Gotta' brag on my kid today, she made her first solo flight at age 18! She's picked a different road to take; figured out how to graduate a semester early at high school and has been working on flight school and obtaining her private pilot's license.

Congrats to her!

That is awesome. I think many her age there (alaska) and plan to stay there would be doing the same if they could afford it.
Instead of a car, start saving for a small plane.

By the time she is thirty she would have it made while most of her friends would be drinking and smoking their way to no where.

Excellent choice considering the current pilot shortage.

Congratulations!!!!

Congratulations to your daughter!! Wish I woulda figured that out when I was 18. [long sigh......]

Tell her we remember when she was into archery, and she did great then.
Assume she will do as well with flying!

Sounds like she is planning on making flying a career. That is definitely the right time to do it. When you’re young, don’t have a lot of obligations, and haven’t developed expensive tastes it is a whole lot easier to start a flying career. Good luck to her, we need more pilots.

Cool!

Wishing you guys the best of luck!

Congratulations. Oh how I wish I had learned to fly.

Huge congrats.i solo'd around 17-18 & ran out of money for it shortly after.
More shocked that she's 18!

Very neat. I wouldn't be surprised if she has seen this already, but your daughter may be interested in this youtuber who has been gaining a lot of attention lately. Young lady with a degree and employed in software engineering, but she has one heck of a side hustle going in aviation. Even with what little she does with the YT channel, it has had great success.

Stevie Triesenberg

quote:

Originally posted by P-220:

Oh how I wish I had learned to fly.

What's holding you back?

I had a student who was in her 80's. Her doctor had told her to ease off on work. She asked the doc if it was OK to take some flight training.

Doc said, "Not if it's work."

She replied, "No, it's fun and relaxing," so doc told her to go ahead.

She was right. It was fun, for both of us. She was a great lady, fantastic sense of humor, had a real aptitude and was one of the fastest learners I had in fifty-plus years of instructing. Working from Midway airport, she adapted to Chicago area traffic as if it were her own back yard.

quote:

Originally posted by sjtill:
Tell her we remember when she was into archery, and she did great then.
Assume she will do as well with flying!

Oh she's still into archery. She's put down her compound and now shooting a recurve. She does more coaching and mentoring than shooting now. She's now a certified Level II Instructor with USA Archery. She takes on some of the more challenging students, ones with autism or disabilities. She's great with them because she's closer to their age and can relate to them better than us old farts.

While I'm proud of her for making her solo flight today, I'm more proud to see her happy, planning her direction in life and setting goals for herself.

quote:

Originally posted by 2000Z-71:

quote:

Originally posted by sjtill:
Tell her we remember when she was into archery, and she did great then.
Assume she will do as well with flying!

Oh she's still into archery. She's put down her compound and now shooting a recurve. She does more coaching and mentoring than shooting now. She's now a certified Level II Instructor with USA Archery. She takes on some of the more challenging students, ones with autism or disabilities. She's great with them because she's closer to their age and can relate to them better than us old farts.

While I'm proud of her for making her solo flight today, I'm more proud to see her happy, planning her direction in life and setting goals for herself.

That’s great news!

That’s all fantastic news, 2000Z! So great to hear that update!

Just an additional comment...

Not sure of your daughter's desire to pursue an aviation career, but if she is leaning that route, I'd recommend University of North Dakota for their aviation program. It is TOPS in the nation and I've flown with some mighty fine pilots that graduated their program. Plus they have HOCKEY!!!

Some may rebut GO TO EMBRY RIDDLE! GO TO EMBRY RIDDLE! Well...yeah! If you want to step away with about $250,000+ in debt. Riddle, IMHO, is nowhere NEAR worth that much money...

Congrats again!!

^ as one of the resident career pilots, I'd say that's quite an endorsement.

My experience was that Embry Riddle puts out very well educated pilots. Their classroom stuff is top notch. I never met a mediocre ERU grad. UND ditto.

Having said that, my advice is to decide if one wishes to be a professional airline pilot or some form of engineer or test pilot. The airlines want to see hours, ratings, and some specific crew and simulator training. A 4 year degree is definitely waning as a requirement, and certainly all they are looking for is the box checked for some kind of (accredited) BS or BA degree.

If you're aiming for aeronautical engineering etc then definitely go for ERU, NDU, or another top notch university.

Beyond that, every professional pilot needs a Plan B. Every pilot can expect to be furloughed twice in his/her career. Having some qualification other than "Aviation Business" will help put food on the table during a 2-5 year furlough.

Some kind of technical, accounting, or other useful degree is what I would recommend.

quote:

Originally posted by erj_pilot:

Not sure of your daughter's desire to pursue an aviation career, but if she is leaning that route, I'd recommend University of North Dakota for their aviation program. It is TOPS in the nation and I've flown with some mighty fine pilots that graduated their program.

Some may rebut GO TO EMBRY RIDDLE! GO TO EMBRY RIDDLE! Well...yeah! If you want to step away with about $250,000+ in debt. Riddle, IMHO, is nowhere NEAR worth that much money...

Agreed, North Dakota is good. Purdue offers some outstanding programs, too.

Embry Riddle -- I know many folks who have gone there. Without exception, their 20-20 hindsight makes them wish that they had chosen differently. They tell me about obscenely high costs for average quality flight training. There is a whole industry around the Daytona Beach airport, independent flight training and airplane rental businesses, that do quite well by offering reasonable costs to Embry-Riddle students (last time I checked, there was no requirement for ER students to use ER facilities for all of their flight time). Back in the late 1990's, I looked at buying one of the airplane rental / flight training outfits there, that specialized in instrument training. In retrospect, I somewhat regret not doing that.