“It’s Never Too Late” is a series that tells the stories of people that resolve to pursue their dreams on their very own terms.
There was no more live music. Patrick Milando couldn’t draw a different conclusion. But perhaps he could turn around.
It was a summer day in 2020, the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, and Mr. Milando, playing the French horn, drove through a closed and empty Times Square. He was 67 years old then and had been a skilled musician for nearly half a century, from the Metropolitan Opera to a dozen years inLion King” Now this musical, like many others, has closed. At an age when his peers were finishing their jobs, Milando began to consider a new way to pay bills – 1,500 meters above his old way.
Sometimes we happily enter a completely new life. Sometimes we jump happily when pushed.
Mr. Milando started flying single-engine planes before the pandemic, but only as a hobby. (He had approximately 300 hours of flying time.) He wondered if he could actually become a professional pilot? He was too old to fly on major airlines (maximum age limit was 65), but there was no age limit for teaching others fly.
Mr. Milando found a small flight school in New Jersey and began earning his commercial pilot certificate. The other pilots were usually several decades younger, and he never once noticed another French horn player. (He observed that most of them worked on computers.) But he felt at home; flying unlocked something in him.
“There is freedom, autonomy. You are the master of your own fate,” he said.
Today, 71-year-old Milando has two careers – it seems that the death of live music was greatly exaggerated. He divides his time between the orchestra and the friendly sky, where he teaches beginner pilots, just as he once did himself. (The following interview has been edited and condensed.)
How did you grow to be curious about flying?
As a musician, I traveled a lot. I used to be very intrigued by the aspect of flying. When my kids were little, I got a flight simulator for fun. I may very well be heard shouting within the basement, “Hold on, pull up!” When I turned 60, my wife arranged for me to take flying lessons. From there I got my private pilot license.
What do you want about flying?
It’s very peaceful. One of probably the most nice moments is once you fly through the clouds and depend on your instruments for training, after which suddenly you might be above the clouds and have a beautiful panorama in front of you.
It’s a rush. The first time you do it, it’s life-changing. Life changing and life-confirming.
It seems a little riskier than playing the horn. Was it ever scary?
The scariest thing was landing for the primary time. I remember I had an opera in West Palm Beach and I used to be there with my instructor at 450 meters and I used to be the tarmac and pondering, Well, I’ve just got to land this plane. Then I felt like I used to be going to cry. It was just intense and amazing.
What made you think about flying professionally?
When the pandemic hit, all of us musicians thought, “Oh my God, what are we going to do?” There was a belief that music would stop working; Broadway was never going to come back.
I remember driving through Times Square someday and seeing how the whole lot was boarded up. It was really scary and I believed, OK, let’s try career number 2. I’m not one to sit around and do nothing.
So how did you do it?
I discovered a small flight school in New Jersey called Sky Training and got my industrial rating. Later that summer, I flew to Minnesota to grow to be a certified instructor so I could teach other people to fly. I also got my seaplane rating, only for the hell of it. I finally took a seaplane over Lake Como in Italy and waved to – who lives there? George Clooney?
Anyway, now I teach people to fly the whole lot from a single-engine Cessna to a multi-engine Piper.
Are there similarities between music and flying?
My success as a musician has all the time come after I was completely focused on the moment. When you set aside all of the unnecessary things that are happening around you. This is something you will have to do once you fly.
As a teacher, it happened to me that a student froze 30 meters from the runway. I had to push his hands away from the controls and take them. He was in a mental freeze that he couldn’t get out of. You all the time have to be here and now.
How often do you fly now?
This is the difficult part because I’m chargeable for eight shows a week of The Lion King. It’s dark on Monday, so I normally spend the day with the scholars and just sustain to date with details about flying different planes. Then I normally hire someone to play for me one other day of the week and teach more people. As a result, I fly perhaps 15 hours a week.
Do you will have any advice for people who find themselves curious about making this modification but are afraid they’re too old to learn something new?
I say: go, definitely go. There isn’t any reason not to do that.
Are you done making big changes?
I’m like a shark, I actually have to move. I actually have run eight marathons; I like learning languages. Now I’m looking into getting my Air Transport Pilot, ATP, certificate so I can start flying people to the Caribbean. This is definitely the last step in aviation.
Every time I say I’m fed up, my kids say, “Yes, I’ve heard that before.” So I suppose I’ll get some ATP
