2 (From the Jumpseat, Emanuel Prince, Jared Savage) Artwork

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The SWAPA Number

2 (From the Jumpseat, Emanuel Prince, Jared Savage)

February 10, 2026 • SWAPA • Season 7 • Episode 2

0:00 | 1:11:05

Today's SWAPA Number is two because today we're sitting down and telling the stories of two pilots in our ranks that are some of the most powerful we've had the honor of sharing on this show.

Midway First Officer Emanuel Prince grew up on Chicago's west side in a two-bedroom apartment with his eight siblings. While most of his friends were trying to be like Mike, Prince had his heart set on being a pilot. Despite a multitude of challenges during his childhood, Prince landed an internship with McDonald's corporate flight department and never looked back. He burned the candle at both ends for years as a Southwest ground operations employee, building time when he could, but ultimately resigned from the Company to fly for several carriers before finding himself back at Southwest in January of 2024.

Baltimore First Officer Jared Savage grew up in Compton, California. He was raised by his mother and grandmother and grew up with his twin. During his senior year of high school, Jared obtained his private pilot license at the age of 18, the same year he was accepted to Tuskegee University. Unable to afford continuing his flight training, Jared worked as a lineman at Moton Field for almost a year, eventually earning enough money to complete his instrument rating. While finishing his training, he met some key figures in his life that helped him land a scholarship and proceeded to become the first flight instructor for the Red Tail Scholarship Foundation. Jared is still heavily involved with the Red Tail Flight Academy in Tuskegee, Alabama.

The road to the right seat of Southwest Airlines is never easy, but these two stories of overcoming adversity and somehow managing to give back are ones we can all learn from.

If you have any feedback for us at all, please drop us a line at comm@swapa.org or tap here to send us a text.

Matt McCants:

Today's SWAPA Number is two because today we're sitting down and telling the stories of two pilots in our ranks that are some of the most powerful we've had the honor of sharing on this show.

Tony Mulhare:

Matt McCants:

The road to the right seat of Southwest Airlines is never easy, but these two stories of overcoming adversity and somehow managing to give back are ones we can all learn from.

Tony Mulhare:

I'm Tony Mulhare.

Matt McCants:

And I'm Matt McCants.

Tony Mulhare:

And this is our conversation with Prince and Jared.

Matt McCants:

Guys, last year, one of our goals was to find and highlight stories from the membership about all the great things our pilots are doing, both in and outside of the cockpit. But yours in particular were ones that I knew we had to follow up on. Not only because of what you're doing today, but how you got here.

Prince, let's start with you and tell us about what your early life was like.

Emanuel Prince:

Sure. So, Emanuel Prince. I grew up in Chicago on the west side of the city. As far as wanting, my early days in life I knew I wanted to be a pilot. It all stemmed from a cartoon called TaleSpin. It would come on every morning before I went to school. And I really just wanted to be a pilot. I had no vision on how to get there, no roadmap, no role models or any way on how I wanted to continue fulfill that journey of being a pilot.

So while I was in high school, one day we had something called Principal for a Day, it's something that happens in Chicago Public School systems where major corporations, they have to give back to the public schools. When giving back, it was the corporations, it had to be their executives. So once the assembly was over with, I went up and I spoke to a gentleman who was our principal for a day, his name was Jerry Calabrese. Jerry was an executive from McDonald's, from what I knew at that moment. So I just said, "Thank you for taking the time out your day to come and speak to us and I really appreciate it."

So right away he said, "Oh, no problem. It's my honor." And he pulled a card out his pocket and he offered me an internship at McDonald's. That's all I knew at that time. So in my mind I'm like, "Well, I'm working at Best Buy, there's no way I want to go and flip burgers at McDonald's." So I took the card out of my pocket at the end of the night, as you do, take everything out your pocket. I put it on my nightstand. And I remember reading it and saying, "Jerry Calabrese, vice president of McDonald's Corporation." I'm like, "Man, this might be someone I should call."

So I reached out to him via email and I remember sending the email, and I got a reply from his secretary Karen Bonfulio. And Karen reached out to me, she said, "Hey, I want you to resend that email, you need to clean it up a little bit." And I kind of chuckled because I was like, "Oh, man, I didn't hit spell check on it." So Karen, I remember her deleting the email, I sent a second email back. And when I sent the second email back, she's like, "That's much better." We got a chance to talk and he offered me the internship at McDonald's Corporation. And at this moment I was like, "Okay, I'll take this. This is not a burger flipping type of opportunity."

Matt McCants:

Okay.

Emanuel Prince:

So I met with him at, they call it Hamburger University. That's what they call it.

Matt McCants:

Yeah. Yeah, that's it.

Emanuel Prince:

That's what McDonald's calls their headquarters. So I went out to Oakbrook, met with them at that time. And when I got out there, initially I didn't even think about this, I was so excited. I remember taking a city train to the end of its line, the green line to the end of the line at Harlem and Lake, for those that are familiar with Chicago transit system. And then I took the metro train and then a bus to McDonald's headquarters.

So I went there and I was just amazed. I was like, "Wow." So the internship actually, that first year, was in the accounting department. And I had no clue on what I was doing, but they trained me for the position. It was just basically for exposure. So I had a really good summer there working. At the end of the summer, Jerry invited me to go to lunch with him. And at this lunch, he said, "So what is it that you want to do when you finish up with high school?" And I was like, "Well, I really want to be a pilot, but I know that's not possible." So I just remember him getting up from the table and he was just angry. He was like, "What do you mean it's not possible? Meet me here tomorrow." And he gave me a time, I want to say it was 7:30 sharp, so 7:30 AM.

So I met him back at headquarters the next morning and we went to West Chicago, which I didn't even know exists because again, I grew up on the west side of the city. So we roll up to this open area with these big white buildings. And I'm looking, I'm like, "Yo, this is cool. Wait, this is an airport? This can't be O'Hare." Again, I only knew Midway and I knew O'Hare, those were the only two airports I knew growing up in Chicago, and Meigs, but obviously that was shut down during some time of my young life.

