After a month of sitting at home, baking in the hot July sun last summer, sophomore Campbell Alldredge finally had enough — she was in desperate need of a hobby.
Her mom had an easy fix suggestion: try flying planes.
Campbell has been flying ever since and is in the process of earning her pilot license to fly solo, thanks to her mom’s advice.
“It’s really cool, especially being downtown because you get to fly over all the cool landmarks that we all have been to growing up,” Campbell said. “And there’s a little window on every plane and you can open it, which I think is fun.”
Her mom, Kelli Alldredge, started flying on private planes for work about six years prior and knew multiple pilots well. One of them, Austin Hunt, mentioned he was training a female instructor, Megan Meyer. Kelli saw a flying program called Advanced Training Device Flight School, a type of flying simulator, and thought Campbell might be interested in the new and stimulating hobby.
When Kelli first brought it up to her, Campbell wasn’t crazy about the idea due to her long-term fear of flying. Her brothers had always teased her, saying that turbulence causes plane crashes and Campbell began to believe that. The thought of being in control of a flying tin can worried her, but as her summer dragged on, the thought of learning how to fly to get over her fears and to be able to take friends and family up in the future became more appealing.
Campbell took her first flying lesson on Aug. 4 with Megan Meyer. Megan started flying in 2020 and became an instructor with the ATD program so far, Campbell has flown four times total with additional on-ground training lessons about once every month.
“Both [Campbell and Kelli] were very excited about everything,” Megan said. “Probably more excited than a lot of people who you take up on an introductory flight.”
For the first lesson, Megan took Campbell up in the air for about an hour-long flight and showed her all of the controls on the plane — a Piper Warrior model. Looking out the window, she could see some of her favorite spots in Kansas City such as World of Fun and the Plaza. They looked like ant cities, and they were so small from how high up she was.
“[Flying] is really cool, and it’s a lot less scary than I thought it would be because you’re in such a small plane, but you get used to it,” Campbell said.
In 2015, she was on a private flight with her mom when the plane hit turbulence. She talked to the pilot afterward and he told her that turbulence is normal and nothing to be afraid of, which helped her get over her fear of a crash.
Every lesson is different for Campbell. Sometimes she has a full two-hour long flight and sometimes it’s textbook training with the occasional combination of both. She starts lessons by checking all the plane requirements — checking the gas, wings, and weather, and making sure the propellers, engine, and radio contact work correctly.
She then goes up in the air, spending time working on real tricks such as turns, descends, and climbs. The weekends are when Campbell does her “homework” — paper sheets and bookwork that go towards her eventually attaining her license. Paperwork consists of learning about flying in different weather conditions, plane names and how they work, and different tower names.
“Campbell dedicates her weekends to her flight training, and each time you go it’s a couple-hour commitment,” Kelli said. “It’s pretty tedious but she does dedicate her weekends to it.”
Now, Campbell flies out of the downtown Kansas City airport, staying in the city for the duration of the flight with the ability to pinpoint exactly where she is in the sky.
Although Campbell hasn’t yet decided if she wants to fly as an occupation, she’s planning on continuing on to get her Private Pilots license once she earns all 40 required hours.
“I haven’t decided if I want to be a pilot as a career path, so I just wanted to get it to have it and it’s just something that I could use for fun,” Campbell said.
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