Erik Lake: This is your dream job. You’re about to start it and I walk in there and it gets to be my dad, you know, training me first time. You know, I’ll just never forget that.

Tom Lake: It’s incredible, you know. You look over there and here comes your son and he’s a qualified pilot. Amazing to watch the dedication and the hard work that he put in. 

Lucy Jabbour: That’s Tom and Erik Lake, father and son commercial pilots that ended up at the same airline, flying in the same flight deck for hundreds of hours together. I’m Lucy Jabbour and this is The Air Up There!

Various People: This is your captain speaking. The feeling I get when I’m flying; you get an adrenaline rush. Seeing something fly is awesome. As soon as I had that flight, I just decided. Flying airplanes is all I’ve ever wanted to do. I get so excited about aviation, aeronautics, space, math, and science and engineering. Like star gazing and just wondering what it would be like to be up there. There is a space for you. There’s a lot of camaraderie. The support from the people. The air traffic controllers. There's so much freedom. I fell in love with it. I developed a passion for it. Just know you can do it. There’s certainly a place for everybody in aerospace.

Lucy Jabbour: Erik, what was it like seeing your father walk into the flight deck for the first time as your captain?

Erik Lake: Awe, man that was, it was special. I was also, scared a little. I will definitely admit that. You know, that it's your first flight ever on an airline. Definitely studied and over prepared, I think, just to, you know, make sure my dad knew that I doing well. And I was good, you know, he wouldn’t have to yell at me too much up there, you know, during the trip. But it was it was surreal. It was really cool. I've always heard his stories coming home from trips when I was younger and to be able to actually kind of put my eyes on that and kind of see what he was talking about and experience some of those things with him. I mean, it was, it’s something I... it's hard to explain. It was just, it was just really special. 

Lucy Jabbour: So, Tom. What was it like to have your son as a first officer? 

Tom Lake: It's incredible. You know, you look over there and here comes your son and he's a qualified pilot. It's kind of surreal you know. You think back when he's a little bitty boy now he's sitting professional pilot and in the right seat of our cockpit and it's huge you know. And this stuff about me yelling at him. I've never yelled at him one time. Ever. Very proud. Memories for life. And feeling very fortunate that we had that opportunity, and we got to spend so much time in the cockpit together.

Lucy Jabbour: So, you guys end up at the same commercial airline. Erik, how did it feel to then be able to fly with your dad?  

Erik Lake: It was really special. I was... when I started on my path. When I got in the Air Force and started pilot training, I was... I was kind of thinking, like, I think I can get there in time to be able to fly with him, because he had a good amount of years left. I was really working hard. I mean, I was, I tried to fly as much as I could in the Air Force. I deployed three times. I had volunteered for two of those. Then I’d come home and I would fly a little airplane as well just to build time because hours in any airplane matter. But it really was, it was timing and it was luck was a big part of it as well. Because, when you usually start with one of the major airlines, it's whatever's available. They'll have a list of cities and airplanes. I was looking at it and just one of the airplanes was the one my dad was flying in Atlanta. I was like, oh, man, this is cool. So, I mean, I put that as my first one, obviously, and I luckily got it. So, I was like, this is unbelievable. I can't believe this is all working out the way it's supposed to. Again, I didn't know if I'd be able to fly with him on my first, you know, trip. Then he told me that I would be flying with him and I was like this is crazy.

Lucy Jabbour: Tom, how many hours did you guys fly together roughly? I don't know if you know the exact number and what makes that special?

Tom Lake: It was close to 500 hours that we ended up and we didn't even realize, because we were given at least one or two trips a month. We’d bid and I’d swap with other captains, and stuff like that, to make it happen. Everybody just loved it, you know, they loved the story. So, we got to fly a lot together. Every trip that we had, we always had a great time. Which including my last one which was really something and he made it really, really special.

Lucy Jabbour: Erik, how did you get into aviation? What pathway did you kind of... how did you make everything like, click?

