From the Flight Deck

Sometimes, people who fly aircraft already have the flying bug in their genes. It’s not at all unusual for a pilot to have grown up with a parent who flies, or another family member, and that they’d been going up regularly in a Piper or Cherokee since age 5.

Then there are pilots who blaze their own trail in the air. Shoreline Aviation Certified Flight Instructor Evan Casey is one of the latter.

When he graduated high school and headed off to college, Evan pretty much had football on his mind. The Whitman-Hanson (Massachusetts) High School grad had experienced a perennially great football program (he was a running back and linebacker), and he headed off to Division 3 Ithaca College to follow that sport’s pursuit (he played linebacker).

“I had been up to the school a couple of times because a family friend went there a few years prior to me going,” Evan said. “He also played football there, and I got to see what it would be like to play there and their culture even before they started recruiting me. I also really enjoyed the area and like what the school had to offer. Overall, a great experience.”

Only college wasn’t the direction that felt right. “It was a great place, and really good people,” he said. “But there was something about going into debt about something that, ultimately, I was not passionate about. I thought about going into the trades, or maybe being a firefighter. Flying hadn’t crossed my mind.”

So, he stopped college after a year and looked for work. It was then that a family friend planted a certain bug in his ear. “We have a family friend who flew for Jet Blue and asked if I’d be interested in trying flying,” he said. “I went up, and I liked it. Now I love what I do!”

Evan Casey is a certified flight instructor at Shoreline Aviation.

Evan, 21, began his flight training, earning his private pilot’s license while working as a barback. Then he headed to North Carolina, where he enrolled in Blue Line Aviation’s fulltime, 5.5 month fast-track training program, what Blue Line says is “Ideal for strong academic performers wanting rapid career entry.”

There, Evan earned his instrument rating, his commercial license, his CFI (Certified Flight Instructor) certificate, his CFII (CFI Instrument), his ME (multi-engine) certificate and his MEI (ME Instructor).

From his private pilot’s license at 20 to all this at 21? That’s commitment. And support.

“My family was incredible,” he said. “My mom is a hairdresser. My dad is chief of police in Hanson. My younger sister is also a hairdresser. We’re really close and have always had a great relationship. They supported me throughout my flight journey. They allowed me to drop everything I was going to do to go get my certificates.”

For fun, Evan would occasionally rent a plane and fly around Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. His biggest flying adventure was doing his commercial cross-country flight at school, flying from Smithfield, North Carolina, to Athens, Georgia – about a 300-mile jaunt as the crow flies – in a Piper Archer.

Now Evan is instructing would-be pilots in Shoreline’s fleet of Piper Warriors. He says he’ll do whatever he can to best accommodate their schedules Since starting fulltime with Shoreline mid-summer, he’s had eight students, ranging in age from 14 to 60. “A couple of students have been coming here to Marshfield since they were kids, taking pictures of planes; now they’re flying.”

Evan had heard about Shoreline’s flight school at GHG. “I did some research online, and learned there was a flight school here,” he said. “I reached out, and Keith (Shoreline President Keith Douglass) interviewed me. And now I’m instructing, with the potential to fly bigger planes.”

Evan hopes to eventually become certified to fly Shoreline’s fleet Citation jets. He says he’d like to fly charter someday.

In the meantime, “So long as I’m flying some sort of aircraft and making money, I’m good with that.”

And maybe it will be Evan who some day plants the flying bug in a future family member.