How I Became a Corporate Pilot

I grew up in Dallas, Texas a few miles from Love Field. As a child, my parents would  take me and my siblings to the park that is on the north side of the field. We would play at the  park but the real treat was the Boeing 737’s that would come in and fly right over us on their  final approaches to landing. Watching the Southwest Airlines 737’s come in only a few hundred feet overhead sparked an interest and fascination with aviation that would plant an aviation seed in me. This was compounded by an aunt who was a senior flight attendant with Delta. We would fly with her and be able to go up and talk to the pilots and see the cockpit.  

Alas, I grew up and had other interests when I was in school. One subject I loved though  was history. Especially reading about the great aerial battles of World War One and World War  Two, the airplanes used and the men and women that flew them. It wasn’t until I was almost  finished with college when I thought about flying professionally. I received an email from my  twin sister who was an ER nurse in North Carolina that really made me think about flying again. To set the scene, I was finishing up a history degree at The University of  Colorado in Boulder where I spent most of my free time skiing, hiking, and camping in the mountains. I loved the views from the top of the mountains and the idea of traveling around the world and experiencing what it had to offer really appealed to me. That is when I received this email from my sister. She told me a Med-Evac Helicopter pilot had transported a patient to their Emergency Room and he looked exactly like me, so much so that she was taken back and for a minute and thought it was me. After her encounter with this mystery pilot, she thought to email me and tell me the story. Well, that story started to turn the wheels in my head and I started doing research in becoming a pilot as it would not only fill my passion for aviation, but for travel and adventure as well. I set off on a course shortly thereafter, moving back home to begin my aviation training. 

Over the next year, I would get most of my certificates and eventually my Flight  Instructor Ratings. I instructed and built hours, eventually working into bigger and better  airplanes. While the airlines had been a goal of mine when I first began flying, I chose to go the  corporate pilot route and started by flying small single engine pistons, then multi-engine pistons,  turboprops, and eventually into jets. I have been flying for the same company for close to a  decade now and we have had some great birds; from the PC-12 and Astra Jet (G100) to now a  fleet of Citation Jets with our CJ3 and CJ1+. I have been able to travel all over and see sights and  places I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to if it had not been for becoming a corporate pilot.  As I write this, I am sitting at the airport looking at my plane out the window and wondering how  I am lucky enough to have one of the best jobs in the world.