Why We Fly

Age doesn't stand in his way

Although Sayre, 20, is in his third year at Auburn University, his academic hours make him a senior. His father, Kit, pushed him to take night classes at a local college while he was still in high school. "I got a lot of my core classes out of the way -- that was one of the best things I've ever done," said Sayre, an aerospace engineering major who flies for Auburn's War Eagle Flying Team. "It really helped with the workload."

When Sayre was about 3, his father owned a Piper Navajo. But he got hooked on aviation in the sixth grade, when he airlined with his dad to Washington, D.C., on a business trip. "By the end of the trip I had the entire Boeing fleet memorized."

Still intrigued by airplanes a few years later, Sayre expressed an interest in learning to fly. His father wanted to make sure that he was really interested before paying for lessons. "He gave me his pilot information handbook from like 1969 -- it was an antique -- and I read it."

In October 1999 Sayre took his first lesson at Mobile Downtown Airport, also known as Brookley Field, with flight instructor Bobby Mooring. Sayre had been flying Microsoft Flight Simulator on his personal computer. "On my very first lesson we had a long, straight-in visual [approach] for Runway 32," he recalled. "I asked him what the ILS frequency was, and I dialed it in and flew the ILS. That really amazed him."

He finished the private pilot curriculum and his dual cross-countries before he was 16 and could solo. "So I moved into my instrument training -- I knew I was going to go all the way through." The aspiring airline pilot also worked on commercial, tailwheel, and glider training requirements.

"On my sixteenth birthday -- August 13, 2000 -- I soloed in a Cessna 152 on a Sunday morning at Brookley." Soloing before he could legally drive a car was no contest, Sayre said -- the airport was open that Sunday, but the motor vehicle administration office was closed. About two months later, Sayre earned his private pilot certificate -- in a glider. His dad, a 10,000-hour pilot, was justifiably proud. "The first time I ever took my dad for a ride in the glider," Sayre recalled, "I was flying something he wasn't licensed to fly, which was a little weird."

Just a few days after turning 17 -- on August 18, 2001 -- Sayre took both the private pilot-airplane and instrument rating checkrides. His shirt was soaked after the first checkride, so he bought a T-shirt from the FBO to wear to the instrument checkride. One year later to the day, having already earned a multiengine rating, he passed both the single-engine and multiengine commercial checkrides. Shortly after passing his initial flight instructor checkride in October 2002, Sayre added the CFI-instrument and multiengine instructor ratings -- you guessed it, on the same day.

"Because my dad was willing to do this for me as an investment -- he calls me 'his retirement plan' -- at the end of 2002 I went to Scottsdale, Arizona, to SimCom and got a [Cessna] Citation 500 type rating." Sayre later obtained a Boeing 737 type rating, and he thinks he may have been the youngest pilot to do so. His father is a Hawker 800 XP business jet captain for Netjets, where he trains newly hired pilots. "I'm very fortunate that I've been able to do this because of my dad," Sayre added, noting that many of his friends are working two part-time jobs to get through school.

Sayre gave his first flight instruction to an instrument student in February 2003, but he had to put instruction on hold last fall because of his course load. He gave 320 hours of instruction over the 18-month period.

When a friend once asked him what's so great about flying, Sayre replied, "Nothing beats a sunset from 10,000 feet -- you're that much closer to heaven." He is on track to graduate in May 2006 and is applying to airlines for internships this summer -- this time, with no plans to double up.