Personal Introduction

Hello Everyone,

My name is Brandon Weise. This is my first ever blog for my aviation senior seminar. I think it would be best to start by giving a little bit of background information , and how I became involved in this field of work.

Ever since I was little, I have always been fascinated with the military. To be more specific, I was fairly interested in planes. I loved that someone could go in such a sophisticated piece of machinery and travel wherever they please. The real thing that drove me to this field of work was back in eigth grade. I grew up in a small farm town in Southeast Michigan called Monroe. In this city, we had a small airport just outside of downtown. One day my dad decided to let me go on a fly along in a Cessna 150. We ended up just flying around in the pattern at Monroe's airport for an hour. One fun fact about the flight was that the pilot who took me up, Jerry Delaney, ended up being my professor for two of my classes. Its crazy how someone you think will never have an impact on your life in the future ends up becoming one of your teachers. I remember throughout high school, I continued to change my major, and what career path I wanted to follow. I debated on nursing, education, and even criminal justice. One night I was thinking, and remembered about how much fun I had sitting right seat in a Cessna back in elementary school. Although I had very minimal exposure to actually flying, I knew this was always my dream.

Currently, I am enrolled at Eastern Michigan University. My major I am working on is Aviation Flight Technology. I am a fourth year currently working on my Commercial Rating. I recently passed my instrument check ride two weeks ago. If I stay on the same pace I am currently at now, I will graduate fall 2017. It may be earlier or later depending on where i am in my flight training.

For my future plans, I would like to finish my commercial rating by the end of this academic year. After that, I plan on dispatching over at Eagle Flight Center until i finish my multi-engine and CFI. Once I have accumulated enough hours, I want to move on to ExpressJet to build more time. Once I reach Captain status, I would like to move on to the majors. My end goal would be to work for Delta Airlines. One other goal of mine would be to fly international routes. It has always been my dream to travel and see what else is out there in the world. I would also like to retire at Delta. If I get bored of doing nothing, which I tend to get bored fast, I may just fly recreational for as long as I can.

I am really interested in two upcoming topics. One beings UAV's. At some point in the near future. Unmanned aircraft will be a fairly dominant portion of the industry. I think it is fairly interesting, that we can operate such complex machinery without man being present. I am also interested in the Pilot Shortage topic. Aviation students picked the right time to jump into this booming industry. I hear this statement all the time, but I am not really sure why it is such a good time to join. I never had heard a real reason behind the pilot shortage, so it would be nice to gain some information on the particular subject. Some current aviation topics of interest in would have to be commercial space travel and China releasing their own commercial airliners. We are knocking on the door to being able to travel outside of our atmosphere. It would be such a tough yet amazing feat to accomplish for the human race. China aircraft grabbed my attention recently as well. With a new fleet of aircraft soon to be on the market, this will create a change in market competition. Maybe one day when I am in the airlines, I might find myself behind a piece of Chinese ingenuity.

The field of aviation industry is a very in depth piece or work. Not a single person in this field just one day decides they are going to be a pilot. We are share a similar characteristic that drove us to this passion, no matter how we discovered it.