The back seat of a Super Cub

I was eight years old the first time my father let me fly.

He owned a small two-seater airplane on floats, and he used it to reach communities in northern Canada where the roads were difficult enough that, for most of the year, flying in was the better way. He’d load up and fly out — landing on a lake in the summer, a meadow in the winter — to help and serve the people however they needed.

I rode in the back on those flights. And one day, somewhere out over the Canadian wilderness, he took his hands off the controls and said…

That was it for me. After that, I found every excuse to ride along. Some kids beg for the front seat of a car. I begged for the back seat of a Super Cub.

I earned my license at eighteen. My first commercial job was flying a float plane through the western coastal mountains of Canada for an outdoor tourism lodge.

Northern winters don’t leave much room for seaplanes. So when the ice came in, I climbed out of the cockpit and into a logging truck, hauling timber across the ice roads until spring broke it up and I could fly again.

Four years flying in Canada. Three more in the U.S.

Aviation has been my passion since I was eight years old, with over five thousand hours of commercial flying. That kid in the back seat never really left.

I’ve thought a lot about why that back seat mattered so much. I love flying. I always have.

But I don’t think it was ever only the flying. My father wasn’t out there for fun. He was out there because somebody needed help, and the airplane was how he got to them. The flight was never the point — though it was the best part of it. The people at the other end were.

That’s the part I took with me.

In 2022, with a bigger vision for what a life in aviation could look like, we started Noble Jets — with the sole purpose of serving people well.

The airplanes are bigger now. The mission hasn’t changed.