CHAPTER 7

All of this instilled in me a similar lifelong love for aviation, so learning to fly was a natural thing for me to do at that point in my life. But for whatever reason it hadn"t yet occurred to me that I could make a career out of flying, i.e get paid to do what I loved.

But that was about to change in a big way.

Once I started flight lessons and got behind the controls of a tiny two seat Cessna 152 for the first time, flying airplanes really grabbed me and wouldn"t let go. The more I learned the more obvious it became to me that aviation was the career I should be pursuing, not law.

So after struggling for about 3 nanoseconds on my decision, I decided to leave law school at the end of my first year to pursue a professional flying career.

Never mind that the country was in a recession and the airlines had gone through huge furloughs of pilots, meaning it was highly unlikely I would get hired by an airline anytime soon. Or get any flying job for that matter.

But I didn"t care, because I knew it was exactly what I wanted to do for a career.

 

Turns out it was the best decision I ever made and I"ve never looked back since.

Immediately upon leaving law school I focused a thousand percent on flying. Over the next couple of years I became a flight instructor, then a charter pilot flying twin engine airplanes around the Northeast, and then a pilot for a small commuter airline.

I read every book I could about flying, worked on building my flight hours and continued to immerse myself in the world of aviation.

Meanwhile the economy started to turn around and a huge wave of airline pilot hiring suddenly began to build. And because I had focused exclusively on what I wanted rather than what logic suggested was likely to happen, I was in the perfect position to ride that wave of opportunity when it began to surge.

9494 Copyright © 2010 Surefire Tactics Marketing, LLC