Follow Your Own Flightplan

My start in aviation was pretty early. I have vivid memories of my father taking me to the Cleveland Airshow as a kid and watching F-14 Tomcats, A-10 Warthogs fly demos as well as performances by the Blue Angels and others. Military aviation inspired me in part because it was always the cutting edge of technology. I became a member of the Military Aviation Preservation Society or MAPS museum and was able to volunteer doing cosmetic restorations of retired airplanes. After some time getting my hands dirty working on airplanes I decided that this was something I wanted to make a career out of and I began working on my private pilots license while in high school. I rode

My Dad didn’t miss an opportunity to get me in an airplane as a kid

my bike to a job at Dairy Queen for $7.40/hr and was able to pay for lessons as I went. Doing my training this way wasn’t as fast as an accelerated program but I still finished by the time I graduated college. After doing some searching I discovered my high school had a program that allowed me to attend another local high school fo r aviation classes during the first half of the day, then go back to my high school for the rest of my regular classes in the afternoon. After I graduated, these classes and the credits they gave me for having my private pilots license, became a semester worth of credits towards my bachelors degree, for free. As luck would have it, a family friend was a pilot at Fedex. I was fortunate and he was willing to guide me through my ratings at a local flight school and I eventually became a flight instructor with his help. I will be forever in debt to him for his mentorship, especially early on in my training and career.

Along the way I towed gliders, took a flight with a friend who flew skydivers and did other odd jobs. Of all of the jobs I had, the one I enjoyed most was instructing. The flight school I worked for had a J3 Piper Cub, so in addition to the usual flight training for students, occasionally I would be able to fly with someone looking to be signed off for tailwheel aircraft in our Cub. We would get to fly out to a grass strip and do landings on turf just like in the 1940’s when the airplane was built. I flew the family on a few weekend trips in rented airplanes which were fun. My sister and I took our dog Mitzi with us to lunch a few times too. If you get the chance to fly into any of the Lake Erie islands during the summer I recommend it.

Flying around Seattle in the Beech 99

Once I graduated from college I had enough time on my hands to work a regular flying job since I wasn’t attending classes anymore. My first job after instructing came as a copilot on the Citation 500 series jet. It would seem as if the stars had aligned for me because this job came purely from unintentional networking. When I began flight training I joined a Boy Scout group for older scouts that met at the airport for aviation activities like visiting museums and going to airshows. We even had a tour of the Goodyear Blimp facility at Wingfoot Lake. Rather than having car washes, we washed airplanes as our group fundraisers.

One of our annual events was an airport open house. This eventually grew into the Props and Pistons Festival, an airshow that hosts aircraft as big as the C17, and proved a fun way to volunteer in the aviation community and get more folks involved. An adult volunteer in the group had a close friend who managed jets and coordinated maintenance for their owners.

Flying back to San Juan from Curacao in the Beech 99

He hired new copilots from time to time so once I was experienced enough to handle the job and insurance wasn’t going to be an issue (The FAA might make the rules, but the insurance industry has the final say) my friend connected us and I had my first jet job at age 21. That was a wonderful job. From Akron we would escape the Ohio winter and fly to Texas, the Carolinas, Florida and other warm destinations. My favorite was a trip to Key West where I went snorkeling and visited Margaritaville. I made sure to take plenty of pictures for my folks to prove how hard I was working! I was even able to get some international experience since one of the aircraft owners we flew for had a house in Canada. After flying the Citation, I became a BE99 turboprop Captain at a Dallas based cargo company before being hired as a First Officer for a regional airline in the Midwest.

Me at my current job flying the CRJ Regional Jet

The moral of the story is don’t leave any stone unturned in your aviation journey and enjoy the ride. There will be opportunities, both good and bad. Find out what you like and don’t like. All pilots are pilots but my four different jobs as a pilot have been vastly different and now I know how I might like to spend the rest of my career. Find out what that means for you and it will set you up for an enjoyable career that lasts for decades.

Mitzi in the back seat of a Piper Cherokee 140 I flew

Flying on family trips with Mom sleeping in the back