Adventures in Business Aviation: How I Got My Start
Contributed By National Air Transportation Association Staff I n an industry as full of passionate people as general aviation, everyone has a story of falling in love with flying. As
things click, so I was immediately drawn to anything to do with the mechanical aspect. Getting some answers to those questions really laid the groundwork for all the rest of it.” Deberry served in the Air Force for 22 years before joining the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), where he led, directed, and managed aviation safety oversight activities and later became the interested in helping create new pathways forward to help kickstart the next generation of careers in aviation. “We should take every FAA’s Academy Director. Now, DeBerry says, he’s opportunity to go out in the community, to show young people what aviation is all about, to talk with people about careers in aviation. We should tell our stories of how we fell in love with aviation, and we should explain those emotions of accomplishment, of enthusiasm, of passion that we feel for our industry. For a young person looking for their way in the world, hearing people who are excited about their careers really causes things to start to turn,” added DeBerry. Megan Eisenstein, NATA’s Managing Director, Industry Affairs & Innovation, says the first sparks of her own love of aviation might pre-date her earliest memories. “It really began with my dad, a corporate pilot who has always flown Part 91 for private companies,” Eisenstein recalls. “Growing up, he would always
the members of the National Air Transportation Association (NATA) team began sharing those stories, it became clear that such tales—of initial sparks and of the careers they inspired—can play a critical role in motivating the next generation across all aspects of the industry.
ask my brother, sister and I if we would like to ride to the airport as he was stocking up on snacks and drinks and supplies for his trips. It was always such a fun adventure to take a ride to the airport, run around the hangar, see his airplane, and help him stock up the plane. I grew up around aviation, and then my older brother took an interest in it and started taking flying lessons. Once he got his license and started taking me for rides, that sparked a different kind of interest. Over the past 12 years, all my jobs have been in the industry.” “Getting introduced to aviation at a young age helps spark an interest, and not just in the pilot field,” she says. “In aviation you can be a pilot, you can be in aircraft charter sales, or be a broker, or focus on safety, or maintenance, or on the airport and FBO side. There are so many different aspects to the industry.” She points out that those different sides of the industry allow for a lot of movement.
“My story started very early on, when I was only four or five years old,” recalls Keith DeBerry, NATA’s Chief Operating Officer. “A friend of my grandfather’s had a biplane—you know, fabric and dope—and he and his wife would give rides for money. He landed in one of my grandfather’s fields one day when I was just a boy and, in that instant, I became enamored with aviation, for life. I immediately started asking, ‘What makes it fly? What makes it stay in the air?’ I’ve always had a curious mind about what makes
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