Chief Pilot

Aaron Dabney, M.S.Ed., MCFI

“I got into this because I was in the right place at the right time,” Aaron says.  “I really thought that maybe I’d do this for a year and then instruct as a hobby when I retired.  But, I fell in love with the process of educating.  It’s a really cool thing to watch a student solo for the first time and know you contributed to that.  I’m also really glad to give students an opportunity to fly with someone who wants to actually teach.  That’s where my philosophy of education came from:  It’s more important to teach how to learn to fly, than to just teach how to fly. Now I get to pass that along to my new instructors, and hopefully we can infect the whole profession with that attitude.”

Aaron Dabney has loved aviation for as long as he can remember, having had his first airplane ride in his family’s J-3 Cub well before his first birthday.  Growing up around historic Ball Airport in Victoria, Texas, he was always around “old airplanes and older pilots,” as he puts it-and he wouldn’t have it any other way.  It was there that he fell in love with grass-roots flying.  “Flying wasn’t about rich people having this exotic hobby,” he says.  “It was really more of a blue collar experience.  Most of the guys worked at the chemical plants that dot that part of Texas, had their own small businesses, or were Greatest Generation retirees.”

Aaron found his way to Waco in 1999, when he enrolled at Baylor University.  He graduated in 2003, and then again in 2009 with a Master of Science Degree in Education.  While there, he also met his best friend and wife of 15 years, Alisa. 

After a decade of flying for the fun of it, Aaron earned his Flight Instructor certification in 2009.  After co-founding one successful flight school and serving as chief pilot for another, he decided to open his own business in 2013.  In the years since that very first flight school, Aaron has amassed over 5,000 hours of instruction given, endorsed well over 100 applicants for FAA practical tests, and earned 3 consecutive accreditations as a Master Flight Instructor through the rigorous peer review process of the National Association of Flight Instructors.  He also serves on the Board of Review for that program and teaches the Introduction to Aviation class at Baylor University.