It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s actually a plane pulling a banner and you, too, can rent it.

In the distance, the yellow crop dusting plane looks small.

But it rapidly grows bigger as it flies toward you, low to the ground, like a scene from the Alfred Hitchcock classic, “North by Northwest.”

Suddenly, the plane makes an alarming dive, dangling a short rope with a grappling hook from the tail.

Seemingly at the last second, the pilot pulls up into a climb with a dramatic roar from the engine.

The grappling hook snags a loop of rope suspended a few feet above the ground, and a strip of 7-foot-tall black letters starts to gracefully peel off the ground and rise up into the air.

The soaring words are strikingly framed against the blue sky and fluffy white clouds: “PROGRADE AUTO EXPERTS.”

Thus begins another job from the only flying billboard company based in Minnesota.

Felt’s company flies the planes that you may have seen circling for hours over the Minnesota State Fair, advertising everything from car dealerships to insurance agencies.

His aerial billboards fly over the Minnesota Renaissance Festival, the Minnesota Yacht Club Festival in St. Paul, the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon — anywhere there might be a crowd of people outside willing to crane their heads skyward to read a high-flying message from a local credit union or a political candidate.

His planes have promoted the upcoming Paul McCartney concert at the U.S. Bank Stadium.

He’s been hired to fly a banner advertising a roofing company over a neighborhood that just had a hailstorm.

Want to surprise your beloved with a marriage proposal floating in the sky? Felt can arrange that.

Felt previously started a home maintenance company and a social media management company.

But he’s also a private pilot and his interest in aviation led him in June 2024 to buy a longtime Minnesota banner towing company called Big Aerial Sign Services when its previous owner, Jim Schulze, got out of the banner towing business and became a corporate pilot flying private jets.

Flying out of the Forest Lake Airport, Aerial Banners is the only banner towing company based in the five-state region including North and South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota, according to Felt.

Felt said his is only one of about 25 or 30 banner towing companies in the U.S.

Felt’s company also has a branch with pilots and planes flying out of Pembroke Pines, Fla., just north of Miami.

During the winter, Felt sends most of his planes on a 15-hour trip down to Florida, where he has seven pilots towing banners over beachgoers lounging on the sand. They advertise sunscreen lotions and options for post-tanning partying.

“DJ RICHARD TONIGHT GIRLS DRINK FREE,” is a typical aerial banner message that a nightclub in Florida would want flown over the beaches, Felt said.

“That works incredibly well,” he said.

In the summer, Felt will bring planes back up to Minnesota, where his pilots are busy towing flying billboards practically every weekend over local festivals, sporting events, lakes and concerts.

“The Fourth of July is nuts,” Felt said. “Everyone wants to get out in front of people at the lakes, or for parades.”

Felt said a banner flying multiple loops over a parade makes a bigger impression than sponsoring a float in the parade.

“People are going to look up and see ProGrade Auto Experts many times,” he said. “This is branding. The goal here is to get as many impressions as possible.”

He said his planes and his six Minnesota-based pilots flew 47 hours this year at the Minnesota State Fair, up from 22 hours last year.

Some of his jobs are political messages, promoting or bashing one candidate or another. He’s been hired to fly a “WALZ FUMBLED” banner over a football game. And a “QATAR-A-LAGO” banner in Florida.

Felt said he won’t fly a message that’s extremely negative.

He said he does about two to four marriage proposals a year, including one in which the banner flew fly by the couple taking a helicopter ride. Another message flown by Split Rock Lighthouse last year said, “MELISSA, WILL YOU MARRY ME?”

Sunfish Lake resident Tom Hawley said he popped the question in front of family members and friends by hiring Aerial Banners to fly over a cookout he was having on Cross Lake on July 3.

He said it cost more than $2,000 to fly a banner up to northern Minnesota and back with the message, “ANNE NOVAK WILL YOU MARRY ME?”

“It was super cool and a fun way to go about it,” Hawley said. “It was well worth the money.”

If you wanted to have a plane fly by your outdoor wedding saying “CONGRATS DAVE AND JUDY!” just as the officiant says “I now pronounce you man and wife,” Felt said he could probably do that.

Felt currently charges $695 per hour of flying time for a short text message with 7-foot-tall letters.

You’ll have to pay more if you want a custom printed 90-foot-long banner that could include a 30-foot tall picture of yourself. But you can reuse that banner for up to 175 more hours and just pay for the flying time.

“That’s a really, really large banner,” Felt said. “It’s bigger than a house.”

Felt said he once did a gender reveal event that involved three banners that cost $2,000.

In a world dominated by tweets, TikTok videos and Facebook posts, business is growing for this form of not-so-instant messaging.

“I believe Minnesota is an untouched market for banner towing,” he said. “The demand could be way larger.”

A report by market research firm Data Insights Market also said aerial advertising is experiencing “significant growth.”

Felt said businesses are turning toward a form of advertising invented about a 100 years ago as a way to differentiate themselves in the digital world.

“What people are realizing is the digital and TV space is really crowded,” he said. “Facebook ads once worked and now they don’t.”

It’s hard to ignore the movement, noise and size of a giant sign flying 1,000 feet above the ground at 60 miles per hour, according to Felt.

He thinks the banners work better than conventional billboards.

“I got in front of 200,000 people for four days for not an incredible amount of money,” he said.

State Farm insurance agent Kim Nybo has hired Felt to fly a 30- by 90-foot banner featuring a giant picture of herself over everything from the 3M Open to the Defeat of Jesse James Days.

“It’s brand recognition,” Nybo said. “It’s thinking out of the box to try to grab people’s attention.”

One limitation to this form of advertising: You have to be brief. A long message or even a website address would be too hard to read. Five words or less is good.

Also, even though the lines and signs are weighted and have aerodynamic features to make sure they fly correctly, they still are subject to the errors that plague any copywriter: typos.

Once, the “S” was left off the “PROGRADE AUTO EXPERTS,” resulting in a refund for the customer.

“I have to proof every banner,” Felt said.

/*/