Seniors Leverette and Kirkland soar to new heights
Leverette expects to receive his PPL around April of this year.
“I am close to getting my PPL,” Leverette said. “I have completed my first solo and am now starting to cover the material needed to obtain a private license. I’ve been training for about two years, and I still have to complete some of my solo cross-country flights and diversion blocks.”
Ever since he was around 6 years old, Leverette has been interested in Aviation. Leverette said throughout his life, he’s received support from his family and friends.
“I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be a pilot,” Leverette said. “I also have had many family friends who work in the aviation industry share their experiences with me, which has helped to inspire me to strive to achieve my ultimate goal of becoming a professional pilot.”
After seeing his continued interest, Leverette’s mom Amy Michaud managed to get him a spot at an Auburn University Aviation camp in June of 2022. The camp is open annually for a duration of two weeks with limited spots. Since then, Leverette and Michaud learned about a local program called Centennial Aviation Academy.
“You can start in your eighth-grade year, but it’s typically ninth grade,” Michaud said. “The goal is that by the time you graduate high school, you have completed that program. So we knew it was a three to four-year program and got into it to do that and set the long trajectory of him completing it by the time he finishes high school.”
The process of obtaining a PPL is lengthy with requirements that include a minimum age of 17, 40 hours of total flight time, completed ground school and a completed written test.
“The process of getting my aviation license has been very smooth,” Leverette said. “My flight school makes it easy to schedule flights and ground lessons online. All of the instructors are friendly and great communicators. Furthermore, the school also updates us on any information regarding aircraft and instructor pricing, along with other important details we may need to know.”
Leverette reflected on the challenge of balancing schoolwork with his journey to gain a PPL.
“To balance this with school, I have had to schedule my flights around school hours and on the weekends,” Leverette said. “I’ve also had to schedule some flights early in the morning before school because of limited availability in the afternoon. Studying is also a big part of attending flight school. This has required me to strengthen my time management skills to ensure I allocate enough time to both my high school responsibilities and flight school studies.”
According to Leverette, flight school is expensive and has required a large financial commitment from his parents.
“As a parent, it’s a big financial commitment,” Michaud said. “It’s almost like pre-paying for college, because when he completes his private license and does it outside of college, it isn’t something he has to do in college. So we knew going in that we were going to accomplish this goal in order to shorten his college time.”
Michaud said in the long run, the money spent toward flight school will benefit Leverette with more experience within the highly competitive field.
“We knew we wanted him going into college having his private license so that he could continue moving forward instead of starting the process in college,” Michaud said. “It will give him a leg up to be more competitive than other students as well since aviation spots in college are competitive and we wanted him to have an advantage.”
One of the biggest moments in Leverette’s aviation career has been his first solo flight.
“Watching him do his first solo was something that we had planned for a couple of years and knew what to expect,” Michaud said. “He couldn’t do it until he turned 16, and it took planning. But being there to watch that, the nerves of him going up to do that as a mom, and how excited he was to accomplish that goal and to fly a plane by yourself at sixteen, it was a really big accomplishment and took responsibility as well. I think that was one of the top experiences of watching him.”
A lot of research and knowledge is required for Leverette to be able to pursue this field as he gets older so that he knows what he’s committing himself to.
“We’re trying to research different career paths, connecting with friends and friends of friends, looking at different Facebook groups and just trying to support him,” Michaud said. “It’s complicated, it’s not your typical senior that’s planning to go through college and do general studies or a biology degree, there’s so many ways to get to the end of being a pilot, but then so many regulations on that. It’s our job as parents to guide him in the direction he needs to go and to support him financially.”
The research they’ve continued to do has made Leverette more interested in aviation.
“This is definitely what I want to pursue in the future,” Leverette said. “Ideally, I would like to become a commercial pilot for Delta Air Lines. I’ve researched numerous colleges that offer aviation programs. I have applied to seven major universities that have renowned aviation programs, six of which I have been accepted to. I plan to attend one of these universities immediately after graduation in the fall of 2025.”
Senior Eva Gustafson met Leverette in ninth grade, and they’ve been friends ever since. She believes that he will achieve his goals, and hopes to see him on a flight in the future.
“Me and my friends always joke that in 20 years we will get on a random Delta flight and look in the cockpit and see Weston is the pilot,” Gustafson said. “With the rate he’s been accomplishing his goals, I know that will happen one day.”
Gustafson said that he’s put a lot of time and work into obtaining his PPL and that other high schoolers look up to him.
