In the fall of 1990 a less than impressive group of hopeful pilots showed up in Sanford, Florida, with big dreams and empty heads. We came from the Carolinas, Montana, New England, Oklahoma, and Illinois. Through the intervention of fate we were all housed in an apartment complex on Airport Road not far from the airport where we spent the vast majority of our time.
Some of us had previous flight training experience but hadn’t actually achieved that coveted FAA certificate yet. A few of us had our private pilot certificate. We all came to train in Florida where the weather was conducive to flight training.
Each of us was attracted, for our own reasons, to the facility we’d chosen, which had a reputation for providing good instruction in well-maintained aircraft. Perhaps best of all the school provided a pathway to the airlines for those who chose to pursue that route.
We flew Cessna 152s for primary and commercial single-engine training and testing. Cessna 172s were the workhorse we rode through our instrument phase. Piper Senecas and Seminoles were the twins we flew to earn our multi-engine private certificates, followed by our commercial multi-engine tickets.
We flew often, attended ground school religiously, and even went so far as to form a study group that gathered in one apartment or another each week to work on our teaching skills. The CFI, CFII, and MEI loomed in our future and we were determined to complete our training and get to work.
What we didn’t know then — what few new CFIs ever realize — is that we didn’t know much. Just as the private pilot certificate is a license to learn, so is the instrument rating, the commercial certificate, and the CFI ticket.
Time and experience were still light in our logbooks, but we persevered.
We found those much-coveted entry-level jobs. We worked our way up the ladder one flight at a time. Eventually, we found the golden ring.
Ironically perhaps for a group of individuals who started out in lockstep, we’ve all gone our separate ways personally and professionally over the course of the intervening years.
Bryan flies the Airbus 350 out of Atlanta. Baird captains B757/767s across the globe. Scott sits in the left seat of a B737 based in Guam, an idyllic island that is also an unincorporated territory of the United States. It sits way out in the Philippine Sea. Raj fills out our group as pilot in command of a sleek, high-flying corporate jet that calls Kazakhstan home.
My buddies all fly big iron. They all live hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from their base. They all wear four bars, command the respect of the crews they fly with, and generally have gotten everything out of their careers they could have hoped for.
I, on the other hand, still fly a Cessna 152 with an occasional Cub flight with a friend thrown in for the fun of it.
Back then, had I known this would be my future, I might have been disappointed. I’d hoped to fly large multi-engine aircraft built by Boeing and Airbus, too. I wanted to jaunt off on trips around the world, spend a third of my nights in hotels, and generally live the dream of a commercial airline pilot. But that didn’t happen.
Thank goodness, my plans changed.
I thought I knew all about careers in aviation on the day I met my classmates. Truthfully, what I knew was an odd combination of inaccurate assumptions borne of a narrow field of vision brought about by ignorance.
Aviation offers so much more than I could even dream back then.
While I’m still flying the small stuff, the trainers and relatively low-powered personal transportation machines, there are benefits to my career choices that I appreciate. I like the aircraft I fly. I’m comfortable in them.
The relatively local area where I spend the bulk of my flight time appeals to me. And I live just a shade over a mile from the hangar where my airplane is kept. I simply pull out of my driveway, turn right onto the main road, turn right again at the first traffic signal, and the airport suddenly appears before me.
Recently I’ve been teaching a high school class of sophomores who are mostly prospective pilots, engineers, and mechanics. Their teacher quit and I didn’t have the heart to let the class fall apart. So I volunteered to fill the void and share what I know based on more than three decades of flying and wrenching and talking to aviation nerds. So far, so good.
What’s gratifying beyond belief is that my big iron buddies are as fascinated and impressed by what I do in a C-152 and a keyboard as I am with their globe-trotting adventures and super-cool lifestyles.
Our dreams came true, fluid as they were over the years. We each got what we were after. Better yet, we each find our own way to pass on the joy and the satisfaction we’ve gotten out of our careers to others.
And we remain connected, whether we meet up while one of us is on a layover or we use social media to stay in touch from across the globe. We’re still friends more than 30 years after that first meeting.
The bond between us is loose, but strong. We shared something powerful for a year, long ago. Something so central to our beings that it still binds us together to this day. It occurs to me that the one common denominator in each of our lives is aviation.
That’s got to mean something.
I too got my ticket at ComAir at SFB. I met some wonderful people and pilots during my tenure there. I learned a lot, passed my check ride and had a great time while doing it. looking back, I have no complaints.
I am not employed in the airline industry, I just wanted to buy, own and fly my own airplane and ComAir helped make that happen. During my exit the school moved on to become Delta Connection. Sadly they had a tragic accident and sold off the flight school (can’t remember the name of that company). That company eventually sold it to L3/Harris. My airplane is now located at SFB on the Southeast Ramp. Very, very busy flight school. They have excellent ATC and plenty of air traffic to keep your head on a swivel.
