Chapter 3

A ModelStudent

Autumn1999:

Scottsdale, Arizona, UnitedStates

Fact: What is referred to as a $100 hamburgercosts
a lot more than $100.

Three months had passed since Miguel took his last lesson. I’d almost forgotten about him and assumed he would never be back. I’d long since written him off as just another rich guy who gave up on the idea of flying when he realized the effort and the expense involved. When he reappeared, he was on the verge of becoming a distant memory, and I was genuinely surprised to see him. We discussed his unusual schedule and how he could effectively train. The plan we came up with was that from then on, we would fly every day he was in town, which was usually 5 or 6 days per month. We also discussed the possibility of him buying his own plane. I found it hard to imagine the guy who saved $50 on an intro flight spending almost $200,000 to buy an airplane barely a yearlater.

Over the course of the following months, Miguel took several lessons with me each month. Preferring the hands-on, stick and rudder part of flying, my other students who were mostly male, middle aged, and highly successful didn’t want to apply themselves to the book learning aspects of flight training. They were in love with the idea of flying, but had little patience with the actual nuts-and-bolts of learning how to fly. Many of them were frustrating to teach because they would get so far behind in their studies that they would reach a point where they couldn’t progress in flight training until they caught up with the book work. Once again, Miguel was the exception; he kept me on my toes and made it necessary for me to hit the books on occasion. Unusually studious, he took notes; asked lots of good questions; and was conscientious in the way he fulfilled his duties as a student. Bottom line, he was a model student even though his scheduling was unconventional. The best approach to training is to fly two to three times per week. Because Miguel was splitting his time between Arizona and Chile, he would disappear for a month or two and, when he returned, he would fly almost every day for two or three weeks. Even though, at that point, he was looking into buying his own plane, I was still skeptical that he would complete the requirements for a private pilot’s license. This was based on him taking the intro flight plus a couple lessons, and then disappearing for several months. However, he proved me wrong. He continued the pattern faithfully for nine months and on October 26, 2000, took his last instructional flight w