Tara Jeffrey
Ethan Nauta has been watching the skies since he was little.
“I’ve always been a fanatic for airplanes,” said the 15-year-old, recalling a plastic toy plane he carried around for years.
“My earliest memory is from when I was really, really, young. I was with my grandma in the car and I would just look up at every plane I saw.”
His fascination with the science of flight grew, and when he was 12 begged his mom to attend a summer camp at the Huron Flight Centre.
“I told him, ‘You get me all the info and I’ll take you there,’” mom Lisa Nauta recalled.
“He was totally hooked.”
Officials at the flight centre took note of the boy’s keen interest and suggested lessons.
“And it kind of went from there,” she said.
Nauta logged flight hours alongside chief instructor Jason Brent, and when he turned the minimum age of 14, was ready to qualify for a solo flight licence.
But he had to wait for Transport Canada to provide medical, and just as the pandemic arrived.
“There were some extra steps that they had to take to assure that I could be a pilot because I have autism spectrum disorder,” said Nauta, whose medical clearance application was submitted in March 2020.
“I was confident he would and so were all the people who supported him,” his mom said, “But there was that trepidation with him, wondering if he would be able to take that first flight.”
After waiting nearly two years, Nauta’s certification was approved and last month he took off and landed a plane by himself.
“It was fairly surreal,” said Nauta, who took one quick loop around the Sarnia Chris Hadfield Airport before landing — where he was greeted by the flight centre team and a good old-fashioned water soaking.
“They were super celebratory about it — they’re the ones that taught me to be able to do all those things.”
Nauta plans to work towards his recreational licence, and has bigger dreams of attending the Royal Military College of Canada.
Last summer, he met Col. Chris Hadfield when he visited the flight centre, but was a little too star-struck to mention his own achievements.
“I don’t know,” Nauta said modestly. “He meets so many people in a day, and there was a huge lineup.”
“He was speechless,” added Lisa Nauta, who recently moved from Sarnia to Petrolia.
Dennis Ryan of the Huron Flight Centre said only a handful of teens have obtained a solo licence over the years.
“It's a lot of work to get there,” he said. “A lot of grown ups will quit before the solo, because it’s too much.”
These days, it’s Nauta’s mom who’s beaming up at the sky.
“It’s just amazing to be able to watch him fly the aircraft — with that level of responsibility — it’s so surreal,” she said.
When he turns 16, and with a recreational licence, Nauta will be able to bring a passenger along.
“I’ll have to drive him to the airport,” she said, “but he can fly his date out to Thunder Bay for lunch.”