Erik Lake: Yeah, when I started, it was kind of either am I, I’m gonna go the civilian route, or I'm gonna go the military route. Every pilot that starts in the Air Force, regardless, you're going to do probably two years of training. And then once you're out of that, you'll go to your reserve unit, and then you'll basically do some seasoning orders if you want them. So, that's another six months of just flying with your squadron learning from them. And then you're basically after that you're free. You can live wherever you'd like. You can do whatever you want on the civilian side, as long as you keep current on the airplane at the reserve unit that you're at. So, sometimes I would do trips that were a month long. Some were just, you know, a weekend or two-three days a month. It's really cool in the reserves, because you can work as much as you'd like. So, if you didn't want to do the airline route, and you want to just fly in the military, you could do that full-time as a reservist and still have a civilian side of a job or whatever you'd like to do. Live wherever you want, so. You know, my dad, and some of his friends who'd been in the Air Force told me about the reserves. A lot of them were active duty first and then they went to the reserve component. But I was very lucky in getting mentored by some of them and they explained that you could go right into the reserve side of things. I had always had that desire to serve; to do something greater than myself. That was a that was a part of it that really swayed me over to that side. Because, you know, my grandfathers were in World War II. My uncle was in Vietnam. We've had a lot of family lineage that has gone back to the Civil War. It just felt like an honor to continue that in our family. 

Lucy Jabbour: You come from this family lineage of aviators and so you really grew up around aviation, which begs the question, were you always interested in aviation?

Erik Lake: To a degree, yes, but I think it shifted here and there I think as I was growing up. I would go out to the hangar with my dad when I was young; I mean, 8, 9, 10 years old, you know. He had gotten a hangar and started building an airplane. So, I’d go out there and, you know, I think I was just starting to understand aviation, what his jobs were, you know. He was in the Air Force still and then started at the airline. So, he was doing both for a period of time. A lot of time there were, he was gone, but always kind of had that door open for me, I would say, for aviation. Never pushed it on me, I will say that. Even as I was going through high school. I went through phases. I started to play the guitar and I kind of got into that and was doing like rock band type stuff with some friends and, you know, I was growing up. And I think he was, you know, letting me kind of figure out my own way. I knew that I wanted to fly in some aspect, whether it was just getting my pilot's license, and just flying for fun, you know, with the family and things like that. I’d go back and forth, I would say, with it being a career because once you start that, you know, it's a long road. It's dedication and then you’re, that's what your life is going to be if you decide to take that. And I think, as I got older, I saw how much I was enjoying it once I really started to fly a lot more with him. And I'm glad I kind of took that time to figure it out. And he let it he let me figure it out on my own. 

Lucy Jabbour: Tom that had to take a level of restraint, right? 

Tom Lake: It did. I would love to have them come out the airport, but I did not force them to come out. They are kids, you know. They’d come out there. They’d see me working on stuff and, and you know, they go like what and this is... this isn't any fun. And I'm over there having a good time and looking at stuff and putting an old airplane together. And I understood that, but I just wanted to keep them exposed to that and many other things that help kids make up their mind what they want to do with their life. And in Erik’s case, I remember when he fell in love with flying and it was really neat to see, and amazing to watch the dedication and the hard work that he put in. And I always told him, you know, you gotta make your own luck. You got to be ready to go when the opportunity comes. And he was.

Lucy Jabbour: So, Erik, you have a little-known following on social media. There's a lot of documentation of you and your dad flying together, which is so fun. It's fun that you like let, you know, the public in on that and give people a taste of like what that relationship was like up there. What made you want to document that time together in the flight deck?

