Chances are pretty good that you’ve flown in a plane at some point in your life.
It’s less likely that you’ve been the one in control while traveling by plane, and you probably wouldn’t consider yourself able to teach someone else how to fly a plane.
But for Saint Louis University alumnus Steven Warchol, that’s a daily occurrence.
A native of Belleville, Ill., Warchol’s interest in flight sparked during high school, when he attended an aviation camp at SLU.
He went on to graduate from Parks College of Engineering, Aviation & Technology with his flight instructor certificate in 2008, and is now a full-time flight instructor for the aviation program—a job he never planned on having.
“If you would have asked me five years ago where I thought I’d be today, I wouldn’t have said teaching, but I really enjoy it,” Warchol said. “It’s very rewarding to see students go on to get their own flight certificates.”
While Warchol acknowledges that teaching is great because “no two students are exactly the same,” he also admits that there have been occasions when he’s had to take over the controls while flying with them.
As for his own flight experiences as a student, Warchol says his scariest moment was actually as a passenger.
“When I was a freshman, I was a passenger with one of my instructors flying into Creve Coeur at night, and all of a sudden I hear the pilot say, ‘Oh, [expletive].’ I look out the window and I see another plane just passing us, so close that I could see the profile of the other pilot’s face,” Warchol said.
Despite sometimes getting frustrated with annoyances such as bad air traffic controllers and the negative stereotypes that he finds people have about pilots—“There’s the idea that we’re lazy and unprofessional … people think computers just do all the work”—Warchol loves flight, and the freedom that comes with it.
“Going through cloud layers and seeing all the different cities from above, it’s a completely different world and perspective than being on the ground.”
Warchol recently got to experience that different world to a new extent by flying his longest solo flight to date—an eight hour flight to Clearwater, Fla.
The pilot enjoyed the flight and the Florida atmosphere, and says he’d like to, one day, get his seaplane certification and ferry people between Orlando and Key West.
For now, though, Warchol is enjoying his time as both teacher and student at SLU.
He is currently working on his MBA, and is hoping to get into the management side of the airlines. His dream job would be to fly for NASA, “except that’s not exactly a realistic goal,” Warchol said.
When not in the air or at the airport, Warchol can be found studying hard in the John Cook School of Business, hanging out with friends at Humphrey’s or watching the St. Louis Blues play at Scottrade Center.