A Sky High Passion Bonds a Family
Love took flight at Geauga County Airport three decades ago and the King family’s passion for aviation has soared ever since.
“It all started in 1986 when I met my wonderful wife-to-be, Katrina,” Brian King said. “Our first date was an airplane ride in the Breezy of course. I had to see if she had the ‘right stuff.’”
It turned out she did.
The lives of this Parkman Township couple and their two daughters, Ayla, 21, and Brenna, 18, are bonded around family and flying.
Brian is a United Airlines captain, Katrina holds a private pilot single engine land and seaplane license, Ayla has her pilot’s license and will graduate soon to become an air traffic controller and Brenna is a student pilot.
“It was a beautiful summer evening and as I was opening the hangar doors, I heard a rumble behind me,” Brian said. “I turned around, thinking it was thunder, to find Katrina opening the other set of hangar doors on her own. This is the one I thought.”
More flights then followed.
“I soon began teaching her how to fly,” Brian said. “She was a very fast learner and loved flying aerobatics as well.”
Brian admittedly has been fascinated with airplanes for as long as he can remember.
“I never considered being a pilot growing up, it just seemed out of reach,” Brian said. “I graduated high school not knowing what to do with my life.”
Everything changed in September 1980 following senior year at Cardinal High School. Brian started working line service for Firebird Enterprises at Geauga County Airport, fueling the planes, plowing snow, cutting grass, helping in the maintenance shop and with anything else that needed to be done.
“I immediately started taking flying lessons,” Brian said. “During that time, I received a lot of encouragement and mentoring from people that I really admired.”
His first job was flying skydivers in Parkman and at 24, he was flying a business jet based out of the airport.
The couple married in 1988 and moved to Houston as a new hire for Continental Airlines.
“For an adventure, we transferred to Continental’s Western Pacific Island hub of Guam for five years,” Brian said. “In 1994, we came home to Geauga County. I couldn’t think of a better place to raise our family.”
Ayla, who turned 21 last week, also graduated from Cardinal High School where Brenna is a senior.
“My first memory of flying was when I was about 3 years old,” Ayla said, with her first flight at 6 days old. “I remember looking down and seeing the houses, horses and cows seeming so small. They looked like toys.”
She attended Kent State University – Geauga campus for one year, then switched to the Community College of Beaver County, graduating Summa Cum Laude with an associate’s degree in Air Traffic Control and obtained her pilot’s license.
“After a lengthy hiring and vetting process, Ayla is currently at the Federal Aviation Administration Academy in Oklahoma City training to be an en-route air traffic controller,” Brian said. “She will graduate in December.”
Ayla initially considered the medical field.
“However, one day my dad took me into the Cleveland Tracon at the Hopkins Airport,” Ayla said, adding she ending up spending 4 hours up there.
“My dad had to go to work an hour in and it was then that I thought…this is what I want to do,” she said. “Every day brings a new and exciting challenge. It’s not that it’s just different day to day, it’s different moment to moment.”
The sisters laughed and hugged Saturday morning at the airport when Ayla was home for the weekend.
“Yes, I love her,” said Brenna, with a huge smile and heartfelt excitement. Brenna was diagnosed on the autistic spectrum as a child.
The King girls grew up at the airport.
“Much of our life has been around aviation,” Ayla said. “Days and evenings spent at the airport having picnics, flying ourselves or taking others for rides. We also love to share flying with others.”
Katrina, who grew up in Leroy Township, soon pulled her phone from her purse to snap memories of her daughters sitting on the wing of the RV-12 her husband built from an aircraft kit with four other friends.
A 30-year-veteran with the Airlines, Brian flies Boeing 737s within the airline’s route network to Hawaii, Alaska, the Caribbean, Central America and most of all out-of-the-way places such as Jackson Hole, Wyo. and Eagle, Colo.
“I love to fly,” Brenna said, a student pilot with more than 50 training flights in sailplanes.
“It hasn’t slowed her down,” Katrina said, of any possible developmental delay.
“Flying sailplanes is her passion,” Brian added, of Brenna’s training with the Cleveland Soaring Society. “She won an award several years ago for being so enthusiastic about flying.”
“Oh my gosh, I love it,” Brenna echoed.
Dave Nuss, her flight instructor, named her his most enthusiastic student.
“She has more fun than everyone is allowed to have,” Nuss said, of Trumbull County.
Brian looked over at his oldest daughter.
“One of the most magically profound moments of my life was when I flew the tow plane for Ayla’s glider solo,” Brian said. “On a beautiful fall morning, the two of us, each in our own airplane, flew into a crystal clear blue sky.”
He added, “I have a mirror in the tow plane that I can look back and observe the position of the glider. I could see Ayla’s huge smile from 200 feet away. Then reaching 3,000 feet, Ayla released the tow rope, gently banked right and flew away from me. It was very emotional for me.”
He also had honor of being her first passenger when she became a licensed pilot.
“It has shown me a different perspective on life,” Ayla said. “When you fly, you see things in a whole new way.”
She added, “I look forward to talking to my dad on the radio someday. I will get to tell my dad where to go and how to get there. Whether it be the Breezy, the RV-12 that he build with four other guys or with him in the 737, I have loved every moment.”
Ayla was home and it was time for more family photos outside the hangar.
“I am very proud of all three of my ladies,” Brian said. “Flying has been a wonderful and great bonding experience for us to share.”
