Shelton's dreams taking flight

It’s not unusual for a student at Aledo High School to take on more than one extracurricular activity. In the case of junior Luke Shelton, he has taken on three.

Shelton is a member of the Aledo football team, the Bearcat Regiment (band), and on weekends you can find him at the Parker County Airport logging his hours.

Shelton always had an itch to fly, but one day in particular caused his dream to take off. 

“My mom had a friend whose husband worked for American Airlines,” Shelton recalled. “He let me go up into their simulation facility and use their big machines, and he let me fly one and that was really cool.”

Shelton took a discovery flight, the first flight before true lessons start, and wanted to keep going. The first few lessons were mostly flown by the instructors with Shelton taking on a little more responsibility with each flight.

“Eventually I was doing the preflight checks,” he remembered. “Then I did takeoffs and landings. I wasn’t really consistent with lessons because of band and football. Then, the closer I got to my knowledge test and check ride, the more lessons I needed just to keep everything up.”

The hectic schedule for both Luke and his instructors opened the door for a new instructor, Russell Beasley.

“He’s 10 years younger than I am and probably twice my size,” Beasley recalled behind a laugh. “That was the first thing I noticed. He's a really quiet, but very thoughtful, studious and meticulous guy. And I know that his intelligence just really helps to pick it back up, even if he’s taken some time off from flying. He gets right back in there and he makes very few mistakes. He’s very regimented and calculated with everything that he does. I noticed that about him pretty quickly.”

On his 16th birthday, Shelton was ready for his first solo flight. He met with Beasley at the Mineral Wells Airport, along with his family, and hopped in the pilot’s seat.

“We drove to Mineral Wells and I remember Russell got out,” Luke’s mother, Penny Shelton, recalled. “So when I saw that Russell got out I knew that now Luke is going by himself. I kind of had a panic moment, I'm not going to lie. It was okay when I could see him, but when he disappeared into the clouds that’s when I got nervous. Thankfully Russell had the radio communication going so I could hear him talking.”

Beasley was also impressed with Shelton’s first solo flight.

“We flew out to Mineral Wells where he did his first solo flight,” Beasley said. “That wasn’t our first flight together, so we basically just did like a big rundown of everything that he needed to do, and just kind of assessed his skill level and I thought he did a really good job.”

Since his first solo flight, Shelton has made a second home at Parker County Airport in Hudson Oaks.

“I thought it was the coolest thing,” Shelton described flying over his hometown. “I could see the entire highway, all the neighborhoods around it, other airports, and the entirety of Lake Weatherford. There’s a whole lot there that’s really cool to see from the sky.”

The passion for flying goes hand-in-hand with Shelton’s career hopes to be an engineer, while also keeping his flying on the side.

After a long process, Shelton plans to take his check ride at the beginning of the summer to complete the process of becoming a pilot, all while marching with the band and playing on the gridiron.