Personal Introduction

1) Background - how/when did your interest in aviation begin?

It began at the end of my freshman year here at Eastern. I had heard about the program from a couple of friends I had in athletics at Eastern. I took my first flight and fell in love with flying.

2) Current status - what major and when do you graduate?

I am a flight tech major, and I plan on graduating December of next year.

3) Future plans - you must address this specifically. Points will be deducted for answers such as "I will fly anything for anyone".  A more appropriate answer would be something like "I will flight instructor and then would like to fly for Express Jet. Upon upgrading to captain at Express Jet, I would eventually like to retire from Southwest Airlines.". I realize that many of you may not have this narrowed down at this point. That's okay. Just write something specifically. Research shows that having a specific goal provides more motivation and success than non-specific goals, even if the specific goal stated does not end up coming to fruition. You will look at this goal again at the end of the semester and comment about if your original goal has changed and if so, for what reasons.

I plan on becoming a flight instructor here at Eastern to build a lot more hours. After flight instructing for a few years I will then move to a regional air carrier, I haven’t done much research on the smaller regional airlines. The name that keeps coming up for regional air carriers is Express Jet, which is where I would most likely go for. Once I reach captain and I feel more confident to move forward I plan on moving to Delta Airlines to fly 747’s provided that Delta is still using them.

4) As stated, this course is comprised of two parts - career development (which will include a series of guest speakers) and current topic discussions. Please state if there are some specific areas that you would like to be represented by guest speakers. Please address this even if that particular type of guest speaker is already listed in the syllabus. If there is a lot if interest in one or more particular areas, I may try to secure multiple speakers in that area. I would also like you to list at least two areas of current aviation topics that may be of interest to you. Although I have laid out several topics in the syllabus, I am flexible about changing them in order to meet your interests.

A specific area I would like to be addressed by the speakers would have to be the resume and initial hiring aspect. If we could see a relatively new recruit to an airline I would much like to hear about what they had to go through to get hired at said airline.

As for potential topics one would be how a pilot can maintain a healthy lifestyle, while being gone for long periods of time with limited rest. Another topic that I would be interested in is the lack of training found in overseas pilots and how it correlates with an increase of accidents.