Learning to fly jets above the City of Angels

It was the summer of a lifetime for 19-year-old Adam Quinn who learned to fly jets above Los Angeles. Now the Ratoath man’s feet are now firmly back on the ground as he has settled into life in Trinity College Dublin as a student of Theoretical Physics.

CIARAN CROWTHER spoke to the talented high-flyer about his experience

During one memorable scene in the Oscar-winning musical La La Land, Ryan Gosling’s character Sebastian, while lecturing his love interest Mia (Emma Stone) about the slow death of jazz on LA’s music scene, exasperatedly complains: “That’s LA – they worship everything and they value nothing”.

His wistful lament, evoking Oscar Wilde’s famous line about cynics, neatly fits into the narrative of a film which pines for the golden age of Hollywood as it portrays the cracks beginning to emerge in the fairytale of what LA is supposed to be and what it seemingly was once upon a time.

Indeed, deep into the Meath Chronicle’s conversation with 19-year-old Ratoath teenager Adam Quinn about his summer of a lifetime in LA, while his month-and-half there was full of thrills and excitement for the most part, the surreal nature of the City of Angels was not lost on him: “… the wealth of the place and the people who live there was one of the most striking parts for me, on one of our days off, we went to explore Beverly Hills and we found ourselves seeing Porsches and Lamborghinis everywhere, then at one point we saw ten Ferraris go by in half an hour.”

Not exactly the sort of motor vehicles you’d expect to see on the Royal County’s roads, then. However, while Adam got the chance to purely appreciate LA’s clear blue skies from above as well as salubrious areas such as Santa Monica, Hermosa Beach and Beverly Hills, he also recognised that everything is not all it’s cracked up to be: “I think it’s better than it used to be, but downtown is still rough. The Hollywood Walk of Fame is grimy and I wouldn’t really recommend it but you have to see it when you’re there, in a sense. We were fortunate to be able to stay in Palos Verdes with ocean and beach views every night, which was unbelievable, it felt like a different world.”

It’s a long way from Castleknock College (where Adam attended secondary school) to Long Beach, California, where his six-and-a half week stay ultimately culminated in 10 hours of solo flying, taking in two cross country flights over the vast expanse of Californian soil, an area which dwarfs Ireland in terms of size, never mind Meath. Quinn and his fellow AerPrize 2020 winner, Patrick Gowran, spent six days a week studying and clocking up sixty hours of flight time with an instructor in order to pass their FAA ASEL Private Pilot checkrides, finally becoming FAA certified private pilots in Angel City Flyers’ fleet of DA40 aircraft on the 21st August.

So how does a teenager from Meath end up flying in the skies above LA? Adam takes me back to November 2019 to explain: “Our physics teacher in Castleknock told us about Aerprize so I decided to submit a video by myself based on an element of flight and ended up being lucky enough to be offered a chance to go to Baldonnell (Irish Air Corps base in Dublin) and compete against other students from around Ireland for a full day of testing.”

That day was more rigorous and intense than Quinn lets on at first. It took place in March 2020, just before the country went into its first lockdown as the Covid-19 crisis began to engulf the world. Everything was under a cloud of uncertainty. None of us knew the horrors which were about to unfold. Many people understandably struggled to stay on an even keel during this time as the situation became clear. In situations of intense pressure and uncertainty, most people crumble.

That day, Adam Quinn realised more than ever before that he is not most people: “It definitely felt like there was a lot on the line that day. I was nervous, but promised to myself that I had to make the most of it and enjoy the experience.”

The day of testing was broken down into three stages, an aptitude test, an interview and a flight simulator. Each test was designed to examine how candidates would react when placed in stressful situations. Any weak mentalities among the candidates present were about to be ruthlessly exposed.

The aptitude test, essentially a two-hour exam which tested candidates’ abstract reasoning and ability to make quick calculations under time pressure was followed by the interview with Seosamh Somers. Originally from Wexford, he set up Angel City Flyers in 2003 and is involved in aircraft leasing in the San Francisco area. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly as Quinn quickly found out: “The interview was nerve wracking, it only lasted 10 minutes but it felt longer, I felt like I was being interrogated.”

Following the rigorous nature of the opening two assessments, any candidates which were not yet rattled were about to have their nerves tested to their limit in the flight simulator.

In this final assessment, participants were rated based on how they reacted to the challenge of the simulator rather than their performance in it: “We were given five minutes to figure out the controls before we entered the simulator where we were faced with a huge screen which stretches all the way across your line of vision.”

On the day, Adam Quinn was the only candidate who managed to nail the virtual landing in the flight simulator. He credits his consistent, gradual improvement in running with being able to handle high pressure situations such as the flight simulator: “The more often you put yourself in these situations, the easier it becomes. Racing on the track primarily over 800m gave me the determination and composure to be able to perform under pressure. It’s about maximising an opportunity when it is presented to you… when I was later told I had won the prize, I freaked out, I was delighted.”

It was the summer of a lifetime but after learning to fly high in the skies, Adam Quinn’s feet are now firmly back on the ground as he has settled into life in Trinity College Dublin as a student of Theoretical Physics.

Will he find himself daydreaming of those hazy Californian summer days as he adjusts to his college lifestyle?

“It was an amazing experience but the potential lifestyle (of a pilot) of constantly being on the move without much stability doesn’t appeal to me. I’d definitely like to go back (to LA) though, it’s a magical place and the culture of the West Coast is quite forward thinking. I can see myself living there, one day.”