Joe Clark – Lord of the Wings
Joe Clark began a revolution of business and commercial aviation in 1991, co-founding Aviation Partners with Dennis Washington. He gathered together a highly and uniquely experienced team of aerospace professionals consisting primarily of retired Boeing and Lockheed engineers and aerodynamicists, to develop blended winglets initially for the Gulfstream II business jet.
His aviation career began in 1965 when he founded Jet Air, a Learjet distributor for Canada and the Pacific Northwest. He cofounded Horizon Air in 1981, a regional airline that was purchased by Alaska Airlines seven years later. In 1987, he founded Avstar to market ex-military aircraft to civilian customers. At Aviation Partners, the winglet technology would go on to break other records and improve performance on business and commercial jets for decades.
His philanthropy spanned from children’s charities and the homeless to all-things aviation. He co-founded the Friendship Foundation with Clay Lacy and Bruce McCaw, which creatively raised money and awareness. One hundred passengers donated $5,000 each to take the record-breaking Friendship Boeing 747 flight, breaking an around-the-world speed record. The flight, which raised $500,000 for UNICEF and multiple children’s hospitals, took 36 hours, 54 minutes and 15 seconds, traveling 22,997 miles at an average speed of 624 mph.
Throughout his storied career, Joe received numerous honors. Those include the Horatio Alger Award, the Living Legends of Aviation’s Aviation Entrepreneur of the Year and Lifetime Aviation Entrepreneur, and Professional Pilot’s Innovator of the Year. One he especially cherished was the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) Meritorious Service to Aviation Award.
In 2022, two years after his death, he was enshrined into the National Aviation Hall of Fame. In 2025, his contributions to aviation and the military were memorialized at the Palm Springs International Airport, where an Aviation Partners’ designed Split Scimitar Winglet is on long-term loan to the Palm Springs Air Museum.
