How'd you start in aviation? Poll

[201er]

What drove you to get your initial airplane training? Did you start flying in the military? Training for commercial intents? Solely for private reasons? For the purpose of instructing and teaching others?

[201Steve]

Curious if anyone will select instruction. Seems like one of those things you wouldn’t know until after you start. Arguably just an offshoot of “commercial” as well. 

[Rmag]

My Dad bought a plane, I wanted to fly it...

[gsxrpilot]

For me it was just something I'd wanted to do for as far back as I can remember. The earliest I remember flying was about age 6 in my grandfather's Comanche 250. But I know from my parents, that'd I'd been flying countless times prior to that. There were a lot of pilots in my extended family, going back a few generations. I had a couple of great great uncles who learned to fly in the Curtiss Jenny, bought a couple of them and flew them back home to eastern Oregon from Ohio. But until my younger brother, none were pro pilots or military pilots.

I started my working life as a teacher and have always considered myself an educator of some sort. So for me the goal has always been the CFI and then done.

[Yetti]

I really enjoyed the learning part.  There were lots of knobs and buttons and learning how to make them all work together.   It makes travel in the state of Texas easy.  I think it is cool to look out the window.  I grew up sailing/racing small sailboats it is very similar.  I started thinking powered parachutes would be cool.  But they don't do well with Texas Spring winds.  Then thought sport pilot then figured what the heck.   PPL    And I enjoy working on things.

Edited March 28, 2021 by Yetti

[David Lloyd]

One of our salesmen said he was going to the airport the next day to see about flying lessons, did I want to go with him?  Okay.  Never thought about it before.  A year later we both had our license and bought an airplane together.  My first trip after getting my license was to Richmond on business.  We flew that Cherokee for several hundred hours, sold it.  I bought a Mooney.  Several years later, he bought a Mooney.  Still has it.  In the seventies, I was the only person I knew that paid for flight lessons out of my pocket.  Everyone else was using up their VA money.

As our company grew, I used the Cherokee, then the Mooney and the a Bonanza to travel a couple days a week to work with our sales people and see customers.  When that business was sold, I was traveling 5 states on a regular basis.  My next job required travel to 14 states to see customers.  Monday mornings was the Bonanza instead of the pickup.  Wednesday nights back home.

[MikeOH]

I was in high school and a friend was learning to fly.  I went up with him on a few lessons and was hooked!  My parents weren't too wild about the idea of me learning to fly, but told me if I wanted to pay for it they wouldn't stop me.  My part time job paid $2.75 an hour, and the C150 was $10.50/hr wet, plus $5/hr for the CFI.  Took me 8 months...that was the pace of the work & spend plan

[Rick Junkin]

I wanted to be a fighter pilot but discovered during my ROTC scholarship physical my eyes weren't good enough to fly with the USAF in any capacity. I wanted to serve so I took the scholarship anyway. I was assigned as an acquisition officer when I was commissioned and after a year or so started training for my private ticket on my own dime. Soon after that I was getting prescription sunglasses for flying and the ophthalmologist told me my eyes hadn't changed but the vision qualifying criteria for USAF aviation had expanded due to my being 2 years older and I followed a path that took me to the back seat of an F-4E as a Weapon Systems Officer. My work toward my private ticket helped get me through that door. I finished up my ticket 2 years later. Now I'm retired after having had a military and civilian aviation career that let me fly/test some really cool airplanes. I've been an instructor and examiner in my WSO capacity in all but one of the airplanes I was qualified in, and earned my CFII along the way. I'm preparing to possibly embark on a third career as a primary instructor out of my hangar for select students (Learners?! Sorry, I'm old school and won't drink that Koolaide. "Clients" I can do.)

So, I answered =Private= for the survey, but in reality that's only part of my story.

I know there are other similar/different/better stories out there and I would really like to hear them!

Cheers,
Rick

 

[MooneyMitch]

What drove you to get your initial airplane training?

Watching the 50's TV show Superman, made me want to fly!   Jumping off the couch with my homemade cape was not cutting it, and besides my mother did not like me crawling all over her special furniture !!

I suppose doing stuff like terrorizing my mom's furniture, along some other things I did as a child, explains why I always thought my first name was Damnit !

Oh, yes, I have to mention SkyKing and his Bamboo Bomber Songbird ! 

[Parker_Woodruff]

Wanted to be an airline pilot after I got a copy of Microsoft Flight Sim 2000 in middle school 

[midlifeflyer]

Strictly private. 

Like @MooneyMitch, 1950s TV was the original impetus, although I was (barely) smart enough to know Superman wasn't an option (didn't stop me from trying, though). For me it was Sky King. But I never did it until...

...years later. My wife got tired of hearing me talk about wanting to fly since Sky.  For my 38th birthday, she bough me a logbook, the FAA Airplane Flying Handbook, and three introductory lessons at a local airport. She claims she hasn't seen me since.

Ultimately getting my CFI was not about any career aspirations. I have had the teaching bug ever since I was a child. Although never a full-time professional educator, it's something I have always done in one form or another, because I have to. 

[FlyingDude]

Age 4: jumping off the couch 

Age 7: made wings from newspapers, jumped off couch. Caught about to jump off balcony. Parent halted aviation career temporarily.

Age 21: hanggliding off of Italian Alps and Appennines

Age 23: first lesson in 3-axis ultralight. Afforded 4 lessons only 

Age 25: started PPL. Gave up hanggliding. Spent all disposable income on flying since...

