Dayton teen flying toward pilot license

Nevada Connections Academy graduate Luz Sandoval of Dayton might just complete her pilot’s license before her driver’s license with more than 60 hours of flight time behind her.

She rode a flight simulator at an air show when she was 12, experienced her first flight on her 13th birthday and went on her first solo trip by the time she turned 14.

“I had just started with a fascination with airspace and aviation,” Sandoval said. “When I was taken to an air show that happened in Minden when I was 12, I saw the Thunderbirds perform, I wanted to do something larger for the country. I found that through the (U.S.) Air Force, and I decided that’s when I wanted to be a pilot. Ever since then, it’s been crazy.”

Sandoval, who recently graduated from tuition-free online school Connections and is a younger sister to fellow graduate Isabel Sandoval, was in the school’s program as an Honors and Advanced Placement student. She took AP art history, AP English, art literature and composition among other courses and said the time management and reading skills she gained from her online education were valuable.

“It’s just been a really great program learning how to be independent,” she said. “It’s less distracting from parents, it’s good for time management and it’s been really fun and learning to socialize with people. … It wasn’t too difficult for me. I think it was a better choice.”

While she was in school, Sandoval played in soccer and baseball and took part in the Carson City’s Civil Air Patrol, a nonprofit civilian auxiliary to the Air Force, for which she was a part-time cook and learned search and rescue skills. She began preparing for pilot training and leadership building, she said.

“I found out they started for the military organizations and have since then been working with the fire department and sheriff’s office at the state and regional levels as well as search and rescue, and I got qualified in mission and radio operations,” she said.

But in between her classes and soccer, she began paying for flight lessons. To operate a glider on her own, she had to have at least 46 hours and for a Cessna plane, she had to log at least 60. Sandoval turns 18 on Aug. 24, and she said she plans to fly at least five or six hours this month to finish her license as she completes her move from Carson City to Dayton.

“I just enjoy it as a passion,” she said. “When I fly, I feel very in control, very one with the atmosphere, just because as a kid, you dream about flying or what it feels like to fly. In your dreams, you float around and going to places. You get to be places, to be above the world and to travel to different places and have a lot of lifechanging places. That’s what I look forward to on my journey.”

She couldn’t identify where the “flying bug” came from without many family members who have served in the military.

“It’s almost like instinct,” she said.

Sandoval has flown as far as the Winnemucca Municipal Airport and attended a gliding academy with a patrol in Texas.

“We basically had a full week of nonstop flying in a ground cohort with pilots that are retired from the Air Force, the military and record-holding gliding instructors, and one of those was in Utah,” she said.

She has remained as long as two hours in the air in a glider without an engine and reached an altitude above 10,000 feet.

Recently, she secured a job at the Carson City airport working with Stellar Aviation, which is centralized in Reno. Sandoval said she will handle aircraft rentals, passenger reservations and military customers entering the area using their own planes.

“I’m saving up my money, and my aspiration is to commission in the Air Force as an officer, and I’m working on my associate’s degree at (Western Nevada College), and I’m applying to the Air Force Academy,” she said.

She plans to study biomedical or chemical engineering while pursuing her aviation dream.

“There’s always going to be something that hinders a person from achieving their goals, but as long as you know it’s your passion and it’s something you want to do, there’s nothing that can eliminate you — your race, your gender, your abilities…

“As long as you tell yourself that’s what you want to do, it’s going to be fun, it’s going to be great, and I think that’s a great way to look at life.”