From Barnstormer To Billionaire

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Ninety-year-old Vero Beach resident Al Ueltschi stands outside FlightSafety’s Flight Academy at the Vero Beach Municipal Airport. From a tiny, 200-square-foot office at LaGuardia Airport in New York, he built FlightSafety into the world’s largest and most respected pilot-training organization.

Albert Lee Ueltschi first decided he was going to become a pilot on May 21, 1927. Although he turns 90 this month, he still remembers the date because it was the day Charles Lindbergh landed in Paris, becoming the first man to fly the Atlantic. For two days young Al had been glued to the family radio as one breathless report after another followed the flight of The Spirit of St. Louis from the moment it left Long Island, N.Y., until its arrival 33 hours, 30 minutes and 29.8 seconds later at Le Bourget Airport. “I was just 10 years old, and Lindbergh was my hero from that moment on,” says Ueltschi (pronounced Vool-shee). “All I could think about was becoming a flier like him.”

Al had first dreamed of learning to fly even earlier, around the age of 5. “There weren’t many planes in Kentucky in those days,” he says, “but every one I saw fascinated me. I remember walking out of my schoolhouse, which was set on a hill, and gazing down into the valley thinking, this is what a pilot must see.”

Read the entire article in the Summer 2007 issue

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