So we get inside this place and I see people sitting around and they introducing themselves as pilots. I'm like, "Oh this is cool." And then we go inside of the hanger and I see a Global Express and a Gulfstream and I'm just like, "Wow," just amazed. So over the course of the day, they showed me around. At the end of the day, they offered me an internship to work there the following summer-

Matt McCants:

Okay.

Emanuel Prince:

... which was the summer of my junior year. So I went on and that following summer I did an internship there.

Matt McCants:

There at the airport?

Emanuel Prince:

Now, if you remember me ... Yes, sir, at the airport at the McDonald's corporate flight department. So if you remember me explaining to you how I got to the initial interview which was in Oakbrook, I didn't even think about when I accepted this interview just out of excitement how I was going to get to the corporate flight department which was in West Chicago and I lived in the west side of Chicago. I'm chuckling now just thinking about how motivated I was.

So coming from the west side of Chicago, I took again, the green line to the end of its line. And then at that stop, I took the metro train to the West Chicago stop. And once I got off at the West Chicago, I had to walk five-and-a-half miles-

Matt McCants:

What?

Emanuel Prince:

... from the metro stop to the hangar.

Tony Mulhare:

That's a commute, man.

Emanuel Prince:

Yeah. So did that. Then after I finished I was like, I was tired. I was tired, but I was like, "Well, everything happens for a reason. This is an opportunity. I'm not going to complain to them that I can't make it there, I got to figure it out." So I did that. Over the course of the summer as I was doing that, one day I came in and I was drenched, just soaking wet.

So I'll never forget this. My supervisor, his name was Terry Ludrick. And Terry was like, "Hey, why are you wet," when I walked in. I was like, "I just walked, I just walked here." He goes, "You just walked from the parking lot, why are you soaking wet?" He's like, "Come on, let's get you changed. Let's try to see if we can find you some maintenance clothes or something," to try to put on a jumpsuit. So he started digging deeper. He's like, "What do you mean you walked from the parking lot?" I said, "No." I said, "I walked from the West Chicago stop." He goes, "How long have you been doing that?" I said, "The entire summer." He goes, "What?" And I say, "Yeah, the entire summer, this is what I've been doing."

So unfortunately, or fortunately, he got on the phone with Jerry and told Jerry about it, and Jerry called me, he was fuming. He was just like, "Why would you not tell me? I could have found a way to assist you, to help get you there." So the next day, to make a long story short, Jerry ended up, he had an old car and he actually ended up letting me have that older car and I drove that for the rest of the summer, and that's how I made it to my internship. It was maybe the last week or so.

But the moral of that was just that if you get an opportunity, I don't think you should look for handouts on how to continue to get there. You need to make every effort that you possibly can in order to make that opportunity work the best for you. And a lot of that just stems from my childhood, of growing up was I grew up in a two-bedroom apartment on the west side of Chicago. I was the oldest of nine kids, my mother had nine kids and she had limited resources. And I just remember watching her do everything she possibly could with the limited resources she had and that was just instilled in me, for me to make sure that don't complain, there's a lot of people who have it a lot worse than you. When you have an opportunity, take full advantage of it.

Tony Mulhare:

Jared, let's flip the script to you for a minute. Tell us about the early years for Jared.

Jared Savage:

Yeah. So I was born and raised in Compton, California, which I know a lot of people have some preconceived notions about, but I loved growing up there. I was raised by my mom and my grandma and had a twin brother, so that was a pretty cool experience. Ever since I can really remember, I've always been fascinated with planes. I saw this show called the Koala Brothers when I was a kid and there was these little clay koalas, animated, that would just hop in their plane and go fly and help people, and that was the whole premise of the show. But it just seemed really, really cool to me.

I don't remember how old I was, but I couldn't have been older than about seven or eight and I just told my mom, "I like planes." She thought I wanted to be an engineer, but I never really wanted to be an engineer. It was way too much work and I always knew I wanted to fly them. So there was an airport, ironically the Compton Airport, that was right around the corner from my house. So I can't count how many days after school I would just get dropped off at the airport and I would just watch the planes, and go sit in the planes, and sit in the classroom and fly the simulator. I just loved being around the airport and all the other pilots. It was just the coolest thing ever.

So when I was in probably middle school, starting out high school, me and my mom really had a talk and we said, "I really want to fly. I don't want to work on planes, I want to fly them." And it was a lot of sacrifice, but she finally got over her fear of me flying and we started working towards making that dream a reality. And it really came down to a lot of sacrifices. No birthday gifts, no Christmas gifts, no sports games, no extracurriculars for me. I was just so focused. I'm like, "How can I save up enough money to get these flight lessons started?" When I was a junior in high school, I was able to start my flight lessons and I had already been taking discovery flights here and there. When they had the free ones at the airport, I would go to different airports and just get on whatever plane I could.

But I was able to start flight lessons as a junior, and I finished up my private as a senior in high school when I had just turned 18 and that was just the best feeling in the world. My mom was my first passenger, of course, and I flew her over to French Valley. We got a way too expensive hamburger. It didn't seem expensive at the time. I wasn't paying for it, so who cares?

Tony Mulhare:

Yeah, the old $100 hamburger.

Jared Savage:

Yeah. But yeah, she was my first passenger, and then I took my brother and grandmother up. I just remember after getting that private I was like, "Yeah, I got to go all the way with this." I knew I wanted to be an airline pilot, but kind of like Prince, I didn't have any family that even worked for the airlines, let alone was a pilot. I didn't know any airline pilots growing up. We did the best we could to just get me introduced to as many pilots as we could, but it was just a lot of hard work, a lot of prayer, a lot of research and studying. And I was able to get my private and almost my instrument, I started my instrument and then I went to college in Tuskegee University and they wanted me to go early. When I applied they said, "Can you start in the summer and take some classes," so I did. I didn't end up finishing up my private in high school, but I was pretty close.

Tony Mulhare:

Yeah. So Jared, you were working, somewhere in there, you were working at, is it Moton Field?