 

 

 

 

[Planegary]

at about 2 years old I was terrified of planes ,as in, hid when one flew over. My mom took me to the airport and ever since then  I wanted to fly. After high school graduation and a nomination to the air force academy, the academy wanted me to go to a jr college for a year since I had no athletics in high school ( I was focusing on academics and had a job) no time for after school extracurricular activities. I put myself thru a 4 year college and then marched to the air force recruiter who told me that they weren't taking any officers but if I wanted to go in as enlisted.... Went to the navy recruiter and took all of the aptitude and physical tests and scored highly. Paperwork was sent in  and 2 weeks later the movie Top Gun was released. Sent myself to flight school and here i am 35 years later

[midlifeflyer]

37 minutes ago, Planegary said:

at about 2 years old I was terrified of planes ,as in, hid when one flew over.

You just brought back a memory. I was 4 and was in the hospital for a tonsillectomy. To calm me when giving me anesthesia, they told me I would have good dreams and asked me what I wanted to dream about.

 

I don't need to tell you the answer, do I?

[Eduleo]

Grew up next to a commuter airport downtown Sao Paulo, and went to watch airplanes land most weeknights after dinner with my dad (electras, 727's, etc). 

Best buddy age 7-11's father was a 707 captain for Varig. I was reading PPL textbooks by age 10.

The week I got my first full time job (20 years later, in the US, in a career that has nothing to do with flying), I drove to the local airport and had my first lesson. The best memory I have of my dad, the last time I saw him before he passed a month later, was his expression when I told him I was learning to fly and was about to have my checkride.

[KLRDMD]

I figured I could use an airplane in business but it turned out after I got my private that really wasn't an option. Later I was able to use an airplane in business so that helped.

I can't do something half way so here I am 27 years later with CFI, CFII, MEI & ATP. I don't personally know anyone else that went through and obtained an ATP that didn't fly professionally at least in some capacity but I'm sure there must be a few of us. When I do flight instruction I ask the "student" to make a donation to the Flying Samaritans for an amount they think is fair.

I'm the off-site coordinator for NYU Langone. Anesthesia residents rotate in Arizona and California and I manage those rotations as well as work with the residents one on one clinically doing cases. I figured flight instruction was close enough to teaching anesthesia. After all, if you don't do it right in either area there's a distinct possibility someone is gonna die.

[midlifeflyer]

24 minutes ago, KLRDMD said:

I don't personally know anyone else that went through and obtained an ATP that didn't fly professionally at least in some capacity but I'm sure there must be a few of us.

I have a friend who got his single engine ATP. He knew he was going to fly with his family regularly and wanted the mental security of locked in professional attitudes and procedures. I've given him IPCs and it shows.

[KLRDMD]

3 minutes ago, midlifeflyer said:

I have a friend who got his single engine ATP. He knew he was going to fly with his family regularly and wanted the mental security of locked in professional attitudes and procedures. I've given him IPCs and it shows.

One of these days I have to get my single engine ATP - just because. I only have multi now.

[Chocks]

Wasn’t in my wheelhouse at all until I got a copy of FSX from a family member. I mean I had long gone family in aviation, but I just liked airplanes, never thinking I would ever fly one. 
1 year after “flight simming” it, the wife thought I should try the real thing and she got me a discovery flight for my 33rd birthday. I was nervous, but excited. 
The moment the wheels came off the ground, I was utterly smitten. I was an aviation addict from that moment and have been chasing that high ever since. 
 

Then, @gsxrpilottook me for a formation flight in his Mooney in 2015, and turned me into a full blown crack and heroine addict. So now I’ve been a formation flying Mooney drug dealer for 6 years. 

[gsxrpilot]

While my younger brother went off and got his Private at 17 and just kept going, I never could figure out how to come up with the money. I kept thinking if I could save up $5K or so, I could get started. By age 40, my brother was a Southwest Captain, and I still hadn't taken any lessons. The best advice I got was to quit trying to save up the money. All you really need is enough money to pay for one lesson. Go take that one lesson, and you'll figure out how to pay for the next one. He was so right. Eleven months later I passed the check ride.

[RobertGary1]

My father was a pilot in the Navy. He died before I was old enough to know much about flying. I remember going out to ops in the evenings and sitting in the a-7’s and f-4’s. 

[Bartman]

During my medical residency I noticed that the inbound commercial planes going into KTRI passed directly over my house, at the same altitude and speed, and then turned over the same spot to line up with the runway. At the end of year 1 of training there was more free time and I responded to an advertisement for an introductory flight. When I showed up it was a beautiful sunny day in March, but they refused to take me up and said it was too windy. They even said if I went up on that day I would have never been back. Went back the next weekend and Beverly took me up and it was a great day. Finished my private in October that year.

Looking back I learned 2 things

• The commercial flights were going over the OM/IAF
• They were right, if I’d gone up on that gusty March afternoon I would have never been back

[Mooneymite]

Just lazy by nature....

I had an affinity to things that flew from an early age.  An itch that never went away.

[N201MKTurbo]

I did it for work. I had work at the other end of my first solo cross country and got reimbursed for the trip.

[Joe Zuffoletto]

I grew up watching the astronauts in the Gemini and Apollo programs and caught the aviation bug then. Got my license as soon as I could afford to, at the tender age of 21. Best decision I ever made!

Never aimed to fly in the military or commercially because I was too colorblind. I wanted to do it strictly for the challenge and for fun.