Commercial pilot in the making

Much to the surprise of Simone on the Flying School front desk, Sam arrived at Goodwood Aerodrome last August with a large bag of cash, painstakingly gathered from working in his local pub. “These hands have washed many dishes,” he said, “but it was worth it as I knew after my first trial lesson that I absolutely wanted to learn to fly.”

Returning to the Goodwood Flying School with his mother, a well-known local artist, we sat down in the Briefing Room. Tall, with shaggy hair that covers part of his face, his eyes lit up when we started to talk about flying. His mother described how as a young boy, he would take a chair and a pair of binoculars outside, climb on to the chair and watch the aircraft fly by. He would remain there for hours, transfixed by what was happening in the sky.

As soon as he turned 14 he started to fly gliders with Lasham Gliding Society. He loved the experience but soon became too tall to glide. He was still too young to learn to fly so his parent gave him a flying simulator, on which he wiled away many hours. He laughed as he described how his phone has every app available so that he can follow aircraft, pilots, flying tips; I got the impression that there wasn’t much room left on his phone for anything that wasn’t flying related.

Sam and his mother both spoke very highly of his school, Churcher’s College in Petersfield, where he has been encouraged to follow his passion. He is a member of the Combined Cadet Force, and through this has won a two-week scholarship and 12 hours flying with Tayside Aviation, which he will take up in October.

One of the other parents at school is a pilot with Thomas Cook and took him to their head office at Gatwick. He was able to meet and talk to commercial pilots, all of whom were delighted to share their passion and could obviously see a fellow pilot in the making. Whilst there, he was introduced to the Head of Training, who fortuitously has an aircraft based at Goodwood Aerodrome.

Rachel, Sam’s mother, suffers from a fear of flying herself, so handing her son over to a flying school was not easy. However, she was given all the reassurances she needed that the Goodwood Flying School was the place for her son to learn to fly. 

She went on to say that "It was the mixture of professionalism and friendliness that hit me as we walked in.”

We look forward to following Sam’s journey to becoming a qualified pilot with his regular updates.