My name is Nick and I am from New Hampshire.
I listen to metal music, I’m afraid of heights and I’ve been to 20 countries.
Before I came to LIFT Academy, I was a professional ski jumper for 9 years, and just before LIFT, i was a biomedical electronic technician.
I used to fly in flight simulators whenever I could. When I was skiing professionally, I travelled with rudder pedals, a joystick and flight simulator software whenever there was space in my bags.
I remember the first time I was drawn to aviation. I was on a flight from Boston to Salt Lake City for the Junior Olympics. I remember during take off that I felt it was one of the coolest things ever and that I thought to myself, “I would like to do this.” My journey to aviation was long. After I graduated from high school, I deferred my acceptance to Embry Riddle Aeronautical University for a year, and proceeded to ski jump professionally for the next nine years. After that I came home, got a normal job and looked into the ways I could get back involved in aviation, which is when I found LIFT.
It was intense! I know it would be a lot of work to become a pilot. Going into training for my private license was a big immediate jump into flight training, after not studying for a while, my habits had to change quickly!
Being a student was work! I needed to stay focused, to work hard, knowing that I was constantly working towards my goals. It was great knowing that my peers were also doing the same thing. It was a lot to get used to at first, but was a great experience and fun to work with everyone, and I was always excited for every flight!
So far, being a CFI is challenging in its own way. It is exciting to see students progress in their training and taking my feedback and using it in our next flight together. I also enjoy getting to know and creating relationships with my students.
I would like to be a professional pilot because the idea of flying huge and complex machines through challenging conditions safely while connecting people to where they want to be seems like an extremely fulfilling job.
LIFT has been a great fit for me for many reasons, but one of the top is the people. I think LIFT also has a different feeling than other flight schools, has given me the opportunity to make great connections with others, it fits my want for accelerated flight training and I love having goals to work towards and achieve.
I’ve made some great friends at LIFT that I spend time with outside of the hangar, lifelong friends. At LIFT itself, I feel that the atmosphere is very professional with a major emphasis on safety.
Don’t be so hard on yourself. Emphasize the positives when you can. Take all the little victories you can.
I enjoy hiking, skiing, building computers, cars and working on cars, working out and cooking.
My name is Krista Saint Dic and I was born on the island of Haiti. When I was 15 we moved to Miami, and then spent about 20 years in New York City.
Some interesting things about me: I am a professional dancer. I do ballet, Jazz, Hip-hop, jive and African, just about everything except for tap dancing. I speak four languages, includingFrench, Creole, English and Spanish, English being my third language. Finally I used to produce films!
Before I came to LIFT, I was a flight attendant and for Republic Airways. Before that I was a filmmaker, and produced, edited and casting directed movies.
What prepped me best for LIFT was that I was already in the aviation industry as a flight attendant. So I kind of knew what to expect from the lifestyle and I know what to look forward to once I get back on the mainline flying!
When I was a kid, my brother and I would get so excited whenever we saw a plane in the sky. I was probably about 5 years old and I remember that we would just scream and point out to the airplane. I always wanted to be a flight attendant because I truly love the experience of flying. I mean packing your suitcase at home, going to the airport, getting through the chaos at the airport, boarding the plane, eating the food in the plane and landing, really every part of it. I’ve loved the whole experience of flying but somewhere along the line I kind of stopped thinking about flying until maybe about 3 years ago or maybe a little bit like maybe like 3-4 years ago. My sister actually put the idea back into my head saying, “Why don’t you apply for flight attendant positions” and then the whole dream came back again, and was how my love of aviation restarted again.n
My first day at LIFT was pretty laid-back. I was happy to meet my classmates and everyone else who works at LIFT. There was another student in my class who was also a flight attendant so we bonded instantaneously and I didn’t really fly that much the first week but I felt I felt energized to go and then fly the planes.
