Special Delivery – Plane & Pilot Magazine | Aviation

Though being a pilot had been a dream since childhood, my adult 42-year career was as a teacher of French, primarily in junior and senior high schools both in the U.S. and internationally. Aviation was a very enjoyable pastime from age 17 to 65 or so, and teaching allowed me a lot of time, especially during summer and winter school breaks, for aviation.

Spare time was often spent reading aviation books and magazines or browsing through the aviation-related journal Trade-A-Plane, where I one day came across a very intriguing, very short ad. It read something like, “Pilots wanted. Must have commercial license, 1,000 hours minimum, taildragger and no-radio cross-country time,” and there was a phone number.

That was it. There was nothing about where the job was, what kind of aircraft were involved, and not a word about the pay. It almost made me wonder if it might involve something illegal, but curiosity got the best of me, so I called the number shown.

Hank Koenig answered and said he worked for the Ferry Service Company in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. I knew that was where Piper had its factory, where all of its planes were manufactured at the time. Some years later, a flood of the nearby Susquehanna River resulted in considerable damage to the factory, and it…