Jared Savage:

Yeah. So when I went to Tuskegee University, I couldn't afford to pay for any more training and I needed some money just to be a college student. So when I was at the airport, I think I had visited with my mom actually when she was in town, the manager, he knew I was a pilot, he knew I like planes and he said, "Well, you can just work here if you want."

So I started working as a lineman at the airport right down the street from college. So I would go to class and after class was over, go to the airport, do the lineman. Come home, do homework, go to sleep. Wake up, rinse and repeat. And I was able to save up just enough money to go and continue my instrument training, which I had just about finished back in high school. And being a lineman was one of the best experiences I had. It got me really involved with the lineups, and the fueling, and wing balance, and getting planes in and out and airport operations, which was a really good experience to have as a pilot already.

Like I said, it gave me the funds to keep going with my instrument and try to get my instrument knocked out. They didn't really have a flight school at the time in Tuskegee so I had to go up the road to Montgomery, which was about a 50-minute drive from Tuskegee, but you got to do what you got to do. I'm not going to complain since Prince had to walk five-and-a-half miles each way every day for his internship. But yeah, I had to do that. And when I was in Montgomery, my instructor, he knew that I was working on instrument, he kind of knew my budget and he said, "Hey, I think there's a scholarship that is running out of this airport right now and I think they're looking for guys just like you." His name was Chris Hamm, he was a military guy and he was my flight instructor. And he said, "Let me give them a call and just see if they'll be interested, no promises."

Tony Mulhare:

Yeah. So I think there's just an interesting parallel between both of your stories there. You're seeking opportunities, but along the way there's also somebody that steps in and provides a little bit of mentorship, a little bit of guidance and honestly, quite a bit of help. So tell me about Chris Hamm, and General Sparrow and Hammond Cobb?

Jared Savage:

Yeah. So like I said, Chris, he was my instructor and he said, "Yeah, I'll get in contact with these guys." And the next day, I got a call from General Sparrow, who I didn't know anything about at the time. And he said, "Hey, we heard about you, we'd like to interview you to see if you'd be a good fit for this scholarship that we just started a couple of years ago." And it was a local scholarship in Montgomery, I'd never heard of it, but I said, "Yeah, I'll go."

So I went down, I sat and interviewed right before one of my next lessons, and I met with William Sparrow, who I ended up finding out was the Brigadier General for the fighter unit in Montgomery. So he oversaw the entire squadron there and he was also a FedEx pilot. And a guy named Hammond Cobb, who was the foundation's treasury, a really good philanthropist, fantastic guy. They were both board members and they interviewed me, and I told them kind of what I wanted to do. I had an internship lined up that would hopefully pay for some more training, but I was going to figure it out. I had to make this possible. And they said, "Yeah, we're definitely, we're here to not really force people to become pilots with our money. We want people who are going to be pilots and we're just going to help them get there a little bit quicker."

So I went to GE Aviation to work on some engines, jet engines, during the summer of 2018 in an internship. And I came back to Tuskegee in the fall and I had my scholarship from the Red Tail Scholarship Foundation, and I flew like a madman. I flew as much as I could possibly fly to get my CFI, and I got my commercial and CFI done in about a five-month span and I started teaching in 2019. And I've been teaching not full-time obviously because I'm an airline pilot now, but I've never stopped working with the scholarship since that time.

Those guys, and I'll talk more about it later, but Swapper, and that's Will Sparrow, his nickname is Swapper, Rich Peach, who's a Delta captain, also an F-35 pilot now, he's one of the board members, and Hammond Cobb, who's one of the board members, the philanthropist treasurer, are just three of the most influential people I've ever met in my life. And those are the founders of the scholarship that I'll talk more about later.

Like you were saying earlier, I think that luck is when hard work meets opportunity, and everybody ... I was just blessed enough to be at the right place at the right time with the right person to have the opportunity to accelerate my flight training. I pray to God I would have been an airline pilot without the scholarship, but man, it made it a lot easier to not have to worry about trying to work and do classes and then fly at night.

Matt McCants:

Okay, Prince, let's come back to you real quick. Let me see if I'm following this. You land the internship, the original internship at McDonald's, and then Jerry really hears about how you want to be a pilot, gets you over to the flight department. Now you start walking miles at a time to go to this second opportunity at McDonald's and that gets your foot in the door with aviation. But your second foot in the door was getting hired at Southwest Airlines on the ground op side, is that right?

Emanuel Prince:

Yes, sir. And just to go back a little bit, that McDonald's internship, the second time around that you spoke of, was in the corporate flight department. So while I was there, I got a chance to meet a lot of pilots obviously.

Matt McCants:

Sure.

Emanuel Prince:

Met pilots, tech ops, or maintenance as they call them, chief pilot and all those great things. So I built relationships with those guys and girls and still to this day, I still have a great relationship.

One that really sticks out to me is my relationship with Captain Quincy Flemmings. At the time, she was a captain over there. And still to this day, I still speak to her. She's over at United Airlines and she actually does a lot of work with the union as well over there. But I still speak to them.

So going from McDonald's to college, I went to Part 141 school called Daniel Webster College up in Nashua, New Hampshire. Had never been to New Hampshire. I know what I needed to do in order to maintain my focus was I needed to get far away from Chicago from the distractions that were happening. Just right before I had left to go to college that particular summer, I remember my cousin and I, we were walking from the store and we were accidentally targeted in a shooting with someone who looked alike of a young lady who was beat up by some guys and it was her brothers that were coming to retaliate. And I remember getting of the phone, jumping behind a car that when that particular day this had happened and I remember, "Oh, my God, this is getting bad." I'm like, "When is this going to be over?" I was already lined up to go to college.

So I remember getting from behind that car, made it to a phone at that time and I called Quincy and I told her about it. Quincy was the pilot from McDonald's that I had built a relationship with. And she had actually came and picked me up and she said, "No, you're going to stay with me until it's time for you to go. I need to make sure that nothing happens to you," until it was time for me to leave to go to college. That's just one of the things that just stuck with me. She made sure that I was well taken care of through that time that I really needed her.

