F.A.A. Recognizes Local Pilot for 50 Years of Aviation Safety

ZANESVILLE, Ohio – A local pilot and aviation mechanic was awarded the ‘Wright Brothers Master Pilot’ award today for flying 50 years without incident. 

Zanesville Municipal Airport Director of Maintenance and award recipient Marty Drummond shared what the award means to him and how the efforts of others helped play a role toward accomplishing it. 

“Well it means a lot,” Drummond said. “It was many years of flying and doing aircraft maintenance and being involved in aviation in a lot of different aspects. It takes a mindset of safety the whole time you’re flying or doing maintenance work. So you’re always thinking of that. And like I said you always listen to other pilots, a lot of times we fly with two pilots. And we have another pilot that’s a safety pilot or copilot and they assist us.”

Several pilots around the state have earned the award but one of the biggest obstacles is the 50-year qualification period.

Drummond explained how understanding aviation on multiple levels played a significant role toward achieving the recognition from the F-A-A.

“We do preflights on the airplane to make sure that they’re airworthy for the flights,” Drummond said. “And we have minimums for weather and that sort of thing. And then as far as mechanics and stuff, we… all the safety sensitive areas we work on, we have somebody else double check them and make sure we put things together right and I get a lot of the safety checks. I was also Backcheck qualified for a couple of the airlines we worked on at Port Columbus, when I was up there with Lane Aviation.”

Drummond noted that he logged many hours test-flying aircraft after repairs and has piloted many charter flights from coast-to-coast.