Jenny Greenwood: Earns four (4) aviation degrees by age 20

Jenny Greenwood of Oswego has earned her commercial pilot’s license, is certified to fly by instrument flight rules and is a certified flight instructor. After she reaches 1,000 hours of flying time, she can then teach at any aviation school or airport anywhere in the country and continue taking lessons to accomplish her goal of flying a commercial jet.

How often have you heard someone say he or she wanted to be a teacher, police officer or some other career for as long as they could remember?

Well, 21-year-old Jenny Greenwood of Oswego is not one of them, but she certainly made up for lost time.

As a student at Oswego High School, she realized after watching the large airliners flying over her yard every day for several years enroute to O’Hare Airport in Chicago that she would like to be a pilot.

“They weren’t real low, but there were so many of them. Every minute a plane was flying over and I was constantly looking at them. I was always curious, but it wasn’t until high school that I thought about flying, and figured that I could actually pursue learning to fly.

“I thought I had fallen behind because I was already in high school and felt it was too late – which it definitely was not. I thought everyone who learned to fly had a relative or friend with a plane,” she said.

In high school, she was on the dean’s list, in the National Honor Society, had a 3.8 GPA out of a possible 4.0 and played varsity volleyball, a sport she has had to put aside since going to college.

A student pilot can fly solo at 16, but cannot receive a private pilot license until age 17, she said. So by these standards, she started later than some people, but definitely made up for lost time.

Once she decided she was destined to become a pilot, she applied for and received an internship at the J.A. Flight Center at Aurora Municipal Airport. An internship class at Oswego High School had prepared her for this job, she said.

“I knew absolutely nothing about flying and had flown only in large commercial jets, but I felt I should know a little bit before going into college,” she said.

She looked at various other aviation colleges but chose the University of Dubuque because it is only three hours from home, had everything she wanted and was the most affordable.

Her first flight in a small plane was an introductory flight during a visit to the university, which took place before she started her lessons at the J.A. Air Center at Aurora Municipal Airport.

Finally in 2013, her senior year at Oswego High, she started taking flying lessons from Nadia Kountoures at J.A. in a Cessna C172 Skyhawk. She received her private license on Aug. 6 of that year right before she went to the University of Dubuque.

In just two short years since then, Greenwood also has earned her commercial pilot’s license, became certified to fly by instrument flight rules and is a certified flight instructor. 

Her commercial pilot license allows her to fly any single-engine airplane up to 12,500 pounds.

The instrument rating means she can fly in clouds using only the instruments and having contact with a controller who is watching all traffic by radar.

Her certified flight instructor rating allows her to teach flying in the C172 she learned in or any comparable airplane, she said.

She never really thought about what she had accomplished by the age of 20, but said only a couple other students at Dubuque did the same thing. “I guess it’s an achievement,” she said.

She recalled flying her first solo.

“The first solo is just in the [landing] pattern. All of a sudden when I realized I was in the air I thought – oh, now it’s up to me to get it back down.”

She soloed and received her private pilot’s license at Aurora through J.A. Air Center. James Witt, J.A.’s chief flight instructor, pointed to a photo on the wall of Greenwood leaping off the ground like a cheerleader when she exited the plane following that first solo flight.

“After my first solo, I decided this was going to be my life career,” she said.

The average time to solo is 15-20 hours and Greenwood said that’s about how long it took her.

“The next solo was to go wherever I wanted. With no road signs to follow, it’s the most freeing feeling ever. The flight lasted about an hour,” she said.

When she returned to the Aurora Airport, she was number four to land, so she had to enter the pattern and watch for three other planes that were in the pattern ahead of her. “Aurora is a busy airport,” she said.     

Students must fly in and out of airports with grass runways and no control towers as well as ones like Aurora with towers and paved runways, she said. She enjoys using the Aurora Airport and said it was a great place for learning to fly.

Greenwood prefers airports with towers and a live controller, but would like to use light gun signals sometime.

If a pilot loses radio connection, there is a code they can use to squawk to the tower that indicates the radio is out. The tower controller then uses a light gun that shoots a beam visible for 15 miles. Different colored lights mean different things along with flashing or steady lights, she said.

Greenwood said she had considered a double major by adding management of fixed base operations such as the J.A. Flight Center, but decided to stay with a single major and graduate in three years.

Her final course at Dubuque will be crew resource management. And she still wants to take a meteorology course.

Then she has to build her flying time up to 1,000 hours.

After that, she can then teach at any aviation school or airport anywhere in the country and continue taking lessons to accomplish her goal of flying a commercial jet.

“I would prefer flying passengers over cargo. I think it would be cool. I thought about flying for FedEx or UPS, but I’m not sure I want to be landing at 6 a.m. when I prefer to be sleeping,” she said.

