It took six and a half years for Chicopee couple Dan and Pat Bergeron, both 77 years old, to build a two-seated one engine airplane from a $100,000 kit. Dan constructed portions of the aircraft in their cellar and one-car garage with Pat assisting with the assemblage as riveter, firing small metal rivets to hold the plane together. They completed the plane in 2009.
On a sunny and windy autumn afternoon in late October, the couple was unloading their plane from their hanger at 90-year-old Northampton Airport to take off for a lunch trip to Keene, New Hampshire, which Pat said would only take them about 20 minutes at around 150 miles an hour to reach their destination on their striking blue and white plane — Spiro II.
“Every flight to me is a mountaintop moment,” Dan Bergeron noted.
While not everyone has built their own plane, many pilots in addition to the Bergerons use the Northampton Airport each day. Rich MacIssac, general manager at Northampton Airport for the past 15 years, said more than 100 airplanes are based at the airport, including a dozen with the airport’s flight school.
“In general, the airport does about 3,000 takeoffs and landings a month,” he explained. “Roughly about 100 a day.”
MacIssac said the people who are flying planes out of the airport come from diverse backgrounds.
“We have people who own aircraft for their own private business purposes and use them, but the majority of the people who are here own airplanes for their own recreational purposes. They’re taking day trips with them flying around the local area and to places for lunch or the weekend or to the beach for the day.”
Over the past decade, the Bergerons have flown about 840 hours. One trip began as a planned cross-country journey to Washington state, but the plan changed when they encountered stormy weather in Illinois. Instead, they flew to Wisconsin to visit family. They’ve also flown up and down the east coast from Maine to Florida.
For Dan Bergeron, a retired U.S. Army Intelligence officer of more than 20 years with a year spent serving in Vietnam, aviation has been a lifetime interest since he was a small child building model airplanes. He got his first experience flying real planes as a teenager.
“I started at this airport on my 16th birthday in 1958,” he explained. “And then my father found out I was dipping into my college savings and my early flying career came to a screeching halt.”
He went on to attend Boston College in 1960, graduating in 1964, and joining the U.S. Army after college. He served until 1989, then worked 14 more years as an assistant principal at schools in Granby and Belchertown before retiring.
He received his pilot licensing and certification and instructor certification from the Navy Flying Club in Norfolk, Virginia, while stationed at the headquarters of the Atlantic command from 1970 to 1974, he noted.
Pat Bergeron said that 20 years later her husband had to be recertified. That’s when she suggested he build an airplane.
“The next thing I knew, here comes the tail and he signed me up for a riveting course,” she explained. “That’s how it all began.”
But a part of the plane almost was in danger of being stuck in their cellar. When it came time to move a large piece, the couple discovered that they only had about a half an inch to spare in the doorway. If that hadn’t worked, they were going to have to build a new hatchway into the cellar.
The couple’s recreational hobby has become a multi-generational family interest that they’ve shared with their son Tim, who is an Army colonel, and his granddaughter Sydney.
One of the Northampton airport’s youth programs is called “Wright Flight,” which allows middle school age youth to go through a semester-long ground school, MacIsaac said. Once they complete that course at their school, they’re able to take a flight at the airport.
“We do several here in the Northampton area and we also do some in the Westfield area,” MacIsaac added. “It’s been a very successful program. We’ve taken hundreds of kids through the flights. They have a beginning one and an advanced one. We generally do those twice a year in the spring and fall.”
Many of the students at Northampton Airport have ambitions to become commercial airline pilots and clock in hours in the sky for required hours necessary to receive pilot or instructor certifications.
Mano Lalchandani Jr., a 25-year-old resident of Holyoke, initially wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps to become a dentist. While finishing up his Bachelor’s degree at Springfield College, he became interested in flying as a hobby. But when he left western Massachusetts last year to attend a dental school in Chicago, he couldn’t stop thinking about flying and left dental school shortly after in his goal to become a commercial airline pilot.
“I was there for a few weeks in my pharmaceutical lectures and my biochemistry lectures and I was like, ‘Man, I hate this.’ I was in the library 12 hours a day, which wasn’t a big deal because I was used to it. But I had no life and I’m studying something I’m not truly passionate about. I was going back and forth with myself and I finally just gave a call to my girlfriend one night and said, ‘I’m sick of this. I’m done.’ She was so surprised she was like, ‘What!? You’re done?’ I’m like, ‘Yup. I’m done. I’m packing up. All I want to do is fly.”
One of the most difficult phone calls in his life was calling his father to tell him he was quitting dental school to become a pilot.
“I was confused. I was upset with myself. I was probably mildly depressed. I was really overweight. I was in a bad position and unhappy with myself. I knew I just had to do it and I called my Dad and said, ‘Hey, this is the situation. I’m really passionate about aviation. That’s all I think about. That’s all I want to do and I don’t know if dentistry is right for me.’ Me and my Dad had a long talk and my Dad ended the phone call with, ‘Hey, and you’re always welcome back home and if this is something you’re truly passionate about and is going to make you happy, then go for it.’”
Since October 2018, Lalchandani has logged at least 300 hours in the air and is close to taking a certified flight instructor test, which will allow him to teach flight students. Thus far, he’s spent about $50,000 on his aviation education.
“That will give me the ability to teach private students, to teach commercial students, to do flight reviews, and it’s also going to allow me to build hours at the same time.”
In another year and a half, and he’ll likely be close to attaining his commercial pilot licence to pursue his goal of becoming an airline pilot, he said. And afterwards the prospects look good for hiring. Lalchandani said right now there’s a boom in hiring commercial pilots because many of the seasoned pilots are retiring.
“I love to travel and the fact that my job is just constant travel, to me makes me happy,” he said. “I love to be in the sky. And the fact that my sky 35,000 feet on a flight deck instead of an operating room, that makes me really happy. I get to see the best view in the world every single day.”
Bob Beede, Lalchandani’s instructor, has been flying planes for more than three decades and has been teaching aviation at Northampton Airport for eight years. He said his students range from kids in middle or high school to retirees looking to learn a new hobby.
“Flying is an interesting pursuit,” he explained. “It’s fairly accessible. Almost everybody can do it. And it’s something that you can embark on as long as you can reach the pedals in the airplane at 12 or 13 up until your 70s. I see people frequently who are over 65, 70. You’re never too old to learn something new.”
Beede, 61, started flying as a way to travel to different race tracks where he competed in sports car races. He still races today and recently came in fourth place during a national Grand Prix in Virginia.
“Flying in those days was always a secondary thing,” he noted. “And then as I started to phase out of doing so much racing, I started flying more professionally and shifting my career towards more of the flying side.”
Jennifer Hoare, a 26-year-old flight attendant from Paxton, wants to become a commercial airline pilot after being on many planes and seeing the passion that pilots have for their job.
“It kind of sparked an interest in me,” she added. “The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do it. I took my first lesson and I was like, ‘This is really cool. I could definitely see myself doing this.’”
Hoare, who has reached 60 flight hours and will likely soon receive her private pilot’s license, said flying a plane gives her a sense of freedom.
“Growing up, people are always like, ‘If you had a superpower, what would it be?’ Mine was always flying because I wanted to see the world from above,” she said.
Chris Goudreau can be reached at
cgoudreau@gazettenet.com.