setting a track record on his final run.
The series was discontinued after the season and has not returned since the pandemic, leaving him the reigning world champion of a sport that no longer exists.
Hall now combines air displays in his modified MX‑series aircraft with corporate speaking, media and charity work.
Through his organisation Wings for Kids, he supports a model similar to Angel Flight, using twin‑engine IFR aircraft and commercial pilots to transport children and families in need.
Closing his Jandakot presentation, Hall encouraged attendees to dream big without imposing artificial deadlines, to break those dreams into short‑term, time‑bound goals, to surround themselves with people who respond to ambition by asking “How can I help?”, to plan not only what they will do but what they will avoid each day, and to treat every setback as a cue to write down what will change tomorrow.
He argued that with the right mix of vision, planning, teamwork and resilience, ordinary people can achieve what he called “pretty bloody amazing things” – in aviation and beyond.
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