So I go onto Daniel Webster College and I get there, yeah, it was a different environment for me. I'm coming from the west side of Chicago, geographically obviously different. At my school, I'm one of five minorities out of I think it was 600 students at the time at Daniel Webster College so it was a culture shock to me. I was uncomfortable, to be honest with you, but I had one mission in mind and that mission was for me to go, obtain my pilot credentials and get a job as an airline pilot.

So I get there and first year, I'm excited. We start flying right away. Finished up my private and I got my private pilot's license that year and I was just stoked. I was like, "This is awesome." I'm like, "A dream come true." But little did I know, I had more work to do. After my first year, ran into financial troubles and realized, "Oh, man, I can't afford this." So I actually had to stop flying and that was really, really, really heartbreaking to me because I had my mind, my heart set on one thing and then ended up doing obviously something totally different.

And that something different was, I remember having this conversation with my mentors ... And this is why mentors are so important, where you can just-

Matt McCants:

Sure, absolutely.

Emanuel Prince:

... bounce things off them. And coming to realizing that there's more than one way, everybody's journey was different. Some of us are easy, some of us are hard. And my mentor said, "Have you ever thought about still doing flying, but switching your major to aviation management?" And I was like, "Absolutely not." And the reason why is because I'm like, "No, I want to fly."

Well, the more and more I was talking to my mentor, talking to her about it, we really dug into what we could do. So what we did was we drew up a plan, get a degree in aviation management, get a job in management. After that, use that money from management to pay for flight training.

Matt McCants:

Okay.

Emanuel Prince:

So that's exactly what happened. After I finished with management, I decided to start working for a company called JetBlue Airways because I was in Boston. So I met JetBlue and got a promotion from a ... I started in Provo, and then they outsourced Provo and I got a promotion to be a supervisor in what they call the GO, which is ground operations.

Matt McCants:

Okay.

Emanuel Prince:

While I was there, I did not like ... I was young so I didn't really understand that in corporate America, it's not about what you know, it's about who you know.

Matt McCants:

Oh, yeah.

Emanuel Prince:

And I was kind of like Jared, I knew that hard work always, always wins in the end. So I kept getting passed over my second and third promotion. I'm like, "Why is it like this?" I'm like, "Maybe it's just the company." So I instead of me complaining about something, I decided to look elsewhere.

While I was looking, I came upon a ramp supervisor position in Baltimore, Maryland. I knew about Southwest because when I was in college, I was actually working on the ground for a company called Comair that went out of business as a ground handling employee. So I knew about Southwest so I interviewed and I get offered the position. And it was time for me to move to Baltimore, I was starting January 23rd of 2014 in Baltimore as a rep agency [inaudible 00:25:35].

Matt McCants:

So your first day as a Southwest employee was January 23rd, 2014?

Emanuel Prince:

Yes, sir, that's it.

Tony Mulhare:

So Jared, we have similar stories going on. We've got guys, both of you have worked as linesmen in ground operations, in various companies and airports around the country. You're at school there at Tuskegee University. So you mentioned it just a few minutes ago, but you talked about the Red Tail Scholarship Foundation, and General Sparrow and Hammond Cobb. So talk to me a little bit more about that scholarship foundation, where that comes from, tie that into the history of the Tuskegee Airmen and how that helped you finish your road to getting your commercial and ATP.

Jared Savage:

Yeah, absolutely. So the scholarship was really started, and it was started by General William Sparrow and Rich Peace, and they were both in the fighter squadron unit in Montgomery together. One day they looked around and they said, "Man, there's really not a lot of minority pilots." In fact, at the time, Rich Peace was the only one in his squadron and it was a squadron that was dedicated to the Tuskegee Airmen, the tails of the fighter jets were painted red. And they looked around and said, "Why is there only one out of I don't know how many pilots in the entire squadron? This isn't right." And they did some more research and they quickly realized this isn't solely in our unit, this is everywhere and this is a problem.

And between meeting Hammond and really having the want to get it started, they were able to raise some money and get a few scholarships started, and it just grew from there with the fundraising. When I was brought into the scholarship, it had been running for about a year, year-and-a-half at that point. But it was really expensive because they're paying for rental planes, they're paying outside instructors and they're paying for materials. Big picture, they really did want this thing to grow.

So once I got my CFI, I took every single student pretty much that the scholarship had to offer, which was a good bit of students. Again, all this time I'm in college. I'm a full-time student in college, so I'm taking a full credit load, I'm driving back-and-forth to Montgomery which is, like I said, about a 50-minute drive every single day to make this work because I really did believe in the mission.

Later that year, later in 2019, they were able to buy their first aircraft. A little Piper Cherokee, it was beat up.

Tony Mulhare:

Yeah.

Jared Savage:

Horrible avionics. But I looked at it and said, "You know what, this will do. We'll make it work."

Tony Mulhare:

Yeah, it's the best way to learn.

Jared Savage:

Yeah, best way to learn is those steam gauges that halfway work. So we got the plane. At that time, the FBO at Moton Field in Tuskegee had actually closed, so we were able to take over-

Tony Mulhare:

Okay.

Jared Savage:

... that building. Brought the plane down and the scholarship moved from being just handing money and checks to another flight school to now having our own flight school.

The nice part about that was I had to learn really, really quickly about maintenance, about fuel, about taxes, about everything it takes to run a nonprofit, and manage a fleet and manage a building because it was on me. They really did trust me to say, "Here's a plane, here's a building. Go make it work." And obviously, I wasn't alone, but me and the couple other guys that were either CFIs or close to CFIs, we would get together. We were all in school, we would get together after school, go to the airport. We would teach, we would do paperwork. We would be there until 2:00, 3:00, 4:00 in the morning doing homework and doing paperwork every single night.

But we got it, we got it up and running. We started with one plane, a Cherokee, we bought a 172, we bought a couple more planes and now we're up to six planes is where we're at right now.

Tony Mulhare:

One of the things I wanted to point out for some of our listeners that don't have an Air Force background is heritage squadrons pay homage to squadrons that went before us and stories that went before us, and the Alabama Air National Guard, their squadron is the heritage squadron for the Tuskegee Airmen. So there's just a lot of heritage that points back to this, the Red Tails and the Tuskegee Airmen, and that's obviously the foundation story for this scholarship that you're talking about. So talk to me a little bit about that background.