Being a student at LIFT is very fun, but at the same time, it’s what you make it. I’m a very outgoing person so I love meeting everyone. I love asking people where they’re from and what stange they are on. I feel like it’s a very friendly, inviting, family-like environment. There are a lot of group sessions each week that you can attend to and learn like that with other people from different stages but now I have to covid I believe it’s online so what I do is I try to link up with other students and we have study sessions together like that so that way you can keep up with the material so you can know what you doing
LIFT has been an amazing fit for me because I just loved flying. Because I was a flight attendant for the same company that owns LIFT, I already knew the whole culture of Republic Airways and I knew that I wanted an accelerated flight program. I would like to build up my hours and gate back to the airline.
I want to be a pilot because I love a challenge and I want to inspire girls from the country where I was born (Haiti) to become pilots as well. I am also looking forward to making my country and my family proud!
The atmosphere at LIFT is really great. I love the fact that all the students are connected because we all have one goal in common: we are training to fly these planes and become airline pilots.That makes it really really easy to connect with other people at LIFT, we can always discuss aviation together. I also feel like I can always ask pretty much anyone questions if I have questions!
Advice that I would give to myself is stop procrastinating. If you want something go after it. Don’t try to wait for the perfect moment to do it, just do it.
Outside of training I love to hang out with my roommates, I do yoga, I am part of a dance group and we perform different choreography. Whenever I can I go back to New York to visit my family.
My name is Noah Franklin and I’m from the Louisville area.
My hair is fluffier than the average human because I run my fingers through it so much. I only wear Nike Air Force one and I am horrible at cooking.
I graduated from high school one month before I started at LIFT.
So my uncle is a pilot at Southwest Airlines, so he kind of told me all the things that I might need to know, including study habits that I needed to form before I got to LIFT as well as ways that flight training could be different from like regular high school or college.
I wanted to become a pilot because I wanted to do something that not everybody can do. I take pride in knowing that I worked hard enough to be able to do something, something that isn’t seen as a regular job or the same office view as someone who is working in a cubicle. What first interested me was actually my parents. They would take my brother and I to the airport and we would just sit and watch the airplanes.
What I remember about when I first got to LIFT was meeting different people from different backgrounds and meeting people that had different paths than I did. I also remember being excited that I would get to fly the brand new planes. When I did my private, I trained in a Cessena 172.
While I never went to a traditional college, I tried to make it as if this is my college or my job. I would try to get to LIFT early in the morning even on the days I didn’t fly and maybe find a quiet room and do some studying and gather my thoughts for upcoming flights. When I first started there were only like 12 people here so I got the fly pretty much every day if I wanted to.
It’s pretty great getting to see people reach their goals like I did. I love knowing you play a small part in their journey, working to get what they want to do in life, that’s good. From day-to-day, we have a 2-hour flight blocks and are you usually flying, doing ground training or in the SIMs. I have a couple of my own students that I work with, but I mostly work with all students making sure they are ready to move on to the next stage of their training. It’s tough when someone doesn’t pass and I don’t like stopping someone from moving on but also I want to see them succeed in the long run, and I know it is important for them to be ready to move on, before they do.
I want to become an airline pilot because I enjoy people and it’s a unique job where you can meet different types of people. I am looking forward to going to different parts of the world once I become a commercial airline pilot!
LIFT has been a good fit for me because my overall goal was to go to the Airlines and Republic owns LIFT. The program here is structured with the same checklists and other tools Republic uses, and I feel like this will make sure that I have a head start on my airline career.
At LIFT you try to have a professional relationship with your instructor but also you need to have to have some kind of a personal relationship as well. You want to know their background and you know where they come from because that helps you connect a little better. When you’re a student the other students you start with will reach out to you and it becomes sort of like a family. When you have a similar background coming from the same class, we typically study together and maybe hang out a bit. I definitely have a lot of lifelong friends that I can that I can go to maybe when I need something outside of flying, if I just want to go hang out with somebody, it is a great environment!
There are going to be bumps in the road, not everything’s going to be smooth sailing especially in this industry, so I would go back and tell myself that things are going to happen but you need to still keep at it and don’t ever give up, don’t think about giving up. It is a bad mindset to have, so just keep trucking through i guess.
Outside of flight training and working as a CFI, I like to work out, to go golfing with my family and my friends, to go play basketball and I really love going to the movie theater and am so excited for them to open back up.
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