Arlington alumni, class of 2017, Ty Perry started pursuing his dream of becoming an airline pilot at a very young age. “I fell in love with flying right before my 15th birthday, and as soon as I turned 15 I was up in the air,  by the age 16 I had my first solo flight and got my solo engine license”.

When asked what the best route to take in becoming a commercial pilot he had this to say “I definitely think best route in achieving that status is going to a university with a great Aerospace program and for me that was MTSU.”

Ty’s journey has been anything but easy as it is for many young men and women pursuing this challenging career. When asked about his challenges he replied with “Going into this field is very difficult and is a lot of work. Much of this work is not actually being in the aircraft, a lot of the knowledge comes in the classroom. An aircraft has all sorts of different controls and buttons and you have to know exactly what each one does.”

The young pilot expressed how important it was to know your aircraft and the area in which you’re flying. When asked about how important it is to know what you are doing, he said this. “Many people think flying is quite simple because you are in the open sky, but it is quite the opposite. You have to know the area and you aren’t flying just in any direction, you have to plan your flight before you actually start flying”.

Ty recently graduated from MTSU with an aerospace degree at the beginning of August. I asked him how it felt to get through the long process of attaining this achievement, and he had this to say. “It feels so good to get through this chapter of my life, the journey is not over though. I’m in the process of reaching 1,000 hours which is a requirement to get hired by an airline, I have been going through the hiring process and will reach that prerequisite before my training begins, but yes it feels so good that I can finally start flying for an airline and living my dream.