Jared Savage:

Yeah, absolutely. The Tuskegee Airmen, some people are familiar with, but they operated in World War II between about 1942 and '45. And because African Americans really weren't allowed to be in other squadrons, they created this squadron called the Tuskegee Airmen where they trained in Tuskegee. And the entire goal of the squadron was actually to prove that African Americans were not capable to fly and were not really fit to be naval or aviators in the Air Force. And by the end of the war, they actually had the best record. They didn't lose a single bomber, which is the only squadron to actually hold that record and they were widely regarded as some of the best pilots in the world.

And their legacy was greatly forgotten because of what was happening in the United States not just during the war, but after the war in terms of civil rights. So a lot of these wonderful aviators came home and they couldn't get jobs as pilots at home. They could go and risk their life overseas, but then if they came back, they would come back and not be able to fly a 172 or just any planes in the States. So their legacy was greatly forgotten until a lot of organizations like the Tuskegee Airmen Foundation, they've come along and really brought back to life a lot of the history that was, I don't want to say lost, but that just really wasn't told.

And the whole goal of the scholarship is we want to create more pilots than the Tuskegee Airmen originally created, which was 996. So that's our goal, to train 996 Tuskegee Airmen, hundreds of mechanics, and that's how I believe and we believe to keep the legacy going is to give people the best opportunity that they have to keep training.

Tony Mulhare:

Yeah.

Jared Savage:

Because the Tuskegee Airmen had to get that opportunity to show, "Hey, we're good, we're really good. Just give us a chance and we'll blow it out the water." And that's really what I believe and what we believe in the scholarship is you give people who may not otherwise have an opportunity an opportunity and you have no idea what they could do with that opportunity.

Tony Mulhare:

Yeah. And I think it's just like Prince was talking about, there's so many obstacles in the way for the average young man or the average young woman to get through all of these steps, and all of these steps take so much time and money. It's just a big entry obstacle into this industry that we love, but it has its drawbacks and it's certainly hard to get started, especially when you don't know where to start.

So we'll come back to your story here in a second. Matt, why don't you throw it back over to Prince?

Matt McCants:

Yeah. Prince, speaking of the time and money it takes to get here, you now have your next job in ground ops at Southwest Airlines in Baltimore, but you haven't given up on this dream of being a pilot. So how you get there can't be easy and it sounds like you did some burning of the candle at both ends.

Emanuel Prince:

Yes, sir. Working in Baltimore, it taught me a lot. Being very grateful, one, for having an opportunity to be at Southwest Airlines. Being a Southwest Airlines employee I think it's a great honor and it's a privilege, and I really mean it. I know sometimes we get in the way of, when we have higher ups or when something don't go our way, or whatever the case is, we have an opportunity, we want to complain. But starting on the ramp as a ramp supervisor, it really, really gave me the opportunity to exercise my discipline. I remember as a ramp supervisor, I would work at least 60 hours a week just to try to survive as far as financially.

But then not only that, keep in mind I was also a private pilot and I wanted to make sure that I remained current. Not proficient because I couldn't afford to remain proficient, but at least currency with the three takeoffs and landings and proceeding days that we had to do that, so I did that on the side. So once I promoted to manager, I started making a little bit more money. So I was, they called it an MRO.

Matt McCants:

Okay.

Emanuel Prince:

A manager of ramp and operations. So I was making roughly about 70 grand or so as an MRO at the time and I felt a little bit of breathing room. I can try to do a little something as far as pick up, instead of flying for currency, I could maybe get an extra flight in.

Matt McCants:

Sure.

Emanuel Prince:

Try to do something a little bit more. Promoted to a manager in Baltimore and then I decided to change things up after the Southwest-AirTran acquisition or merger happened. Ended up going to Atlanta, Georgia. I went down there and while I was down there, I was around a bunch of other folks that I actually went to college with. And they showed me, it was this one airport ... And Jared can assist me with this, I believe. It was Charlie Brown was the name of the airport. So I remember going over there and they actually had a flight club and these guys would meet all the time. And I was like, "Oh, this is pretty cool."

So now, I'm starting to be around more minority pilots so I'm like, "Okay, I'm feeling pretty comfortable. I can talk, I can speak up." So I started flying a little bit more with them, and then I had an opportunity to take an assistant station manager position in Detroit, Michigan. So I left Atlanta and went up to Detroit, and I did that, one, for the challenge and two, for more money. Because the quicker I made more money, I knew the faster it would be for me to-

Matt McCants:

Build more hours.

Emanuel Prince:

... get to my ... Yeah, build more hours, exactly. So I get up to Detroit. And then the thing I had working against me in Detroit was now having a bigger role, I wasn't able to fly as often as I would like. But I was making more money, so I was able to save that money for when I actually had the time to eventually fly.

So I did really well in Detroit. Detroit, I had great opportunity, I met a lot of good people up there. And my next opportunity came was when I was asked to come back to Chicago and be the assistant station manager of Chicago at Midway. So now, I'm an assistant, I'm making a little bit more money and I'm like, "Okay, now I'm really able to breath a little bit."

Matt McCants:

Sure.

Emanuel Prince:

I'm back in my home turf, so I know things a little bit better in Chicago. So while I was in Chicago, I was able to ... I met this young lady who introduced me to this organization that she was working with, it was called Tuskegee NEXT.

And just to pick up where Jared left off at, Tuskegee NEXT, the purpose of this organization was to, A, honor the legacy of the Tuskegee Airmen. But also, two, it was a local businessman who started it and he wanted to initially pay for 100 kids to get their private pilots license. And I was like, "Man, this is awesome." So I became a mentor for the program. And the reason why I became a mentor for the program was because, if you recall me telling you earlier, there was many a people who helped me out. And I think that if I can be the person who can help a young Prince out and help them to get through aviation just by, whether it's mentorship, it doesn't necessarily have to be money. It can be conversations, it can be helping making decisions. It can be just simply setting a role, being a role model for them.

