GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — Grand Junction flight instructor Deanna Strand doesn’t get nervous about going up in an airplane with a first-time pilot. With flight controls on both sides of the cockpit, she’s ready to take over should someone make a mistake.
New pilots tend to be cautious, however, she said.

“I have to encourage them even to talk on the radio to give reports to the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) control tower,” whose job is to orchestrate arrivals and departures at the airport, Strand said.

In the old days, control tower workers lined up at the windows searching for planes with binoculars, Strand said. “Now they have radar screens seeing planes moving across the skies.”

Twenty-six years after opening her flying school, Strand, 51, is closing up shop to go work full-time for Discovery Channel founder John Hendricks, whom she taught to fly in 1998. Strand Flying School’s last day is Dec. 31.

Strand did the research when Hendricks started buying airplanes. She “inadvertently” became the manager of his planes, watching over them at Grand Junction Regional Airport, 817 Falcon Way, where she also runs her flying school. Strand makes sure the airplanes are fueled and ready for whenever Hendricks, who lives mostly in Maryland, is in town.

Strand became Hendricks’ stand-by pilot while continuing to manage her flight school.

Hendricks started building Gateway Canyons resort about five years ago in the tiny town of Gateway, located south of Grand Junction in Unaweep Canyon along the Dolores River. He’s since expanded the resort to include horseback rides, river rafting, mountain biking trips and educational programs.

His latest vision is to build an air tour program, and he asked Strand to run it.

“I couldn’t imagine it at first,” Strand said. She didn’t want to give up her business. “I said no. The flight school defines me.”

Strand grew up around aviation. Her parents owned a small airport in Kalispell, Mont. She took flying lessons there.

In high school, she got her private license. She earned a commercial pilot’s license while attending the University of Montana, where she graduated with a degree in linguistics.

“I never planned on being a pilot,” Stand said.

Too often, the phone would ring at dinnertime while she was growing up and her father, who was a pilot, would have to “fly off” giving tours of Glacier National Park.

But while she wondered what to do with her linguistics degree, Strand moved to Grand Junction to work first as a secretary, and then as a flight instructor at the airport.

In 1983, she leased a plane and opened her own flying school.

“I thought I’d play around with it a couple of years and then go on to the next adventure,” Strand said. “I figured there would be a finite number of people who wanted to fly — but they kept on coming.”

She gradually added more planes and seven employees. At the height of her business, Strand owned 13 planes.

It was a revelation to Strand when, after six years, someone approached her about buying the school.

“I could sell it and go do what I always wanted to do, but I couldn’t think what that was,” Strand said. “I realized this was it. I didn’t want to get out of this business.”

But with a troubled economy, last summer’s high gas prices and a slow down of business at the flight school, Strand decided it was time to begin her next adventure — developing Hendricks’ air adventure program.

Strand will fly tourists over western Colorado’s and eastern Utah’s red rock canyon country.

“It’s such spectacular country. The idea is for his guests at the resort to be able to enjoy the scenery from a helicopter,” Strand said. The company expects to buy its first helicopter next summer.

Until then Strand will fly Hendricks’ red and black Cessna Caravan — a plane he calls the “Big Red Bird.”

There’s an airstrip alongside Hendricks’ 25,000-square-foot retirement home at Sun West Creek Ranch in Gateway.

But the Big Red Bird, and Hendricks’ other two planes, are parked at Grand Junction Regional Airport where Strand watches over them. Hendricks bought the hanger there from West Star Aviation several years ago.

Strand operates her flying school out of the building. By the end of the year, she’ll move down the hall to another office to put together Hendricks’ air tour program.

A man from Atlanta has inquired about buying the flight school, and Strand said she hopes that will come to pass.

If it doesn’t there will soon be five airplanes for sale.

Reach Sharon Sullivan at ssullivan@gjfreepress.com.

http://www.gjfreepress.com/article/20081118/COMMUNITY_NEWS/811179961/1005/NONE&parentprofile=1059&title=Flying%20school%20owner%20closing%20Strand%20to%20pursue%20opportunity%20with%20John%20Hendricks