One of the most common questions I am asked is “what got you interested in aviation?” So before that question even comes up, I thought I would go ahead and give my answer to it as well as how I got to where I am today. Most of this post will be pretty detail free but I may go into further details about certain events in my training in later posts.
For basically as long as I can remember I always have had an interest in just about any big machine. However planes and trains really stuck for whatever reason. My dad was a pilot for a period of time but it was long before I was born so I don’t really think that had a ton of influence on my love for aviation. My mom has a picture that I love to tell people about and for lack of a better explanation I credit it for my love of aviation. This picture, which I’ll have to find and post on here one day, shows me in a stroller holding a blow up Blue Angel airplane getting pushed around an air show. I don’t think I was more than a couple of years old. Since that seed was planted that day its grown into a true passion and now a career.
When I was younger my family didn’t travel my plane very much. Seemed about every other year or so we would fly to our family vacation versus driving. All through my grade school years, flying to and from vacation was probably the highlights of the entire trip for me. I can remember not being able to sleep a wink the night before we were scheduled to fly out just from my pure excitement of getting to ride on a plane. The very first commercial airline flight that I can remember taking was from Greenville, SC to Dallas Ft Worth. I was 3 years old I think, my family was traveling to Oklahoma to look at houses for our upcoming move. It’s really weird the details I can remember from that trip. We were flying Delta and connecting through Atlanta. Even now I can remember exactly what type of aircraft we flew. We flew an EMB-120 Brasilia to Atlanta then a 727 to Dallas. On the way back I got to experience my first wide body airplane an L1011, I can even remember that it was coming inbound from Honolulu.
I continued to be thrilled each opportunity I got to take a commercial flight. Starting at about 12-13 I discovered the PC game “Flight Simulator 2002” I played that game and its predecessors a ton all throughout my high school years (that’s a post for later). Around 15-16 years old I think my parents realized my passion for aviation wasn’t going away anytime soon. They took me up to Max Westheimer airport in Norman and bought me my first “intro flight” with the University of Oklahoma. That was the day I first got to actually fly a plane. That sealed the deal for me. Later that year they told me I could start taking flying lessons at our local small town airport. (Plenty of stories for later) To speed things up in this post before it turns into a 1000 word essay, I soloed on January 1, 2006. I got my private pilot’s license that summer of 2006. After graduating high school in May of 2007 I went to the University of Oklahoma where I got to fly my first plane. I completed their 4 year aviation management degree graduating in December of 2010. While at the University I obtained all of my licenses through CFII. I worked as a flight instructor for the University from August 2010 to March of 2011. In March I got hired by a regional airline which is where I am today.
Again I know that last part was rushed but as promised at the start of this post I will go into details about each step down the road in later posts. For now I better get some sleep just incase my airline does decide to call me to fly at 7AM.
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