Career Pilot

Career Success Stories

Career success stories serve two vital roles. Any time you are working toward a goal, learning about the success of others who recently attained the same objective can be inspirational and a source of motivation. But knowing how somebody achieved that goal can be equally helpful to you. Their experience may give you some great ideas about how you can plot a course to the career that you desire.

These successful experiences of others may give you some great ideas for ways you can differentiate yourself from other well-qualified pilots who also are applying at the company you’d most like to fly for. Find out how they built enough flight time to meet hiring requirements, or developed relationships with professional pilots that led to hiring recommendations.

Read these success stories:

• Mark Nolen, Boeing 737 first officer
• Byron Hixon, CEO and chief pilot
• Bob Feher, Boeing 777 first officer
• Adam Walsh, Pilatus PC-12 captain
• Paul Lucken, Boeing 737 first officer
• Steve McMorrow, Boeing 737 first officer
• Jason DuVernay, CRJ first officer
• Mike Powers, commercial pilot, Comair
• Kristin Koll, corporate pilot
• Danilo Dubon, NetJets
• Brendan Donovan, corporate pilot
• Saman Khosravi, first officer, Express Jet
• Eliot Tada, first officer, Comair
• Reggie Norsworthy, commercial pilot, Comair
• John Gemelli, first officer, American Eagle
• Ming Tran, first officer, Piedmont Airlines
• Ffloyd Forster, first officer, American Eagle

AOPA has compiled a list of articles to help get you started:

• A tale of two pilots
• Flying for hire: Consider Part 135 operations
• Mission Pilot: Flying for a higher authority
• Flying the Mesa way: Ab initio works for this partnership