“It’s so admirable how committed Weston is to becoming a pilot,” Gustafson said. “I feel like so few people his age know what they want to do with their life, and he has such big ambitions that he is already on the path to conquer.”
As Leverette continues to advance in aviation, Michuad said she will continue to support him.
“He’s very well rounded, and he has a hunger for travel and experiencing other cultures in the world,” Michaud said. “It’s such a joy to take him to other countries and watch him learn and to know that that is part of what he wants to do as a profession. As a parent, that makes me really proud of him.”
Leverette said he’s excited for what’s to come, and that flying a plane gives you a different perspective on the world as a whole.
“I enjoy the feeling of freedom that comes with flying, and the certainty of knowing what I want to do for a career,” Leverette said. “Seeing the world from above can give someone a different perspective on life, and it can help grow one’s appreciation for Earth’s beauty.”
While working to attain his PPL, Kirkland combines his financial needs and his passion for flying planes by working as a line technician at the Dekalb-Peachtree Airport. Although the job itself does not involve any maintenance off the ground, Kirkland regularly flies planes.
“I primarily fuel planes, but also do basic maintenance: I can de-ice them, I can tow them, I can put tarps over them, but I primarily drive a truck around and fuel up planes as a mobile fueler at Dekalb-Peachtree Airport,” Kirkland said. “I just had an obsession that I had never acted on until I turned 17 and started doing flight training and earning my private pilot’s license. I’m very close to the end now.”
Kirkland said the first time he remembers being interested in flying planes was early in his childhood at the annual Peachtree Air Show.
“I went to a Peachtree Air Show, the one they do every year on June 6th, the anniversary of D-Day,” Kirkland said. “There was a little trainer aircraft there, and my parents paid for me to be able to ride in the back seat of it. That’s where it started, they let little nine-year-old me take the controls for a little bit, and I’ve been obsessed ever since.”
From there, Kirkland attended various air shows and practiced flying planes in a pilot simulator. Once he started the process toward earning his private pilot license at 17, Kirkland entered the first milestone of his flight program.
“[The program has] milestones, which they call stages,” Kirkland said. “The first stage, you’re going through your basic maneuvers. The second one is advanced maneuvers. The third one, you’re learning to take off and land. The fourth one, you’re learning the more advanced parts of taking off and landing, such as grass fields and short fields. The fifth one, you’re doing your solo flight to a closer airport, so I went to Lawrenceville. Then the sixth one, you’re doing a solo flight over a state line.”
When he first flew a plane with the aid of an instructor, Kirkland said he immediately enjoyed the feeling of control he had over the aircraft.
“I was a little terrified, but I was just really happy because they let me do everything, which was not what I expected,” Kirkland said. “[The instructor] kind of just gave me the controls and monitored what I did, taking over every time I would mess up. The first time was scary, but very enjoyable. To be talking and thinking about flying for so long and then to finally do it for real, it was just as good as I had imagined.”
As he gained more experience, Kirkland said he realized he preferred the independence of flying without an instructor.
“The first time I flew by myself, it was very peaceful,” Kirkland said. “It felt very good to just be in complete control of the plane with no one looking over my shoulder. It was a very wonderful experience and for some reason, I’m just not afraid of flying a plane by myself.”
As of now, Kirkland is in the sixth stage of the program, having completed two flights alone over a state line. In one of his flights over a state line with an instructor, however, Kirkland had to perform an emergency landing due to the failure of the aircraft’s Global Positioning System (GPS).
“I was on my check-out cross country flight to Chattanooga with my instructor, and right above Dalton, our GPS fails, which includes our entire middle screen, our primary mode of communication and a lot of controls,” Kirkland said. “It goes completely black. Then, we look to the right of that screen, which shows the engine performance screen, and it says that our right alternator is underperforming, which means there’s a chance that in the next 30 minutes, our battery dies, and then 30 minutes after that, our plane dies and the engine would stop. Fortunately, at that point, we decided to turn back and switch to our secondary communications.”
Despite the fear Kirkland said he felt at that moment, his ability to land safely at the Dekalb-Peachtree Airport increased his confidence in his flying.
“At the start of the runway, there were firetrucks and ambulances waiting for us,” Kirkland said. “I stopped feeling scared and just focused on staying alive. It actually made me pretty confident. I felt like whatever else could happen beyond that would be below that.”
While Kirkland is not yet able to earn income through flying, he said he is taking every opportunity to build a future career of being a pilot.
“This will probably be my career,” Kirkland said. “If you want to do something that has a clear job field, get as close as you can to it. Although I cannot necessarily fly planes as a job yet, I can fuel them because I’ve made connections, so connections are everything.”