So I became a mentor for Tuskegee NEXT and I've been doing that now, again, since 2018. So I'm coming up on, what, eight years of being a mentor with Tuskegee NEXT. And over the course of the eight years, they surpassed their 100 students of paying for scholarships. And just like Jared mentioned, now the founder, he wants to continue to go up to 900-plus folks that he wants to help to get their private pilots license.

Tony Mulhare:

Wow, that's amazing.

Matt McCants:

Wow.

Emanuel Prince:

And not only that, but what I really like about this Tuskegee NEXT Foundation is it teaches them life skills as well. A lot of these individuals that get these opportunities for Tuskegee NEXT is people who come from under-serviced communities and those that just generally lack resources. It hit home with me because I was one of those people. So what better way to get yourself involved in something and give back to the same mission and the same case in which you actually came from?

So I've been doing that and it's just been a wonderful experience just watching these young men and women grow. And you'll be in the airports and you'll see them, a lot of them are regional carriers now. And every summer when they have a new class of cadets that come into the program, I'm able to come in and speak to them. Then every summer, I make sure I get at least one individual who I mentor their duration of their time in Tuskegee NEXT for the summer aviation program. But then also, I still continue to mentor them past that because mentorship doesn't just stop, it continues.

Matt McCants:

I love it.

Tony Mulhare:

Yeah. So obviously, mentorship is a recurring theme here and I think that rings true for so many of us, just having someone that can kind of point out the way to you and give you a roadmap from where you are to these possibilities.

So Jared, along those lines, you are standing up this flight school there, you're finishing up school yourself, your degree. So walk me through your roadmap to here.

Jared Savage:

Yeah, absolutely. So after I graduated college in 2021, I had the hours to go off to the airlines, I had my 1500, but I really just didn't feel ready to go. I was still doing work with the scholarship and I just didn't really feel like it was my time to go to the airlines just yet. So I got an apartment and I stayed in Tuskegee for another year and just kept teaching. And I started putting in my applications for the airlines around the winter of 2021.

And they were really hiring, the regionals especially were hiring quickly, so I got a couple of responses. And my now wife, who was not my wife at the time, she had just gotten a job with the government and we were trying to decide, "Okay. Well, should we move, should we stay? What should we do?" And I was evaluating my airline options at that point. But I got a call from Republic Airways, who offered me an interview and they had a base up in Washington, DC. So I went, I interviewed, great experience in the interview. They offered me the job before I even got to the airport to catch my flight home.

Tony Mulhare:

Oh, that's awesome.

Jared Savage:

And ironically, that was actually my first experience with Southwest Airlines because my flight, they did their interviews in Indianapolis and my flight had canceled to go to the interview. And I called them up and I said, "Hey, I really want to come, but my flight canceled." So they actually bought me a ticket on Southwest. So I flew from Birmingham ... I drove all the way from where I lived to Birmingham.

Tony Mulhare:

Yeah.

Jared Savage:

I flew to Orlando and then flew up to Indianapolis. I landed at 1:00 in the morning and then I had my interview at 7:00 in the morning that day.

Tony Mulhare:

Yeah.

Jared Savage:

So Southwest got me to my airline interview, my first airline interview, so a little foreshadowing there.

But yeah, after I got the job at Republic, we moved up to DC and I flew for them for just about a year-and-a-half.

Tony Mulhare:

Okay.

Jared Savage:

All that time, I was always wondering, "Am I going to take the upgrade? What's the next steps for me?" And I was still doing my work with the scholarship up from DC.

I really wasn't thinking about Southwest Airlines, to be completely honest with you. I didn't really know where I was going to go, but Southwest had never crossed my mind. But I flew with a captain and he had just gotten an offer from Southwest and he was just so excited. He was talking, "Southwest this, Southwest that. I love this, I love that."

Tony Mulhare:

Right.

Jared Savage:

He was sipping the Kool-Aid and more. But at the end of the trip I was like, "Man, that sounds ... He didn't really say anything I didn't like, it sounds pretty good."

So I did some research on the airline and talked it over with my wife. And I said, "Do you think I should apply? I don't know if I'm even a good candidate." And my wife said, "If you don't apply, we're going to have an issue." So I threw in the application and got an interview, got an interview invite a couple of weeks later.

And this is the part I don't think you guys actually know about. But I told William Sparrow from the scholarship that I had an interview for Southwest and he said, "Oh, Southwest, I didn't know that was on your radar, but my best friend is a captain over there. Maybe he can give you a letter of recommendation." So he ended up giving me the number to a guy who I had no idea who he was at the time, his name was Matt Grew, who's currently the chief pilot in Baltimore.

Tony Mulhare:

Oh, Matt, yeah.

Jared Savage:

He called me out of the blue and he said, "Hey, I heard you want to come to Southwest. My best buddy is Will Sparrow," who I had met all those years ago. And he said ... We talked for a little bit, but he said, "If he talks about you this well, I have no problem giving you a letter of recommendation." So he gave me a letter of recommendation, I came to the interview and I got the job.

And ironically, less than a week later, I got a call from my mom because I had told her about all of this and she was in Sacramento and she was at a conference on an elevator. And she got in an elevator with two Southwest pilots and she said, "Oh, my son just got a job offer from them and he's super excited about it," and she showed the first officer a picture of me. And the captain looked over her shoulder and said, "That's Jared!" And my mom was like, "How do you know who my son is? Who are you?" It was Matt, Matt Grew, the guy who had just written me my letter of recommendation.

Tony Mulhare:

Oh, that's amazing. That's awesome.

Jared Savage:

So it was a really weird connection, but once I heard that story I was like, "Yeah, Southwest is definitely where I want to go."

So I started, me and Prince were in the same new hire class together and I could not be happier with where I'm at. I still do work with the scholarship and to date, we have sent out 153 check rides in our about eight-year history.

Tony Mulhare:

Yeah.

Jared Savage:

We're still going strong with about 15 to 20 scholars all actively flying right now.

