Klaus Savier Awarded the Spirit of Flight Award

EAA, in partnership with the Society of Experimental Test Pilots (SETP), is proud to award Klaus Savier, EAA 258013, the Spirit of Flight Award.

The Spirit of Flight Award was established by the SETP and EAA in 1996, and is presented annually to an EAA member who best exemplifies the spirit of research, development, and flight testing for homebuilt, sport, or classic aircraft.

Klaus has been pursuing aircraft efficiency since he built and started racing his first VariEze, The Delaminator, back in 1983. He has won races with top speeds of over 250 mph, using a highly “Klausified” Continental O-200 engine and significant airframe drag reduction, exceeding not just a 1:1 ratio, but well over 2:1.

He has pursued efficiency in both his airframe and in his internal combustion engine, and he has developed and shared deep expertise in how to drive our homebuilt aircraft to ever higher levels of performance. He has proven his design improvements via both extensive flight testing and in his racing. In the latter case, he’s become impossible to beat in his race class, with 30 first-place finishes in just The Delaminator.

But he hasn’t kept his best improvements secret — nothing is Klausified for him. In fact, for several decades he’s been writing about efficiency, with several articles in EAA Sport Aviation and numerous interviews, and has been a regular forum presenter since at least 2006 at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh in his well-attended talks. He has discussed engine performance and management, the pursuit of efficiency, flight efficiency optimization, Canard aerodynamics, flight testing of homebuilts, and numerous other topics in these forums.

Klaus epitomizes the Spirit of Flight — in his research and testing programs, in his demonstrated race and flight performance results, and in his driven need to share and push us all to higher performance and higher efficiency. He is worthy of this recognition.