Her training has included flight simulators as well as planes.

Greenwood said using simulators saves money when working on an instrument rating. It allows a student to do things they can’t in an airplane, such as practicing what to do if the engine fails. But, she admitted the simulator also is limited because you can’t get the feel of doing steep turns.

While at school she also earned extra money as a peer tutor, helping other students with math and other aviation courses.

She has been a member of Dubuque Chapter of Women in Aviation for three years and has moved up to president. One chapter event to introduce women to flying was to invite middle-school-age girls to the university to use the simulators. “We try to get them young, but it’s never really too late,” she said.  

Greenwood has received several scholarships including $2,500 from the North American Trainers Association and $1,000 from the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. Both were awarded on recommendation of her instructors, she said.

NATA is an organization for pilots interested in the planes used to train pilots during World War II and later. She said a NATA member took her up to do some formation flying in his AT6 advanced trainer.

“Formation flying is sure different,” she said.

She will graduate with her bachelor’s degree at the end of this school year, a year early because of extra time spent at school this past summer.

But she has a ways to go. It usually requires 1,500 hours to fly commercial jets, but she earned 500 hours for classes completed at Dubuque and she has 300 hours of flying time in her log book, so she’s more than halfway to the 1,500.

Jenny said about 80 percent of her flying has been training.

Most of the 300 hours has been flown in the Cessna Skyhawk 172, which is one of three planes she has flown so far.

One was a Socata Trinidad, a four-seat high-performance aircraft that sells for about $400,000 and the other was a Piper Seminole twin engine, which she is presently using to earn her multi-engine rating.

The Cessna cruises at 130 miles an hour, the Trinidad at 160 and the Seminole at 175.

Her goal is to learn to fly the Gulfstream business jets.

“With their range, you can go almost anywhere in the world in one trip and they travel at close to the speed of sound,” she said.

Staying at the college one summer was most challenging thing for her so far, she said. She was working on her studies and taking three courses to graduate in three years rather than four. And she also was working part time during the summer.

“Flying cross country has been the most fun so far. I like it a lot,” she said.

Her first cross country trip was to Whiteside Airport, about 50 miles from Aurora and another one was to the Cincinnati area, where she landed in an airport about the size of Aurora.

Her most memorable cross country flight was a five-hour trip to Escanaba, Mich., and back. On the return trip, she followed Green Bay and Lake Michigan to Oshkosh, Wis., the home base and airport of the Experimental Aircraft Association. Each July the EAA holds AirVenture, a continuous long-weekend air show that is attended by thousands of spectators, pilots and wannabe pilots.

She was disappointed the airport was so quiet when she landed.

“They told me I need to come back when AirVenture is taking place, so I’ve set this as a goal for next year.

“I would love to fly in during the event. I was told that the controllers don’t use their radios because they’re so busy. You have to rock your wings to acknowledge their signals which is a different process,” she said.

She hopes she can someday help an EAA chapter with the Young Eagles program. Each year, local chapters, including Aurora, give youths ages 8-17 their first ride in a small airplane.

Greenwood learned to identify landmarks from the air, a flying method called pilotage. She said they use roads, names on water towers, railroad lines, and other landmarks to know where they are.

Pilots also use maps that have almost anything they need to chart their trip, she said.

At night, they use different navigational aids because many of the landmarks disappear in the dark.

“But it’s beautiful. I love night flying. Everything calms down, it’s a lot more peaceful and it’s no more difficult than daytime flying,” she said.

Greenwood and her instructor did her required night cross country to Kenosha, Wis., and back.

Most of her flying has been in the Cessna 172 Skyhawk with a glass cockpit, meaning it has the most up-to-date digital instrumentation, which she said “is the rage today.”

She described the glass cockpit as a computer screen that replaces the actual dials, needles, and gauges. These same instruments are portrayed on the screen, making it very advantageous during instrument training and programming the autopilot, she said.

The largest and busiest airport she had landed at so far was Midway. It was a fun experience, she said.

“Aviation is really even more than I ever dreamed it would be. It’s a big industry, yet is small enough where there are many opportunities and it’s easy to network. And more jobs will open up when the mandatory retirement age of 65 for pilots goes into effect,” she said.

Even before finishing school, she received a summer-time teaching offer from Witt at J.A.

Witt said the J.A. Air Center owns Culver Academy near South Bend, Ind., where 65 high school juniors and seniors will learn how to fly next summer. And he offered Greenwood a job as a summer instructor.

“I have a lot of networking to do and people to meet before I decide which way to go – corporate or airlines,” she said, adding that either way she wants to fly commercial jets in the corporate world.

She is the daughter of John and Cindy Greenwood of Oswego.

- Source:  http://www.kendallcountynow.com