Discovering My Passion for Aviation

By Evan Gessner

If you’re anything like me, you like to plan everything as far into the future as possible. But, if you’re young and unsure about what you want to do in life, how are you supposed to plan ahead? I’m here to tell you it’s okay to be unsure about what you want to do with your life. Many of the most interesting people I’ve ever met had no clue what they wanted to do when they were in their teens and early twenties, or even when they were older. You would be surprised how much your life can change in just one year. For someone like myself, who was never involved in the aviation community from a young age, an outsider, it might seem intimidating to have goals of being a pilot. I didn’t know anyone in the industry, nor did my family, so when I was younger, all I could do was look up at the sky and imagine how amazing it would be to fly one of the thousands of planes that passed by over my head.

My pivotal moment came when I was introduced to the aviation community at Mandarin High School in Jacksonville, FL. During my junior year, my school offered a dual enrollment program with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, featuring two courses: Introduction to Aeronautical Science and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. I eagerly took both classes and was instantly hooked on aviation. Before then, I was extremely lost with what I wanted to do with my life and career, but discovering the possibility of becoming an airline pilot gave me a clear goal. From that point on, I could plan the next few years of my life around this newfound goal.

The first thing on my agenda was to determine if flying an airplane was truly for me. In early December 2019, I took an introductory flight at A-Cent Aviation at Herlong Airport (KHEG) in a Cessna 172F (N7989U). The number one thing I would recommend to someone with any interest in aviation at all is to go on an intro flight at your local flight school. There is no other feeling in the world like that of being thousands of feet in the sky, all under your own control. I immediately realized how amazing the prospect of being a commercial pilot truly was. Not only did I now believe that flying airplanes was the most fun you could have, but I later discovered that you could make a substantial career out of it as well, a win-win in my book. One month later, I began my journey to obtain my Private Pilot’s license. I went to flight lessons a few days a week after school and tennis practice, and eight months later, I passed my Private Pilot checkride!

Aside from training to get my PPL during my senior year of high school, I also decided that I was going to attend college. Instead of choosing the obvious choice of Embry-Riddle, I instead decided on Florida State University. I had decided to take an unorthodox route to the airlines, and I wanted to enjoy my time in college. Unfortunately, Florida State didn’t offer any aviation-related programs (I majored in Finance), so I knew I would need to complete my remaining ratings at a standalone flight school. I chose ATP Flight School, the largest flight training company in the US, which was also coincidentally headquartered in Jacksonville, where I am from.

In my free time during college, I kept up with flying and aviation news, and I was able to complete a biannual flight review during my sophomore year of college at a new flight school, Holladay Aviation at Craig Airport (KCRG) in Jacksonville. Moving to a new flight school allowed me to make new friends and gave me the opportunity to familiarize myself with the KCRG airspace, which is where ATP’s Jacksonville location is based. Finally, after three of the best years of my life, I had graduated from FSU. Graduation brought mixed emotions, from the sadness of saying goodbye to some of my closest friends, to the excitement about restarting training headed towards my career of flying full time. I will soon begin flight training at ATP and as I do, the passion that I have for aviation has not only stayed with me throughout college but grown.