| January 22, 2020 | Jamie Bennett | reporter |
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While many students drive to class, 19-year-old NW student Kale Burks thinks flying is better.
Burks straps himself into his Legend Cub, a small single-engine propeller plane, rolls down the runway at Hicks general aviation airport in north Fort Worth and arrives at Carol Hunsberger’s speech class minutes later after landing on a grass airstrip in a friend’s field property near Alliance Airport.
On the first day of class, NW and Alliance speech instructor Carol Hunsberger had students tell a story in an effort for them to get to know one another.
“I have students do this story at the beginning of the semester as an ice breaker, and when Kale was done with his story, he pointed to the landing strip and said, ‘that’s how I got here,’” Hunsberger said.
Burks, whom Hunsberger calls a “very humble and an all-around nice person,” took her Intro to Speech class in Fall 2019.
“My first speech was a ‘This Is Me’ speech, and I flew to class and used my Cub as my ‘show and tell’ item,” Burks said.
Having flown by himself on his 16th birthday, Burks received his private license and instrument rating at age 17 and commercial and multi-engine at 18. One year later, he has accumulated 400 flight hours.
“Both my parents are pilots and started teaching me when I was 15,” Burks said. “My dad flies Gulfstreams and is chief pilot for a major corporation. My mom has all of her ratings as well.”
His aeronautics instructor, Chad Weigand, said Burks was a unique student.
“He came to us in his junior year of high school as one of our first cadres of dual credit students in this program,” Weigand said.
“Both of his parents are pilots, so naturally he has the ‘bug’ of aviation.”
Burks flies a King Air, carrying as many as nine passengers, out of Meacham Airport to destinations in Texas and beyond, as he continues to rack up flight hours.
Born and raised in Fort Worth, Burks graduated from Eaton High School in the Northwest School District.
“They had an aviation academy which collaborated with TCC and allowed me to take dual credit classes and fly half of the school day,” said Burks, who managed to leave high school with about 25 college credit hours. He plans to finish a bachelor’s degree at Texas A&M online and apply to join the Air National Guard and fly F-16s.
“I want to pursue a bachelor’s in professional aviation at A&M,” Burks said.
