Katie, a future aviator?

Katie has loved airplanes since she was very little and took her first plane ride with Tom from New Orleans to Columbia. Since then she gets very excited when she sees planes and helicopters. She prefers jets though. She has been telling me that she wants to fly jets when she is older. Yesterday on the way home from school, Jessica and I were talking about getting her another power ride on because her Barbie Jeep is getting too small for her. Katie said she wanted a plane that really would fly instead. For obvious reasons, you can't buy those. This morning she started asking me how much jet pilots make because she wants to do that. I told her they make good money and if it is her passion, she should go for it. So I started looking at how old you have to be to take flying lessons. I saw a case where a 7-year-old girl was flying and tried to break a record, and her father coerced the flight instructor to take off in bad weather to allow her to break that record and ended up crashing and all died. I don't want her piloting a plane at 7. She is a daredevil in her Barbie Jeep. I can't imagine what she would do in the air. In my opinion, kids that young don't have the problem solving skills necessary to pilot a plane and can make stupid mistakes that a mature person wouldn't make. But I do want to nourish her interest in aviation. Tom has several family members who were in the Air Force/Air National Guard and Tom's brother, Jesse, actually has a pilot's license! So if Katie wants to follow in Uncle Jesse's footsteps and fly, I'm all for it.

So I started looking on the internet and found the Civil Air Patrol has several chapters in our area. That's great for us. She will get an ROTC type experience like Brittanie had without having to leave her Christian school. Unfortunately, you have to be 12 to join that. Well she will be 6 in October. So I started looking for something for her to do before 12 that will keep her interest and will allow her to make a smooth transfer to Civil Air Patrol later. I found The Young Eagles Program. From looking at the picture on the website, I'm pretty sure that's the program that Tom's coworker, Rod, is highly involved in and has told us about. They start them at 8. That's only 2 years away. So we will just take her to air shows and do other things to encourage her interest in it in the meantime. There is an airshow in Augusta next month and I would LOVE for Tom to take her to the Sertoma Cajun Air Festival in Lafayette, LA. I told him he should grab Rod and Katie and head down there and let Rod experience the Cajun culture and especially Cajun food! Tom is more interested in the big one up in Wisconsin.

She is only 6 so she could change her mind and that would be fine. But I don't want her to miss an opportunity to find something she is passionate about that could mean something real in the future.