Tom and Pam Clements are the husband
and wife flying team for N982GA during World Flight 2001.
| They
married in 1989. Pam has been a pilot since 1973. She
raced in the Powder
Puff Derby and the All Women's Transcontinental Air Race
and participated in Sportsman Class aerobatic competition
before getting her first corporate flying job with Merabank
in Phoenix. |
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During
her seven years with that company, she moved from a Cessna
421 to a King Air B100 and then a King Air F90. She also
earned a Learjet type rating and started participating
as a Lear SIC (Second-in-Command) when Merabank used chartered
Lears for some of their trips. After Merabank folded in
the real-estate crash of the late 1980s in Phoenix, she
joined AlliedSignal's flight department, also in Phoenix,
where she remained until taking early retirement in 1998.
While there, she earned type ratings on the Falcon 20
and 50 models and on the Cessna Citation 650. She flew
extensively, both domestic and International, with AlliedSignal
as a PIC (Pilot-in-Command) and spent a great deal of
time performing demonstration flights to prospective buyers
of the |
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AlliedSignal Falcon 20 retrofit program. She has logged
over 9,700 hours of flight time and holds a Certificated
Flight Instructor (CFI) license as well as her Airline
Transport (ATP) pilot's license. |
Tom learned to fly in 1962, while
still in high school, with no intention of ever being a professional
pilot. However, he found that life has a way of turning out
differently than planned, at times, and after college and
a stint in the Navy as an instructor in the Nuclear Power
School, Tom found himself on the road to a life in aviation.
By then, he had earned his Commercial Pilot's license as well
as CFI and multi-engine ratings. Beech Aircraft Corporation
hired him as a ground and flight instructor in their factory
Training Center. At the time, it was quite a small operation
with only five instructors providing factory checkouts to
pilots picking up new King Airs and Dukes. Employed there
for five years, from 1972 through 1976, he experienced a boom
time of heavy growth in aviation, and he left as manager of
the center with a staff of eighteen employees. One of his
most enjoyable jobs at Beech was being the first instructor
for the Super King Air 200 upon its introduction in 1974.
He learned about the airplane from its test pilots and flew
the first prototype. He has been associated with this fine
aircraft ever since.
He transferred to Beechcraft
West of Hayward, California, a factory-owned distributorship,
to try his hand as an airplane salesman. Not finding that
to his liking, he took a job as Chief Pilot for Beacon Oil
Company of Hanford, California, flying a Super King Air 200
as well as an A36 Bonanza.
He saw a need for high-quality,
on-site, King Air and Duke training and formed Flight
Review, Inc. in 1979 for the purpose of providing
service in that field. The company prospered and its training
programs were finally bought by SimCom (now Pan Am International
Flight Training Academy) in January 2000. He worked for eighteen
months with SimCom to aid in the transition and now is semi-retired,
enjoying more time for contract flying with Pam, as well as
golf and refurbishing and flying his Cessna 180.
Tom has logged over 18,000 flight
hours, is a Gold Seal CFI, and has type ratings in the Learjet,
Douglas DC-3, BE-300, and BE-1900. He has written numerous
articles for both "Kilo Alpha," the newsmagazine of the King
Air Operator's Group as well as for "Twin & Turbine" magazine.
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