A NEW FLIGHT
INSTRUCTOR STORY
Jay Smith, Executive Editor
jays@modelaircraft.org
DOUG ABEL SHARED THIS great story with me about becoming a flight instructor and the joy of sharing the hobby with others.
I had a family of four who came out and was interested in flying. The dad wanted to learn how to fly, and his oldest daughter seemed interested as well. I had showed up at the field with my late father’s Apprentice S15e, which had been donated to the club for flight instruction, so I offered to take them up and let them fly on a buddy box.
The dad was cruising around and having a great time, and then his oldest daughter wanted to jump in and fly; she absolutely fell in love with it. But what really surprised him was that his youngest daughter, who was 10, I think, asked if she could learn to fly, and I said, “Absolutely!”
We stepped up to the line and I took off for her then pressed the button to turn the airplane over to her. She was having fun cruising around, just figuring out how to do the basic controls, and she was enjoying it.
Afterward, the dad came up to me and said, “Our two daughters are absolutely loving this! Can we come back again?” I let them know about our Monday night flight instruction and sure enough, the entire family came back out this past Monday night to go through flying lessons.
I again took the youngest daughter up, and she was ecstatic to work with me. I let her fly, just giving her a few pointers, and by the end of her third flight ever, she was starting to make simple, large, sweeping turns. She was all smiles behind her mask, and absolutely enthralled with the flying.
Afterward, she walked away to tell her dad how much she was enjoying it, and her mom came up to me and thanked me profusely.
She told me that I was very patient with her, although she had a bunch of questions. She told me her daughter has ADHD and is always flitting about with various things, but this was the first time she’d seen her daughter so excited and absolutely focused on something and have that much interest in it.
Hearing that, I don’t know how to explain it, exactly. It was like how I imagine a proud parent feels. And I know now that I’m going to keep doing flight instruction for as long as I can do it with our club.
