BILLINGS — At least a thousand feet above the city, Jaden Marinko keeps his head in the clouds.
“I’ll just be sitting in my house, right? I can hear planes flying over and I’m thinking, ‘What plane is that?’” said Marinko.
He is a flight instructor with Choice Aviation, which two weeks ago, opened a flight school in Billings—the very same schooling company where he once earned his pilot’s license.
“It’s mixing my two passions, which (are) getting to know a lot of different people as well as planes," said Marinko.
His career path seems almost inevitable. His mother worked for an airline, and his father, also a pilot, took him on numerous flights as a child.
“We went up on this intro flight and he gave me controls, let me fly the plane around a little bit, and then, it sounds very cliche, but I was genuinely hooked from that moment," said Marinko.
For aspiring pilots, the sky offers many paths—commercial, cargo, charter, and beyond. For Marinko, flight instruction brings a unique joy.
“The planes are used as tools. They’re used to get you from this location to that location,” he said. “When you’re flight instructing, they’re used as toys. It’s still a very serious thing. That’s kind of where the freedom is in instructing.”
That freedom, he said, keeps flying magical.
“It can be as simple as, ‘Where do you want to go practice today?’" said Marinko. "‘Do you have family over here that you want to go and see? Go fly in, go to lunch, fly back.’”
Marinko would like to encourage the Billings community to experience their intro flight with Choice Aviation to hopefully inspire a lifelong love of flying.
“This is not where you just come to get lessons. You can come and just hang out and ask questions. Come here and study," said Marinko. "I don’t know, it’s like a second home.”
