Beloved Flight Instructor’s Lessons Continue to Replay in Airline Captain’s Head

CFI Mario Feola taught a pilot how to push himself to excellence, even if that push felt like a kick in the butt.

Friday, March 29, 2024 at 08:37 AM ET

Verified

Down below us, on a bubbly set of cotton-white clouds, was a perfectly round rainbow, and in its center, the shadow of our airplane. “It’s a pilot’s cross,” Mario Feola said. [Illustration: Joel Kimmel]

Key Takeaways:

The narrator, an airline captain, attributes his success and ability to handle critical flight emergencies to foundational lessons learned from his first flight instructor, Mario Feola.
Mario's teachings, such as remaining calm under pressure, overcoming fear of weather ("it's only water"), and taking decisive control ("you fly the airplane"), were directly applied by the captain in situations ranging from severe icing and engine failures to navigating stormy weather.
Beyond technical flying skills, Mario's mentorship instilled deeper life values in the narrator, including the importance of grace, patience, faith in others, and the pursuit of excellence.
The captain concludes that Mario's profound impact extended beyond pilot training, ultimately molding him into a better man, mirroring his wise and generous instructor.

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“So, do you ever get to use any of those little things I taught you in the big leagues?”

My first flight instructor, Mario Feola, always loves to ask me questions like that one. He is perpetually curious about how my job is going and how it relates to the tips he passed on to me. He likes to see the ripple effect his teaching had on the making of a learner pilot, especially one like myself, now a new captain on a 45-ton airliner. Instructors are like that, especially wise, gray-haired ones. Mario has as much experience, and gray hair for that matter, as any airman I ever met. He has a big belly, a white beard, and a dominating presence in any room. He’s pretty much a jolly Italian Santa, only happier and more generous if that’s possible. This Santa, however, doesn’t have any reindeer—just a small, single-engine Cessna.