80knts

As long as I can remember the only thing I've ever wanted to do was be a commercial pilot. I still get the same rush of excitement setting foot in an airplane as I did when I was a child. I just wanted to start a new thread for everyone to share how they got into aviation and why they love the job. So let's hear what got you into aviation and if your passion is still as strong as it was when you were starting!

CaptainCarl

Didn't want to go to college (skool iz fur fewls), decided to give flying the ol' college try. Didn't suck at it, got to go places, and here I am, doing it as a career. The passion comes from overcoming the challenges encountered while flying, not the actual flying itself, and yeah, I live for the challenges (although they are fewer and further between these days).

Stihlsaw

I was always interested in airplanes, my father was working on his private when he was killed. I can remember looking at his maps and charts as a young kid in the mid-late 70's. My mother and father divorced when I was 8 and I stayed with my father every other holiday and for the summers. My parents did the "kid exchange" in Minneapolis as that was the halfway point, my dad and I would spend hours outside the fence along 29L/11R (30L/12R now) at KMSP and watch jets land and takeoff. Back then it was the "good ol days" of airlines and I can to this day remember seeing Western 727's and the old "blue goose" of North Central DC-9's!

After my dad passed my mother re-married to a dairy farmer. I loved running farm equipment and throughout growing up I realized that was my calling in life. I see a piece of equipment weather it be a tractor or construction equipment or a big rig and I want to drive it! Same thing with planes, I see a 757 or a G-V and I want to fly it!

Been flying Corp jets for 20+ years now and wouldn't trade it for the world. I've had the last 6 days in a row off and already getting itchy to go on a trip! Doing a west coast run starting Saturday and looking forward to it!

badflaps

I was changing a tire on an F-86L outside in the middle of winter, I thought, this really sucks..........

John Carr

Because breaking them is more fun than fixing them

busdriver12

First year in a community college, no clue of what I wanted to do with my life, but I figured I'd probably end up as an engineer. Walked through the library, on a shelf on the left side was a rumpled paperback book. It was, "The Right Stuff". Never looked back.

Wonder where I would be today if I'd been looking at the shelves on the right side, instead of the left.

JohnBurke

Fortune cookie.

It read "let your business interests take priority this month."

So I did. I flew through High School, and upon receipt of the fortune cookie, headed off to ag school.

tomgoodman

This picture in an encyclopedia when I was in 4th grade:



20 years later, he was the dinner speaker for our Daedalian group.

Packrat

I was one of those kids who had airplane models hanging from the ceiling of the bedroom. And even though my step-Dad was a Marine Corps fighter pilot, an IP at Navy TPS, a FOSI at UAL and finally a UAL pilot, flying as a career never occurred to me.

Then, after college, I visited my cousin who was an Army guy in Hawaii. He had a house on the water at Ewa Beach. I'd watch the P-3s, A-4s and H-2s come and go all day. Then it hit me, "I wonder if they need people to do that?"

Went to the Navy recruiter when I got home and 3 months later I was in Pensacola at AOCS living "An Officer and A Gentleman."

DYNASTY HVY

Feeling the need for speed.