By Julie FrenchThe Daily Northwestern
McCormick juniors Benjamin Heintz and Brian Zargham are both pilots, and they’re betting there are a lot more high-fliers hiding out around campus.
The Northwestern Aviation Club is Heintz and Zargham’s solution to unite NU pilots of all levels to share costs, stay in practice and just have fun.
Heintz and Zargham started publicizing the club last week. They said they received 16 e-mails from students licensed to fly or eager to learn in the first two days.
“Once people start, they kind of get hooked and want to keep going,” Heintz said.
Medill freshman Taky Ono said his mother was worried at first when he told her he was taking flying lessons. But he decided it was an acceptable risk, saying that planes don’t cause accidents, pilots do.
Heintz said people think flying is more dangerous than it really is.
“It’s not like you have to be extremely talented,” he said. “If you can drive a car safely, you can probably fly an airplane … anyone at Northwestern could definitely do it.”
After safety, the biggest concern is the cost of flying. Ono estimates he already has spent $10,000 to earn his private pilot license. He said his parents won’t cover the costs, so he works at least 30 hours a week to pay for lessons.
He either spends three hours by bus commuting to the Chicago Executive Airport or pays a $50 cab fare to get there. To earn his license, he must fly at least 40 hours with an instructor. He pays $124 per hour to rent his plane and $55 for his instructor, for a total of $179 per hour.
“It’s a ridiculous sum of money,” Ono said. “I hope this club attracts more like-minded pilots so I can share the expenses with them.”
Heintz began flying after he received lessons as a high school graduation gift three years ago. But he said he didn’t fly at all during his freshman year at NU in part because he didn’t have a convenient way to get to an airport.
Now he is working on earning his flight instructor certificate and is looking for ways to help other aspiring pilots. Having certified instructors in the club and sharing rides to the airport would lessen time and cost commitments considerably.
Heintz and Zargham also have established a relationship with Skip Goss, the president of Skill Aviation at the Waukegan Regional Airport. Goss said he could offer group discounts to the club.
Despite the costs, pilots see several advantages to learning how to fly and building a community.
“For me, it’s kind of the motivation behind studying engineering,” Heintz said. Being a licensed pilot is a skill he can put on his resume, and because there are relatively few pilots, they form a close network. He even found a summer internship through his flight instructor.
Morteza Rahimi, NU’s vice president for information technology, has been flying for more than 30 years. He compared the flying community to a fraternity or sorority.
Even as a hobby, Rahimi said flying can provide benefits beyond fun.
“It’s absolutely attention consuming,” said Rahimi. “Your focus is on the flying … any other issues like grades or jobs become secondary because flying is one of those things that you can’t afford to make a mistake.”
Reach Julie French at [email protected].
