By age 16 I had several hours towards my private license.
My junior year in High School I started looking universities with aviation degrees, or engineering. I had settled on Rose Hulman and one other (been 40 years so don’t remember the place, but it was one of the top aviation colleges in the US at the time.) I actually was accepted at “the other place”.
It all came crashing down in the last conversation I had with my enrollment counselor and he asked a question that hadn’t been asked of me in the prior many conversations I had with him.
“How is your eyesight?”
You see, I’m legally blind in my right eye and in the US, pilots are required to have 20/20 corrected eyesight. In order for my right eye to be 20/20 I would basically have to have a telescope hanging off my face.
I never did get my private pilots license, which I can get even with my eyesight, but I would never pass medical for a commercial ticket.
Yes, I did look at training in other countries and yes there are a few that only require perfect color vision, which I do have. The problem was my parents absolutely forbade me to travel to another country.
I wanted to be a pilot.
By age 16 I had several hours towards my private license.
My junior year in High School I started looking universities with aviation degrees, or engineering. I had settled on Rose Hulman and one other (been 40 years so don’t remember the place, but it was one of the top aviation colleges in the US at the time.) I actually was accepted at “the other place”.
It all came crashing down in the last conversation I had with my enrollment counselor and he asked a question that hadn’t been asked of me in the prior many conversations I had with him.
“How is your eyesight?”
You see, I’m legally blind in my right eye and in the US, pilots are required to have 20/20 corrected eyesight. In order for my right eye to be 20/20 I would basically have to have a telescope hanging off my face.
I never did get my private pilots license, which I can get even with my eyesight, but I would never pass medical for a commercial ticket.
Yes, I did look at training in other countries and yes there are a few that only require perfect color vision, which I do have. The problem was my parents absolutely forbade me to travel to another country.
So that was that.