Flying Lessons for Kids

Remember being a kid and getting to go to the front of the plane?

Atop the lofty perch of old age, I remember this well. And just as Friday morning garbage pickups made me want to be a garbageman, field trips to the cockpit always made me want to be a pilot.

The headsets, the controls, looking down from 30,000 feet… being a pilot is undeniably cool. As my parents can attest to, I, like many other kids, had an infatuation with flying, marked several years of F-14 wall posters, model planes, and re-watchings of “Top Gun.”

Sadly, I’m not sure what happened to my model planes, Maverick is a Scientologist and kids are no longer allowed in the cockpit, but there’s still hope for our next generation of pilots. Wings Aloft, a Seattle flight school based out of Boeing Field, has an affordable program geared at getting kids up in the air, so they can learn how to fly.

Discovery Flights for Kids

• 5-20 kids
• Integrated with the Museum of Flight
• 3 hrs long
• Costs $132

Wings Aloft also offers a host of classes for adults. They have a flight club (which does fun stuff like “Fly-ins” to Roche Harbor, Rosario, the Rogue River, etc), commercial pilot training programs, instrument training, and a smattering of other offerings, too.

The Wings Aloft Team

Flight Facts

• Statute Mile = 5,280 feet; Nautical Mile = 1 min of longitude.
• The Blue Angels have performed for over 427 million people.
• It costs $12,000 - 13,000/hour to fly in a Leer Jet.
• It costs $900 per hour to fly a Cesna 414.