Nice story and I can relate and thinking back I am glad I did what I did. Possibly I would change a few things but hindsight is 2020 as they say. We all live and learn
Aviation has changed since my time in the 19 sixties even the 90s as your story starts. Namely the cost of flying…..
Personally I did a little of everything …..I wanted to be a good pilot so I became a CFI. I wanted to know more about maintnenance so I became an A&P. I wanted to fly bigger iron so a flew some jets. The government was mysterious as I met people that were nice and some the were to use a word…..MORONS. Yes I was an. FAA inspector…
So 54 years later still doing all the above except the FAA bit!…
Thanks for the story and bring back the memories as I a a few students flying the airlines, Corporate, CFI and many PPLs …..
Still do annuals with owners and maintnenance …..
“May everyone always have runway ahead and altitude below”
AMEN, Jamie! I came into the game too late and had to retire from Cessna too early. Then subsequently flying 2,000 hours in two years surviving what arguably is the hardest piloting job — aerial pipeline patrol (try doing that on autopilot); retirement is good as a part-time CFI. The “old school” C-150C is hangared right down the road, it will hit 50 degrees this last day of January in the Dakotas, and I think I’ll go flying — just for the fun of it …
Alright Mr. Beckett, I’ve enjoyed every one of your previous articles that I’ve had the privilege to read. This one really hit home!
Perhaps my aviation experience began a bit before yours but, after forty plus years of being a CFI, then a regional airline pilot, a simulator instructor, and finally an FAA Safety Inspector, the best day was the day I retired and returned to general aviation as a CFI!
I felt like I had come home. Thank you so much for your wisdom and insight which you generously share with us regularly.
Almost the same path I had, instructing, 135, and then a large regional airline for 24 years. Now I’m back instructing for the past 9 years, now on my 50th year flying, and 75 years old.
Mr Beckett was that the old Comair Academy?
Mark, I did attend Comair in Sanford, Florida. Now that building is the L3Harris school. It’s far more modern in so many ways, now. I’ve got wonderful memories of the old dispatch building (now gone) the old tower (also gone) and the close friendships students established in our brief but intensely packed time there.
I have memories there too but it was when I was in the Air Force as a controller back in the 80’s. We’d convoy from Patrick AFB to Samford and set our gear and tent city, playing war. Sometimes for training, sometimes for Operational Inspections (ORIs). We’d have a mobile control tower up on the air in about 6 hours, and the radar (approach and PAR) in around 24 hours. The the Air Force would then fly in and flight check us. Other mobile communication were set up too like microwave and SATCOM.
A good story I am sure many readers can identify with. In my own case, I was one of the teenage “line boys” at the late, great Kentucky Flying Service, Bowman Field, Kentucky, with its rows and rows of C150/C152/C172/C182/Aztecs and all kinds of twin Cessnas. Early 70s, when the pattern was full at Bowman and planes landed simultaneously on the paved runway an parallel grass strip. A long weekend sweeping hangar floors, cleaning public restrooms, pumping gas into airplanes and washing them was just enough for an hour of dual in a C150. One young pilot a few years older who we often saw there would become a household name in aviation, Gene Soucy, flying his father’s tiny red Pitts. Another would become a pioneer in the homebuilding community, Mike Loehle, who ran an ultralight training business with his wife from a Louisville city park, unimaginable today. A fellow line-boy got his ratings, ended up an attorney instead, and wound up in my EAA chapter near Raleigh decades later, doing Mission-related flying on the side. In my own case, my plans to fly for the military never panned out due to tough eyesight rules in the 70s, so I shifted focus instead on aircraft design. I was fortunate to have played a minor role in all the commercial aircraft mentioned in this article, and some cool military projects. Now I am having a great time making advanced aircraft components for the RV community, with sights on several totally new light aircraft we hope to produce in the near future. Looking back, I think I would not have been happy trapped for hours inside a cockpit, especially considering the state of airline travel these days. The best flying of all has been in my taildragger operating from grass fields, mainly because of the challenges and the characters one meets in grassroots aviation. And the torch gets passed – our two sons are A&Ps building jet engines for GE, pretty cool stuff. My little grandsons are already very interested in aircraft of all kinds, starting to recognize and name them on sight and by sound, just as their fathers and grandfather still do.
With Your life as You, Mr. Kent Misegades, describes, I consider infamous same comments that some readers of another GA web site make towards comments You have made in that site. They are not, of course, compelled to agree with You, but must not be incorrect, contemptible and obnoxious. In short, those people are those that are infamous, contemptible and deserve to be considered to have a sad life.