Essays

Are you planning on buying your own airplane soon? If not … why not? No matter what your particular excuse, you may just begin to think about aircraft ownership a little differently after reading this motivating piece by Glenn Norman. It’s not as hard as you think, he explains. And owning your own airplane will transform your flying experiences forever!

It doesn’t take much to spark a child’s imagination. François A. “Navman” Dumas has spent 50 years gazing at airplanes, reading about airplanes, building model airplanes, and learning to fly real ones. It all started rather simply, with a toy airplane milled out of steel.

With an airline pilot father and a stewardess mother, aviation is in Why Fly co-founder Hal Bryan’s blood. He grew up playing with toy airplanes and lived on an airstrip. While he can wax philosophical with the best of us, in the end, Hal flies for a reason that defies explanation at all.

Glenn Norman says he learned to fly because of the letter “B.” He also says he’s not superstitious. And yet, when you consider the number of places and people whose names begin with “B” that have played a pivotal role in his aviation life, you have to admit that something weird is going on.