It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No… its our own Christopher Hallam, senior by day, flight simulator pilot extraordinaire by night and weekend.
Believe it! We have some pretty amazing young people set to take on the world here at Hoosic Valley and Christopher is one of them. His dream to soar above the clouds, donning aviator shades, sun shining on his face, piloting vacationers to those picturesque getaways is well on its way.
Since the 5th grade and his first air travel, of which he had to be seriously coerced into even stepping foot onto the plane, one could say he caught the flying fever. So much so, he finagled a lap top and joy stick into a make shift flight simulator and by the 7th grade had already taken his first flight lesson, a Christmas gift from his Gram.
Realizing they had a future pilot in the family, his parents converted an old tv and desk in his room, added a few throttles, a couple rudder pedals and hooked everything up to a computer to make Christopher a real-life flight simulator. He has since joined VATSIM, Virtual Air Traffic Simulation website, an international online simulated flying network of air traffic controllers, pilots and ground coordinators. Log on and take a look for yourself, it’s amazing, thousands of folks from around the globe are part of the community!
Currently, Christopher ‘takes off’ from San Juan and ‘lands’ anywhere in the world, logging upwards of 15 plus hours of flight time per week. Flying in all conditions; sun, rain, snow, wind, clouds, day or night.
Accepted at Bridgewater State University, Aviation Science, his dream of becoming a commercial pilot for Southwest is taking flight.
So, in a few years, when you take your seat aboard a Southwest flight, heading to your vacation destination and you hear “This is Captain Hallam speaking. Welcome aboard Southwest today…just sit back and enjoy the ride”. You will know you are in great hands…he’s been ‘piloting’ since the ripe old age of 11 years!
We have some pretty amazing young people set to take on the world here at Hoosic Valley - if you know of one that would like to share their story outside of the classroom send an email to Nancy O'Donnell at [email protected]