Raglan schoolboy Kish Grant-Swallow reckons there was no time to get scared before doing his first solo flight recently – only five days after his 16th birthday – because he didn’t know it was happening till the last minute.
The trainee pilot had just completed a few circuits from Te Kowhai aerodrome, as was usual, when flight instructor Bill Henwood abruptly told him “I’ll jump out, off you go”.
“Oh ok,” was the tentative response. Kish reckons his heart started beating faster and he thought, momentarily, “what do I do first?”
But then all those hours of flight training kicked in. Kish did his pre take-off checks then was up, up and away … 12 minutes flying solo, the first milestone on his way to a PPL or private pilot licence.
The teen aviator felt “confident and comfortable” first-time flying on his own, he told the Chronicle, though knowing he had the added reassurance of radio contact with Bill on the ground if need be.
Proud parents Ben Grant and Nicky Swallow were there to see their son land, although hadn’t known either the long-anticipated solo flight was to take place that particular day.
No-one knows, they say; it’s up to the instructor to gauge if the time is right, although Kish’s birthday was what he and Bill were working towards, cranking up the frequency of flying hours from fortnightly to weekly sessions the two months beforehand.
“Kish put in lots of learning effort the last three or four sessions,” Bill says.
And fortuitously, everything fell into place on the day. “The stars, weather, traffic and so on aligned for a successful outcome which was all really pleasing.”
Out of a dozen teens who were initially introduced to the thrill of flying through Waikato Aviation’s ‘Young Eagles’ programme two years ago, Kish is the only student Bill has seen achieve the solo flight milestone.
“He first flew with us as a 14-year-old when the group visited Te Kowhai, and he is the only one of the 12 who continued,” says Bill.
The year 11 Raglan Area School student has many flying hours ahead of him if serious about getting his PPL. That would take a year of regular flying, but Kish is in no hurry and there are other milestones to aim for along the way, he reckons.
One is to touch down on the Raglan airstrip in the next year or so, he says, probably when he’s training in cross-country or mountain flying.
Another is to pass his full car driver’s licence: he got his learner’s a few days after flying solo.