Tony Mulhare:

Outstanding. That's awesome. Just over 800 to go then?

Jared Savage:

Just over 800 to go, yeah.

Tony Mulhare:

It's going to keep you busy for a while.

Jared Savage:

Yeah, yeah, I'll be busy.

Matt McCants:

Okay, prince, back to you. Where we picked off last, you are now burning the candle at both ends, building these hours and now in a much bigger role on the ground ops side at Southwest. So take us through what that was really like, and then where you ultimately had to make a decision?

Emanuel Prince:

That was a lot. My typical day would end up like this. Starting in 2018 until December of 2021, going into 2022. I had more money at this time, so now it was time for me to really pick it up and actually get my flight time together. So obviously, I was a CFI by this point. And what I would do is I would go to work, I remember being there, I was the early person. I would be there at 4:00 to 4:30 AM and work until about 2:00, 3:00. And it would really depend on if there was meetings or not, if I had to stay for those meetings.

So what I would do is after those meetings, I would dive directly from Midway and drive to Bolingbrook Airport where I was a flight instructor at JWA Aviation in Bolingbrook. And I would instruct from the time I got there until, most of the time, about 8:00, 9:00 at night. And I did that for, yeah, I did that for roughly about two years. And then when I could not instruct, I would spend my time doing ground school so that way, I could give my students ... For me it wasn't just about, because at this point I really enjoyed instructing, but it was more about giving back to those, my students, who really aspired to be pilots like myself. I think I finished up with 1300 hours instructing at that time.

And that's when I knew, okay, in order for me to be competitive within this industry, I needed to try to get some turbine time and that's what led me to my next opportunity of flying.

Matt McCants:

But to do that, you have to make a bigger career decision, which is possibly walking away from the paycheck, right?

Emanuel Prince:

Yes. Yeah, exactly. And now, I'm at the crossroad. So the next opportunity was, okay, I have to quit Southwest and then go, find a job flying and try to get some turbine time. So I did exactly that, which was one of the hardest things to do because imagine, walking away from, at least at that time, what I thought was a lot of money. But I wanted to be a pilot and the things that you approach it. And let me say, a commercial pilot, the things that you sacrifice to get here, sometimes you have to let go and be uncomfortable for a little bit in order to get comfortable later. And that's what my end game was and that's exactly what I did. So I resigned.

I got on with a company called Air Cargo Carriers, a Milwaukee-based company.

Matt McCants:

Okay.

Emanuel Prince:

Flying the short 360s. So I did my training in Milwaukee. January 5th is when I started, January 5th of 2022, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And right from the start, I was like, "Man, this is going to be an interesting company." The training was just so disorganized. But in my mind I was like, "Turbine time, turbine time, turbine time, turbine time."

When I finished up with training, I ended up getting based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. My route was San Juan to St. Croix, .3 was the flight time. And then you fly back, .3 or .4, it depends on if you want to speed it up or slow it down. And I remember doing-

Tony Mulhare:

That's a long way to build hours.

Matt McCants:

Yeah.

Emanuel Prince:

Right. So I remember doing it. So you did four flights a day, so it was preparing me for those four-legger days-

Matt McCants:

That sounds familiar.

Emanuel Prince:

... that we have at Southwest that people complain about. So when I got back to San Juan, it was San Juan to St. Thomas, which we're going to be flying to soon. And then St. Thomas back to San Juan. If you know anything, those are super short flights. Again, you're looking at .2 or .3 from San Juan.

So at the end of the week, I'm looking at the math and I'm like, "Man, I'm not really building my flight time."

Matt McCants:

It's going to take a while.

Emanuel Prince:

I'm building it, but not as fast as I wanted to. Yeah, it's going to take a while.

So now I'm thinking about it, I'm going through the process and the company, it just really wasn't a good company. But again, sacrifices, these are the ... Nothing lasts forever. And I always had this saying where I tell myself when I'm going through hard times is everything, and I mean everything has an expiration. There's this author that said, "Tough times don't last, tough people do." And with that, I remember, "You just got to stick it out."

But then I get a phone call one day from an instructor who had resigned from United. And he called me and he said, "Hey, I have a couple rappers, they're looking for another pilot to fly with me. Would you be interested?" And I was like, "Rappers? What in the world?"

Matt McCants:

I'm sorry, what?

Emanuel Prince:

He was an older gentleman. Right, I'm like, "What?" I'm like, "They don't have a flight department?" I'm thinking big scheme because I was introduced to McDonald's corporate flight department so I'm thinking that they probably all charter airplanes, but they charter from a smaller company.

So I ended up, didn't know it, and I ended up going on tour. The tour was called One of These Ones Tour. And that was Jeremy Biddle, which his stage name is Yung Bleu. Christopher Brown, his stage name is Chris Brown. And then Dominique Jones, stage name is Lil Baby. Had no clue.

Matt McCants:

Right.

Emanuel Prince:

I knew who Chris Brown was, of course, but I had no clue who the other ones were. So I had to reach out to my younger brothers and I'm like, "Who are these guys?"

Matt McCants:

Is this legit?

Emanuel Prince:

They're like, "What do you mean you don't know who ..." They're like, "You don't know who that is?"

Matt McCants:

That is awesome.

Emanuel Prince:

So I remember they sent me for training and I ended up getting tight. It was an awesome experience. It was my real introduction into flying jets, but it was also into what it's like in the corporate world. So once that all panned out, I realized right away, "Oh, this is really only a gig for the summer-"

Matt McCants:

Sure.

Emanuel Prince:

... because they do a lot of flying over the summer during concert season and all that great stuff.

So again, going back to my friend who started his own jet management company, they had King Airs, PC-12s, so they sent me to a school over in Buford, South Carolina. I went over there and got training in both of those aircraft and that was awesome, I did that. Came back and flew for them. And then they got me SIC typed and Citation XLS and I did that for a little while.

