How To Become A Pilot

Have you ever wondered how to become a pilot? Really it is quite simple. You start off with a visit to your local flying club to research instructors and the quality of the flight school, and from there you start your instruction.

Before you go to the flying club, there are some basic criteria to be met to become a pilot. The number one criteria is, you have to be old enough to hold a pilots license (the same as for driving a car).

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I am often reminded of a quote and a poem that I once read many years ago. I still read them both as often as I can because they so accurately reflect why, as pilots, there is such a love of flying.

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."Leonardo da Vinci.

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

— John Gillespie Magee, Jr

John Gillespie Magee, Jr. was born in Shanghai, China, in 1922 to an English mother and a Scottish-Irish-American father. Magee was 18 years old when he started to learn to fly. Within the year, he was sent to England and posted to the newly formed No 412 Fighter Squadron, RCAF, which was activated at Digby, England, on 30 June 1941. He was qualified on and flew the Supermarine Spitfire.

Magee was killed at the age of 19, whilst flying Spitfire VZ-H, serial number AD-291. The aircraft was involved in a mid-air collision with an Airspeed Oxford trainer from RAF Cranwell, flown by Leading Aircraftman Ernest Aubrey. The two aircraft collided in cloud cover at about 400 feet AGL, at 11:30, over the village of Roxholm in Lincolnshire. Magee was descending at the time. At the inquiry afterwards a farmer testified that he saw the Spitfire pilot struggling to push back the canopy. The pilot stood up to jump from the plane but was too close to the ground for his parachute to open, and died on impact. Magee is buried at Holy Cross, Scopwick Cemetery in Lincolnshire, England.

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