Endeavor Air First Officer James Reeves visits a vintage aircraft he helped restore at the Delta Flight Museum.
The native of Ariton, Ala., a small farming community in southeast Alabama, served in the U.S. Air Force for 22 years, mostly as a reservist, earning a Meritorious Service Medal and two associate degrees in aviation maintenance.
After graduating from technical college in Alabama as a licensed airplane mechanic, he entered military service in 1984 and became head of the Robins Air Force Base ground crew working on the Boeing Stratotanker, an aerial refueling aircraft.
“I held several maintenance positions consisting of structural repair, hydraulics, avionics and line maintenance,” Reeves said. “As a line maintenance tech I was not responsible for any one system, but all of them when the aircraft had a problem during day-to-day operations.”
After the base, he began a 20-year stint with Delta Air Lines, at which a mechanical problem he solved on a Birmingham flight helped him earn the company’s Outstanding Customer Service Award for his avionics expertise.
“To navigate from one point to the next, the aircraft uses the avionics system, which I also maintained during my career at Delta,” Reeves said. “Most all the controls necessary for flight are either electrically or hydraulically controlled. Some are also pneumatic, which I was also responsible for as a maintenance technician.”
As a structural repair technician, he was responsible for maintaining the structural integrity of the airframe of the aircraft.
“This consisted of repairs and modifications to the exterior and interior of the aircraft structure,” Reeves said.
Midway through his Delta career, eight years before retiring from the Air Force, he experienced a life-changing moment at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta.
“In 1998 I finally had the opportunity to take an introductory flight in a Cessna 172,” he said about a single-engine propeller plane. “I fell in love with the experience and have been flying ever since, literally as well as figuratively.”
Reeves that same year racked up the flying and studying time needed to earn a private pilot’s license and bought his own Cessna 172, which he still has.
“I think flying exhibits a feeling of freedom which can’t be duplicated anywhere else,” he said.
Reeves said his interest started before taking off at Dobbins.
“From the beginning of my aviation maintenance career, I’ve been fascinated and thrilled with the concept of flight,” he said. “I had been around airplanes and flight crews all my professional career, but the opportunity for a flying career always seemed to be just out of reach.”
Making the leap from private to commercial pilot seemed unattainable, Reeves said, due to family obligations and working 40 hours a week instead of being able to study full-time.
“I chose to continue to my job as an aircraft mechanic and pay for the training as I went along,” he said. “This route of course took longer, but through dedication and support from others I was able to achieve my goal in 10 years.”
Some of that support came from Reeves’ avionics boss at Delta, Henry Desso.
“One of the qualities I admired about him was his desire to be the best of the best,” Desso said.
In 2008, Reeves was able to pin on a first officer badge, flying commuter jets for Pinnacle Airlines, now Endeavor Air, a wholly owned subsidiary of Delta.
“Leaving a secure job as a Delta Air Lines mechanic to become a first officer at a regional airline required a substantial financial sacrifice, which Mr. Reeves was willing to take,” said Desso, who helped Reeves schedule professional aeronautics classes at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., Desso’s former employer.
The separation didn’t take; in October, Reeves received a conditional job offer to be employed by Delta as a pilot.
“This is an amazing opportunity for me, because it was a very hard decision for me to leave Delta to pursue my flying career after 20 years of being employed there as a mechanic,” Reeves said. “It was a great company to work for and I am looking forward to returning and finishing my aviation career there as a pilot.”
Source: http://www.neighbornewspapers.com
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