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Flight Instructor, 21, Has Already Flown Far

Cheryl Bentley/SUNCOAST

Although only 21, Laura Thompson is an instructor at Clearwater Airpark Flight School. She has already logged 2,100 hours of flight time.

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By Cheryl  Bentley | The Suncoast News

Published: December 19, 2008

Updated:

Glenn Guerette pauses in front of the Light-Sport Aircraft, a red airplane used as a trainer for private pilots, and pronounces it "the neatest thing since sliced bread."

The plane now sits inside Westfield Countryside Shopping Centre as part of a promotion by Clearwater Airpark Flight School.

Flight instructor Laura Thompson answers questions from Westfield Countryside shoppers. Guerette and his son Spencer, 13, stopped to ask about her company's $50 introductory flight lessons, conducted in a plane similar to the one at the mall at U.S. 19 and S.R. 580. Business has been good, says Thompson.

With long brown hair and no make up, the 21-year-old Thompson, a Dunedin resident, appears much like a high school student - until she begins to discuss flying. She then becomes all facts, crisply answering questions posed to her.

Thompson has the commercial-multiengine rating needed to professionally pilot a plane. Additionally, she is licensed to fly helicopters and seaplanes and has racked up 2,100 flying hours.

Those are impressive accomplishments for one so young, says Thompson's former colleague, Brandon Carter, a 34-year-old jet pilot for Tampa-based Coast to Coast Charter. "That level of commitment to get that done at such a young age in a male-dominated industry is rare," Carter said.

Thompson was 18 when she got her commercial rating. By contrast, Carter was 28 when he got his.

Her students give Thompson high marks.

"She knows every airplane there is," says former student Mark Horne. Horne is now a licensed pilot with an instrument-flight-rules rating. The IFR rating allows him to fly a plane using only information from his instruments.

Pilots with the lesser visual-flight-rules, or VFR, rating can't fly when visibility aloft is poor.

The soft-spoken Thompson can transform herself into steady-handed pilot at a moment's notice, Horne observes. "She's lots of fun until it comes to what you need to know to save your life. Then she turns into her mom."

That should steady even the jumpiest nerves. Laura's mother is Dorothy Thompson, a commercial pilot who ran the Marathon Jet Center, at Florida Keys Airport, when Laura was growing up.

"I've been taught how to fly since I could reach the pedals at about 7," Laura said with a smile.

She remembers when her mother decided she was ready for a solo flight when she was 17. "She just got out of the airplane and said, 'See you.' "

Flying didn't call as a career until Thompson skipped a grade in high school and entered the University of South Florida as a pre-nursing student. A part-time job at a flight school reawakened her love of flying.

Thompson left the university after two years with an associate of arts degree in business under her belt and is now going for a bachelor's degree in aviation technology in an online program.

In 2007, Thompson took what she says is one of the toughest pilot jobs in the industry, that of freight pilot. "It's being a single pilot at night over the Everglades in bad weather in an old airplane without modern technology."

She describes her mother's reaction when she heard about the job. "She said I'd either be a better pilot or I'd be dead."

In the end, Thompson found the position invaluable. "It was the best learning experience I ever received," she says.

As a freight pilot, flying through storms in old planes didn't faze Thompson but getting around on land sometimes did. She remembers flying an eight-hour shift through Tropical Storm Barry, in 2007, without difficulty but almost running off the wet road when she drove home.

Piloting a plane appears to bring out the steel in Thompson. "There's something about being in control," she says.

There is also something about the beauty of being in the air. "If I come through a cloud layer and there's a sun

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