Grado Spreads His Wings

Looking down at the earth from 5,000 feet, senior Antonino Grado is content as he soars through the sky.

“It feels amazing,” he said. “I always just think to myself it’s better up here rather than down there.”

Grado began flying lessons at the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport three years ago and recently earned his pilot’s license.

“I’ve always wanted to be a pilot,” Grado said. “There’s nothing greater than being given the responsibility you’re given as a pilot. I also just had a dream to be able to travel the world and expand my horizons.”

“He’s acquired skills that’s he never had before,” flight instructor Thomas Osinkosky said, “[including] how to fly an airplane [and] land an airplane safely.”

40+ hours of training go into a private pilot’s license. “My training was intense,” Grado said. “My classroom [is] no longer in a room in a school. My classroom is now in the cockpit of an airplane in the sky.”

A defining moment of any prospective pilot’s journey is the first solo flight. “It felt more free without a flight instructor in the plane,” Grado said. “I could fly the way I wanted to fly.”

He added that “there’s a tradition where the instructor at the end of the first solo would cut the back of your shirt off, saying that ‘I’m not holding onto you anymore.’ They would kick your butt too, and say go fly by yourself…because you’ve done it, and you’re an actual pilot now.”

“[I was] excited,” Grado said. “And nervous. I was nervous…It was a pretty big deal for my instructor and me. [It] means that he no longer needs to be on my back while flying…giving me that full pilot title.” The back of Antonino’s cut shirt, decorated with the details of his first flight, still hangs on the wall of the flight school.

According to Osinkosky, good pilots “have to have common sense…and the ability to continue learning.”

“[Grado] wouldn’t be where he’s at unless he was demonstrating those things to us in the aviation realm,” Osinkosky said. “He has.”

Shortly after gaining “actual pilot” status, Grado became one of the youngest students at the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport to have an in-flight emergency while flying solo.

“While I was taking off, my engine completely failed,” he said. “[I] saved my own life. I just felt like I was high enough to turn around, make a 180 degree left turn, [and] turn back on the runway, and [I] landed. I got really lucky that day.”

Grado attributes his lack of fear to his “trust of the airplane.” “I’m afraid of heights, [but] in the plane it’s different because I’m flying the airplane so I know I have control of it,” he said.

Grado intends to pursuing flying as a career. “My goal is to become an airline pilot,” he said. “I already have a place to go next year. Once I graduate high school I’ll be going to…Richmond International Airport, flying for ATP flight school [America’s largest flight training company], and then probably become a flight instructor when I’m 18, and come back here and teach.”

According to Grado, the only way to truly understand flying is to pilot the plane for yourself.

“No one can prepare you for the heights you can soar [to] until you spread your wings,” he said.

This article originally appeared on pg. 6 of the Dec. 18 issue.