Erik Lake:  At first, I was kind of just messing with him. Once I started flying at the airlines and doing that I was like, I would think of like these things like, oh, this is this something pilots always talk about. Or like, this is like a funny thing. So, I would make a few videos here and there just kind of poking fun at it and, you know, some people thought that was pretty funny. So, I started to gain a little bit from that. But when I started flying with my dad, everyone just kind of resonated with those. It just really like, I don't know, they took it to heart. It just was something raw and like kind of real. And it just kind of blew my, my social media up just a little bit. It's more common now than it used to be. But it's still a rare thing to fly with a parent in the airline world like that. And I just wanted to show a little bit of that. You know, I think it... it inspires people. I think it... I get a lot of messages like it affected them in some way that was positive. And those are the things that I really enjoy hearing from people on there. So, if I can make a small impact like that then it’s really fun to do that. 

Lucy Jabbour: What would you say is your most memorable flight to date?

Erik Lake: I think for me, was the was the first one. I was just starting out and it was just, I had no idea what to expect. And you know, I wanted to do well. And this is your dream job. You're about to start it. And I walk in there and it gets to be my dad, you know, training me first time, you know, I'll never forget that. The last one for my dad's retirement that one was that one was really special because I got to watch him. I tried to do as much as I possibly could to make it special for him. That is something we get to reminisce on for the rest of our lives. It was just really special. So, I enjoyed watching him get to enjoy that.

Lucy Jabbour: Tom, you, I'm sure, have a lot of flights to pick from.

Tom Lake: Lots of flights. First one in the Air Force. It's my Solo. Soloing my boys. Getting to the airline, achieving that dream. But like Erik says, as far as the most memorable, nothing compares to that last trip that we had. He had everything worked out to just - unbelievable the work that went in. The support from the people. The air traffic controllers. The tower says, they want to talk to you for a second. I'm going like, really? But just all of that and that whole flight, whole trip it just very, very touching, you know. And it was very, very special. It's really amazing that I can say that I flew his first flight at the airline and he flew my last. 

Lucy Jabbour: So, Erik, what advice would you give other people?

Erik Lake: If they have an interest, I think they really need to figure out if it's something that they really want to do. Because it's gonna take a lot of time. The journey is long; it's hard. It takes a lot of dedication once you start. So, I would say, if you're just thinking about it, you know, get a discovery flight or find someone you know that can take you up. See if it's something that you're going to be interested in, that you really enjoy. I know that if you do start it and you really work hard, you will get the result you're looking for in this career. I know that. I've seen countless people do that. The good thing about aviation is just people are really in love with it, when they... the people that do it. They really are they want to help people. It’s kind of cool because you'll just see different people at different stages, and you really enjoy just helping them.

Lucy Jabbour: Tom you've been training other people. You have so much experience in aviation. So, what message would you like to share with future aviators? Like, what wisdom can you impart?

Tom Lake: Just like you, you need to get your discovery flight. And hen figure out, you know, whether you like to fly or not and then maybe take another one. Reach out, get to the little airport, ask questions, talk to people. You will get pointed in the right direction. A lot of people it's just not in their world - aviation. It's just not in there and they don't understand which way to go. Half the battle is knowing the right path and knowing that you’re on the right path. That’s one of the things that Erik and I try to do to help young people to get on the road to flying.

Pilots Portal PSA: Thinking about becoming a pilot, but don’t know where to start? Set your destination to the FAA’s pilots’ portal! If you have questions about the pathway to becoming a pilot, the pilot’s portal has answers at faa.gov/pilots. Find test guides, study tips, handbooks, FAA contacts and guidance! Start your flight path today at faa.gov/pilots. That’s faa.gov/pilots.  

Lucy Jabbour: Thanks for listening! Coming up, in the next episode of ‘The Air Up There,’ we’re talking Hot Air Balloons with the founders of The Balloon Training Academy, Adam and Kim Magee.

Kim Magee: There was just this gap for kids who wanted to keep doing ballooning, but they didn’t have that access that we had.

Adam Magee: We created our own 501(c)3 non-profit called The Balloon Training Academy.

Kim Magee: So, we could provide these kids with a place to learn how to fly a balloon.

Lucy Jabbour: For more information check out faa.gov/podcasts.