A CFII from Nebraska notices a post from a 16-year-old student pilot on a social aviation message board. The young man owns the Cessna 172 in which he is training and writes about how he yearns to fly from his home in New Braunfels, Texas, to a Labor Day fly-in at Prickett-Grooms Field (6Y9) in the remote town of Sidnaw, located in the upper peninsula of Michigan.
The student pilot will not yet be 17 when the event takes place and therefore not eligible to take his checkride in time to fly as pilot in command. The only way he will be able to fly to the event is if a flight instructor accompanies him. He knows that is highly unlikely.
The 24-year-old CFII ponders the young man’s post, and, with a more or less knee-jerk reaction, he contacts the student and tells him he will accompany him.
This is the story of an unbelievable act of kindness. Flight instructor Jesse Angell made the 950-mile, 14-and-a-half-hour journey from his home in Lincoln, Nebraska, to New Braunfels, Texas, and back again—on his motorcycle. His sole purpose was to accompany student pilot David White, whom he had never met, on what would become a trip of a lifetime.
Angell comes from a family of pilots. His father and grandfather ran a crop-dusting service in Nebraska throughout much of his childhood. “Growing up in that environment is what initially got me interested in flying,” said Angell. “I have found the more time I spend in aviation, the more great people I meet.”
Angell’s love of flying and spending time with others who share his passion led him to a role in the management council of the social aviation website Pilots of America (POA). During the summer of 2011, he was taking part in a conversation on one of the website’s discussion boards regarding a Labor Day fly-in at the small grass strip airport in Sidnaw. Airport owners Brad and Denise Frederick host the popular event, which has become an annual tradition at 6Y9. (See “The Rebirth of 6Y9,” below)
It was during that conversation that Angell noticed White’s post regarding his dream of flying to Michigan.
“I don’t know why I did it,” Angell said, “but without putting much of any thought toward it, I told him I’d come down to Texas and fly with him. To be honest, I didn’t actually expect his parents would allow their 16-year-old son to fly across the country with a 24-year-old guy from Nebraska they had never met, nor did I stop to consider where David lived and how long a trip it would actually be for me. I just remembered being his age and how cool a trip like that would have been.”
Just as Angell predicted, White’s parents had serious reservations. White convinced his mother to call Angell and, during the short conversation, Angell told her of his plans, and explained what a great learning experience it would be for David. He could sense that she was very much on the fence about it.
Wanting desperately to win his parent’s consent for the trip, White met with a longtime friend of Angell’s from POA, Spike Cutler, a Dallas attorney. Cutler agreed to talk with his parents and vouch for Angell’s character.
After more cajoling from White, his mother agreed to call Cutler and hear him out. “She wanted reassurance that this guy wasn’t going to steal her son away and sell him on the black market or something,” Cutler said. “I explained to her that I have known Jesse since he was a teenager and enlightened her as to how I came to know him through POA.” He added, “He is one of a kind. As nice as he sounds, in reality when you meet him, he is even nicer.” Cutler also shared his plans to send his own son to Nebraska to stay with Angell to take flight lessons. She relented and gave her permission. This did not come as much of a surprise to Angell, who described his friend as a “very likeable, smooth-talking Texas lawyer.”
Angell left his home in Lincoln around 11 a.m. on August 30, 2011. He rode his motorcycle 950 miles—in blazing heat topping out at 106 degrees—to the Whites’ home in New Braunfels, stopping only for fuel. Exhausted, he arrived at 3:30 the following morning.
David answered the door. It was the first time the two met face to face, and it was somewhat anticlimatic. “David and I talked for two minutes, and then he led me to their spare bedroom where I fell asleep in about 30 seconds,” Angell said.
The pair got up the next morning around 10 a.m. and Jesse introduced himself to David’s mother. They spoke briefly before he and David bid their farewells and headed for the New Braunfels Municipal Airport. After the preflight, they climbed into the 172 and launched for Sidnaw.
The first stop was in Llano, Texas, where they enjoyed barbeque at a nearby restaurant. After two fuel stops in Texas and Oklahoma, they made their way to Lincoln. “FAA regulations prohibit me from giving more than eight hours of instruction in a 24-hour period,” Angell said. “So we had to break the trip up.” They spent the next two nights at Angell’s home and worked on some additional flight training.
The next morning Angell had White fly to nearby Seward, Nebraska, to an airport with a grass strip. “David had never landed on grass before, so I taught him what that was all about,” said Angell. “That way, his first grass landing wouldn’t be at 6Y9—in front of a whole bunch of spectators.”
White also lacked the night cross-country requirements for his private certificate, so Angell decided to have him knock those out as well. That night they took a cross-country flight in a Beechcraft Debonair from Lincoln to Lee’s Summit, Missouri, where they had a late dinner with a fellow POA member.
When they reached Lincoln, White did several touch and goes and they also worked on emergency procedures. The last landing he made was at approximately 2:30 a.m. Not only had he completed his night requirements for his private certificate, he also earned complex and high-performance endorsements—not bad for a night’s work.
They departed Lincoln later that morning. They planned a fuel stop in Minnesota but found the first airport they tried was out of fuel, so they had to divert to another. That diversion led to another learning experience for White. “Although the second airport was only 25 miles away, we picked up a pop-up IFR clearance from Rochester Approach,” Angell said. “David experienced actual instrument conditions for the first time.”
Later that day the pair reached their ultimate destination and landed in Sidnaw. They spent a couple of memorable days with the Fredericks, and met many new friends.
On Sunday, the two fast friends who had been strangers just a few days earlier departed Sidnaw with good memories in tow. They spent another night in Lincoln before heading back to Texas. They landed in New Braunfels at 9 p.m. on Monday. At around 11 p.m. Angell packed up his motorcycle, said goodbye to his friend, and drove off into the night—homeward bound.
The pair had flown 2,720 nm, providing White with more than 30 hours of dual instruction. This included the endorsements, the night hours he required for his certification, and almost four hours of actual instrument time. Angell rode his motorcycle more than 1,900 miles round trip. His only motive was to share his love of flying with a young student pilot.
On September 14, 2011—his seventeenth birthday—David White became a private pilot.
The story didn’t end there. Later that fall, Angell invited White to fly his Cessna to Lincoln, to help him earn his instrument rating.
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