Scott, left, and Rob Creveling were lucky enough to share the cockpit on Rob's first commercial flight with U.S. Airways.
FLORENCE, S.C. -- Many people would be nervous on their first day as a commercial airline pilot, but in late June, Rob Creveling had the fortune of co-piloting for someone he really trusted – his dad.
Scott Creveling, 60, has been a pilot for U.S. Airways for 29 years after serving in the Navy, and in all his years, he has only heard of one father/son duo getting to fly together and none on a first day.
“It’s been really the highlight of my flying career is being able to fly with him; that was awesome,” Scott Creveling said. “We give the Lord credit for that, for kind of working everything out because it was not the kind of thing you could really orchestrate on your own.”
For one thing Rob, 33, didn’t always plan on being a pilot. He started lessons in high school thinking flying could be a fun hobby, but he got serious about it at the University of South Carolina. He then spent some time flying forestry planes and the USC athletics plane – where he hauled the likes of Lou Holtz and Steve Spurrier – before joining the Air Force.
Last December while he was flying refueling jets over Iraq and Afghanistan, he started applying for commercial airlines, putting in as many applications as possible because airlines have done so little hiring for the past five years.
The first one to offer him an interview and a job when he returned to the states was U.S. Airways. He didn’t get his hopes up at first because all the new hires were being assigned to Embraer 190 planes, and not in Charlotte where his dad was based. That is until his class, which mostly got 737s leaving from Charlotte.
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