EDEN PRARIE, MN- June 2015- Vikings Saftey Harrison Smith decided that in order to get over his fear of flying, he needed to face it head on. He enrolled in InFlight Pilot Trainings ground school and trained to become a licensed pilot, spending 65 hours in the air and mastering the complexities of flying a small plane, eventually earning his license in a check ride, the final exam for pilotsacing it on his first try.
The 27 year old Smith decided that it was time to face his fears after flying a small puddle-jumper to a Vikings Artic Blast event. I was actually always scared of it, flying on the team plane, Smith said, It was something I thought I should learn more about, and in the process I actually started flying and enjoyed it. He decided that the best way was to sign up for a class at Inflights ground school, simply showing up on the companys list one day.
According to Trever Rossini, the owner of InFlight Pilot Training, the students must complete at least 40 hours of in-air training, hitting different benchmarks along the way, including a night flying session and a medical exam, before they are allowed to take their final test.
Air travel is commonplace, but few people realize just what goes into a pilots training. Before takeoff on commercial flights, its common to see children and adults peeking into the cockpit to look at the complicated instruments needed to keep a plane in the air. For Smith, learning how to understand all those gadgets was an interesting and important part of his flight training. You learn something every time you go up, he said, stalling the plane, learning how to taxi around and talk on the radios, stuff like that.
Learning how to fly with InFlight has helped Smith not only beat his fear, but also come to love flying. The famously frugal Tennessee native has adopted flying as his off-season hobby, and may eventually buy himself his own plane.
InFlights training program taught him how to understand what it took to fly on his own, step by step. Their programs are designed to help every individual student safely achieve their goals, whether that goal is learning how to fly or even learning new skills. Inflight Pilot Training can be found at their website http://www.inflightpilottraining.com/.
