One year ago, in April 2015, Randy Green earned his airline transport pilot (ATP) certificate. While an impressive accomplishment, this would not be noteworthy here except for one thing: Green was born without hands or feet. Over the course of two decades, he progressed from private pilot certificate to ATP and now flies professionally, all without the appendages the rest of us take for granted as being essential to controlling an airplane.
How does he do it? You only need to spend a few minutes with Green before you know the answer: He possesses an indomitable can-do spirit. As his parents used to say, he doesn’t know the meaning of the word “can’t.” “I’ve never let anything stop me,” he says. “It’s never been: Can I do this? It’s: I’m going to do this, and I just need to be creative to make it happen.”
Green, 43, began taking flying lessons in 1992 at the suggestion of his father, a pilot and aircraft owner. As Green encountered challenges, he and his dad figured out ways around them. Initially, Green assumed his biggest problem would be controlling the airplane, but this turned out to be a nonissue. “I could wrap my left arm around the controls and operate them without any assistance,” he says. He has since discovered that securing his left arm to the yoke with rubber bands during takeoff and landing gives him more power and control in those critical phases of flight. In cruise, when less strength on the yoke is required, he removes the bands.
While controlling the airplane was not the challenge he anticipated, other issues did crop up, such as difficulty applying carb heat in airplanes with stiff knobs. Green’s father created a contraption that snaps over the knob, enabling Green to grasp a hook and gain the leverage he needs. Green, who inherited his father’s mechanical aptitude, has created other devices as well. For his ATP, he trained in a Piper Seminole, which uses manual flaps activated by a Johnson bar on the floor. On discovering he couldn’t reach the bar, Green bought a few supplies at a nearby Walmart and crafted an extension mechanism that enabled him to operate the bar.
It’s all about problem-solving, and Green is a master problem solver. During his initial training, he set a goal to earn his private pilot certificate on his twenty-fourth birthday. On the morning of his checkride, however, the Cessna 172 in which he had trained experienced a mechanical problem. There was no other 172 on the field. Undaunted, Green started calling flight schools within driving distance. He found an available 172 at an airport 50 miles away, booked it for later that afternoon, and then drove himself and the examiner to the airport, completing the oral portion of the exam en route. After successfully finishing the checkride in the unfamiliar 172, he received his private pilot certificate, dated on his birthday, from a very impressed examiner.
It’s that kind of resolve that caught the attention of the nonprofit Able Flight, which chose Green as its 2015 ForeFlight/Able Flight Scholarship recipient, enabling him to earn an ATP. Able Flight subsequently chose Green as the recipient of a King Air 350 type rating scholarship, which he was scheduled to begin in early 2016.
“With Randy Green, we saw someone who had already accomplished so much before we provided a scholarship,” says Charles Stites, executive director of Able Flight. “He had proven himself time after time so the scholarships were an easy call for us.”
Despite all this, Green humbly considers his accomplishments to be nothing extraordinary. “The way I look at it, we are all disabled in some way,” he explains. If you struggle in math or aren’t athletic or don’t speak the language of a country you are visiting, that can be a disability. “It all comes down to how the group or person you are talking to perceives you.”
It’s a sure bet that anyone who meets Randy Green will perceive him as nothing short of amazing. <
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