89-year-old man is 'oldest flight student in U.S.'

ML farmer Tren Jones earns his wings

Even his own daughter doesn't believe that Tren Jones is really 89 years old.

But he is.

Perhaps the image of youth stems from the fact that Jones recently obtained his pilot's license after 38 hours of training and a lifelong fascination with the thought of flying a plane.

"When I was 12 years old, we were on a farm down by Cedar City, Utah," Jones recalled. "I had just raked my hay when a little plane came in, lit in the hay and just scattered it all over. He'd run out of gas, and wanted to know if he could buy five gallons of gas."

Jones said maybe he could find that much gas; the pilot said he would take him up for a ride if he could.

"I guess I got the bug that day," he said with a chuckle. "Ever since then, I've wanted to fly sometime. But when we got married and raised a big family, I didn't have the time or money to take the lessons, although for 55 years we've been here across the street from the airport."

Then three years ago, Jones and one of his grandsons picked up the paper and found out that Columbia Pacific Aviation was offering rides for a low price. Jones and his grandson turned out and took the flights.

"When we came back into the office, he said, 'Well, do you want to sign up for lessons today?'" Jones recalled. "My grandson said, 'You bet!'"

Jones was in the middle of the summer season and didn't have time right away, but the next year Jones and another grandson signed up for lessons and got about eight hours of flying in before the grandson had to go back to school, and Jones' flight instructor went to work.

It wasn't until May that Jones was able to try again. On May 20, he received his license and soloed.

"I was dumbfounded," Jones said. "I thought there was no hope for me. I just wasn't getting landings down like (my instructor) would like and I would like. But I managed to get in two poor landings, and then the next day … I just felt like a bird out of a cage!"

Jones has been flying in a Challenger II, a plane made from an aircraft kit. His son and grandchildren decided to build it in Canada, with Jones' help.

"We put it all together and had to have it inspected by the Canadian aviation authority," he said. "They spent about four hours going over this with a fine-toothed comb and couldn't find anything that we'd done wrong. They said, 'That is absolutely unusual and almost impossible.' So we felt really good about putting it together."

Jones said he feels wonderful while in flight.

"You can see all the beautiful land, the farms and everything — you can see what everybody's doing and what they're doing right and wrong and what I've been doing right and wrong all over mine," Jones said. "I've really enjoyed it."

Jones said he would like to fly to a fly-in in Tonasket, and also has aspirations to visit his grandchildren in Fort St. John in British Columbia.

"I thought, 'Wow, this is a wonderful experience for my father,' because he needed something," Jones' daughter Janiel Cramer said. "My mother just passed away two years ago, and he needed something to keep his mind on something else besides her death. This has just been the perfect thing for him … He's got wonderful eyesight, his body is very agile. He's got a lot of strength and he does not look or even appear to be an 89-year-old man. But he is."

Cramer said that she is the oldest of twelve children.

"All my brothers and sisters are really gung-ho for this because they see a light in Dad's eyes," she said. "He's just thrilled to be up there. He's a good flier and he's happy, so we're all really excited about it."

"I can probably tell you that he's probably the oldest student pilot in the United States," said Darrin Jackson, ultralight flying instructor with Jackson Flight Centers. "The first thing I told him is, I can teach anybody to fly … Flying's no different from driving car, but there's a whole bunch of steps that you have to do perfect. When an engine quits in an airplane, you don't flip the four-ways on and pull off to the side of the road. A lot of (Jones') training was his age, and a lot of the hours that we did to get him where he is today was just repetitiveness."

Jones said that he has gotten some interesting reactions from people when they find out about his new license.

"Someone said, 'What in the world do you think you are doing flying an airplane at 89 years old?'" he said. "And I said, 'Well, what better thing to do at 89 years old?'"