Learning to Fly

The two have each been flying for under a year — DeVito reached 100 flight hours on March 7, whilst Davis is currently at hour 62. 

Their Private Pilot Certificates, the piloting equivalent of a driver’s license, allow them to fly whenever they want. The training process for certification involves flight practice and ground school training to cover practical skills and general aviation knowledge.

The flying aspect came naturally to both pilots — in fact, the national average for flight training is 90 hours, but Davis and DeVito each completed it in half the time. 

“Some people learn quicker than others. This isn’t like driving a car — it’s completely different,” DeVito said. “It took me two months, but some people take one and a half years.”

“I caught on very quickly,” Davis said. “You have to have the motivation to do it.”

It wasn’t all smooth sailing, though. Pilots must pass an oral, written and checkride (flight) exam to get a license, which requires a lot of studying.

Davis spent his nights studying and mornings flying, sacrificing other plans to become a better pilot. He even mimicked flight procedures from his bed by “chair flying” which  “helps you memorize everything around the plane.”

Meanwhile, DeVito failed his first private pilot checkride, which he considers both his biggest obstacle and “an eye opener.”

“It made me stand back and look at the bigger picture and be like, ‘Don’t get ahead of yourself here… that’s how people get killed,’” DeVito said.

Staring down the runway with just 43 hours of training, DeVito’s confidence backfired as he failed to hold a crosswind correction angle amidst 10 knots of wind. After remedial training, DeVito passed on his second official attempt. 

“I didn’t get discouraged, which is the biggest thing. [Failing] really made me want to make sure that all my landings were as good as they could be,” he said. “I’m really happy I [initially failed] because it ended up making me a better pilot.”