Giving the gift of flight

Friday, December 16th 2005, 9:50 am

By: News On 6

We are always looking for unusual gifts for our friends and family members this time of year. How about the gift of flight? TCC's flight school offers something called a "Discovery Flight."

News on 6 reporter Rick Wells took one Friday morning.

I sat at the controls of a Cessna 172 as part of a Discovery flight from Tulsa Community College's flight school and I didn't know they had a flight school. But here we are, the guy doing the real flying is Matt Wise, he's the chief flight instructor, and the director of aviation services.

He says these discovery flights are like a test drive. "It gives everybody a chance to see, is this something for me." TCC is offering these flights at a reduced cost, about a third the cost of an hour of flying with an instructor.

Matt Wise is a veteran airline pilot and still flies private and corporate jets. His dream career is aviation and it all started with one of these flights when he was in college. "I took a discovery flight at a little country airport at a reduced cost, got hooked, love it. So that's how it started for me in aviation, what a great opportunity to introduce that to someone else, get them hooked."

That is part of the appeal, being able to, within reason, to go where you want and not have to follow the highway. It's the freedom isn't it?

You can learn to fly as part of TCC's continuing education program or take flight training while you are earning a degree. "There's a great opportunity here for anyone from 16 to, I don't care how old you are."

You can arrange a Discovery Flight for yourself or someone else by calling the flight school at 828-4270.