The business aviation industry lost one of its visionary leaders when Albert Ueltschi, founder and chairman emeritus of training provider FlightSafety International died peacefully at his home in Vero Beach, Fla. on Oct. 18, at the age of 95. Growing up during the Great Depression in rural Kentucky in a family of modest means, he was bitten by the flying bug early on and decided to become a pilot. In pursuit of that dream, he ran a hamburger stand to fund his flying lessons and soloed at the age of 16. After buying his own open cockpit airplane, he barnstormed around the country, performing in airshows and giving flying lessons. In 1941 he joined Pan American Airways and was eventually selected as the personal corporate pilot for the airline’s founder and president Juan Trippe, a role he maintained for a quarter century.
During that time, Ueltschi realized a need to provide corporate pilots with the same level of comprehensive training as commercial pilots and in 1951, with Trippe’s encouragement he founded FlightSafety, which remains headquartered at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. While growing and diversifying the company, Ueltschi remained an active pilot with Pan Am until 1968 when FlightSafety went public. Today the company employs more than 4,200 people at 40 facilities around the world, and is one of the world’s largest providers of flight and maintenance training. “Safety is the cornerstone upon which business aviation is built, and in a lot of ways Al Ueltschi is the person who laid the cornerstone,” said NBAA president Ed Bolen. “He always said that the best safety device in any aircraft was a well-trained pilot, and he made sure our community had a lot of well-trained pilots.”
