17-year-old Gabriel Carothers has made history as the youngest black pilot in the United States Of America.
Gabriel Carothers is a student from Albuquerque in New Mexico, who recently just completed his his private pilot check ride making him the youngest black to ever ride a plane on his own.
Gabriel said flying a plane has been his favorite hobby since he was a child. When he was 8 years old, he was given the opportunity to take on the controls of an airplane in flight for the first time during an ‘Experimental Aircraft Association Young Eagles’ event at the Moriarty Airport in New Mexico which fueled his passion more.
“I don’t even recognize it, but then it’s days like this that really makes me feel it and reflect on it. The past 4 to 5 years of me training and doing ground school of me waking up in the morning knowing I get to look forward to something like my check ride,” he said.
At the age of 14, he did his own research and learned everything from designing to programming which then led him to build his own flight simulator. Gabriel said his father, Alex Carothers, who is a retired United States Air Force pilot was the one who inspired his passion.
“My father had a family friend who had an airplane that used to fly, so he thought it’d be interesting to take me and my brother up for a flight when we were five and six years old, just to get a feel for it,” he said.
Source: scholarshipregion.com
