Richard Bach, the well-known pilot and author of numerous books, articles and short stories about aviation (he’s probably most widely known for his book Jonathan Livingston Seagull), once wrote a story about a mythical flight school somewhere in the western U.S. and far away from civilization. This story, which was probably first published in the 1960s or early ’70s, also appeared in a compilation of Bach’s short stories and articles, the title of which I can’t recall.
The point of the story was that aspiring pilots would benefit from flight training that would take them through the historical development of flight. So, as Bach related it, this hypothetical flight school has students building and flying balloons and gliders, not unlike those built by the early pioneers of flight. Then the students move to building engines and powered airplanes and flying them, too, continuing this step-by-step approach to more complex aircraft.