Then I said, "Okay, this is great. Now I'm feeling comfortable, as far as flying turbine aircraft. I need something that's going to help me get closer to my end game," which is making my way towards becoming a commercial pilot for Southwest. So I applied for NetJets at this time. My old instructor, he had just got hired on with NetJets. He said, "Hey, Prince, you need to come on, man. You need to get on while the iron is hot." So I ended up applying for NetJets, I get to NetJets and I loved it.

And I'm at home one day, it's super early in the morning and Southwest, I hear that they about to start hiring for pilots again. So I think, "You know what, I'm going to put in." So I put in for Southwest and the rest is history. And believe it or not, I interviewed November of 2023. I was hired as a first officer for Southwest Airlines January 23rd of 2024. That date, I don't believe in tattoos or anything, but maybe I might get that date tattooed on me because 23rd is my favorite date because I got hired as a ramp agent, I got hired as a pilot on the 23rd. It's just like, "Wow, there's something about that date."

And I'll tell you, being here so far has been really good. Every day I'm just thinking about ... Every time I think about bad times, whether we're in IROPs, or they're closing bases or downsizing bases, I just think about how much worse things could be, I think about the grind that I went through to get here and I'm just thinking about, "It was all actually worth it to get to where I'm at now today."

Tony Mulhare:

So gentlemen, both of your stories are pretty inspirational. Obviously, there's lots of themes here that keep recurring. Mentorship, taking advantage of opportunity, getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. But I just want to talk about your giving back and why that's so important.

I grew up the son of a Air Force fighter pilot, I was a rugrat in fighter squadrons all through the '70s and '80s, and so it was no problem for me to visualize what I wanted to do and how to get there. Obviously, your stories are different. So talk to me about why it's so important to be out in front of kids who can see someone who looks like them doing something that they want to do to make that possibility a reality.

Emanuel Prince:

So the reason why it's important for me to make sure that I give back is, I shared earlier, I did not see anyone or had no guidance how to be a pilot or did not have anyone that I could look up to that looked like me to say, "Hey, how do you do this?" So I believe representation matters, it matters a lot.

But not only that, but being a walking role model for those that are coming up, for them to see that if that person did it, I can do it. I want them to know that anybody could do this as long as they have the right people mentoring them, as long as they have the determination, the motivation to do it. It takes a lot of hard work to get to where we are today and I really believe that being that role model, being that walking role model, being that person who is going to give back is what our younger generation need because there's a lot of influence with social media or just worldly things, but for me to be in-person with them, having conversations with them.

I think this month alone I have at least four speaking engagements or interactions lined up, one which is at my middle school that I went to. For me to try to inspire them because my goal is always, and it will be, if I can just help one person. If it's a room with 300 people, if I can help one person, that's one person who would not have had the opportunity to, A, see somebody like me. Two, to know that, hey, they can actually do this. Because when you don't have role models, you don't have mentors, it's so easy to get lost. And it's like, "You know what, just forget about it." It's easier to go to the streets and just do worldly things, versus actually being in society, and actually helping out and trying to make the world a better place.

Tony Mulhare:

Yeah. Jared?

Jared Savage:

Yeah. I think to add to what Prince said. When I was younger, like me and Prince both said, we didn't really have a lot of direct role models that were airline pilots. And when I would fly as a kid or as a teenager, every time I would see a pilot, I thought it was the coolest thing ever and especially seeing a Black pilot. I have so many pictures in my phone of just every time I see a Black pilot I'm like, "Can I please get a picture? Can I please shake your hand? Something." And I didn't even realize when I was at the airlines because it all happens so quickly that I'm that pilot that I used to look up to. I have a lot of kids, when I'm in the cockpit or when I'm just walking around, they're like, "Hey, can I take a picture with you? I've never seen a Black pilot." Even adults. I had an older gentleman on one of my recent flights, he was in his 80s and he told me he's flown for decades and he's never had a Black pilot before.

So I think it is so important that kids see what they are able to become. And I have kids myself, Prince has kids and I want our kids to have the same experience that we had growing up. To have these opportunities, to have these programs and these initiatives available for them, and it's not going to happen if we're not the people in place that we want to see in place. So it really is up to us to do our best to keep Tuskegee NEXT, and the scholarship and all of these programs going so that not just our kids, but all these kids can see, "Hey, it's doable. I was in the exact same classes you were, I was growing up in the same neighborhoods." And it's such a good career, whether you go airlines, or military or don't even fly, you're just working on the ramp. There's so many good careers in aviation and sometimes all you need is really just to know somebody to give you that inspiration that you need to pursue it.

Emanuel Prince:

And Jared, to your point. Now, it's interesting how the roles have reversed to now, I'm the one that sitting in the seat and people say to me, "Oh, my God, can I take a picture?" I had a woman ... And it happens almost every trip that I have, at least once I get that reaction.

One of my goals that I have recently adopted is I want that to become the norm. I really want to see that become the norm because we live in a place where now, we should be able to see whatever a kid wants to be, they should be able to see somebody that look like them and not have to reach too far. And I think that the work that we're doing now is going to eventually lead to exactly that.

And one of the things that's extremely important too is, if you think about it, my mentors coming up, Jerry Calabrese. Jerry was an Italian guy. My first mentee, he was an Italian immigrant recently and he actually got a scholarship, and now he's doing flight training. And again, Jerry helping this young African American male to reach his goals, and now look at me helping another Italian American reach his goals.

And one thing I'll always, always, always try to give them, Jared, and I'm pretty sure you do the same thing, nobody's going to give you anything, is hard work. We all take the same FAA test at the end of the day, we all have to pass at the same high standards at the end of the day. It doesn't matter what you look like, but we are all qualified and they can also be qualified as well with hard work.

Jared Savage:

Just to add to what Prince said, it's not even just that people need to see us and say, "Hey, I want to be a pilot." People could really easily see us and say, "Hey, I want to do my life different. I want to just be better than what I am right now, I want to get out of this environment and I just want something better for myself." So I think, like I said, adding to what Prince said, just being that walking role model and just giving as much knowledge as we can and as people are willing to accept, it's important. It's how people grow, it's how kids get their insights, and determine what they want to do with their life and which path they want to go down. It's so important.

And a lot of my role models growing up were not pilots. They were businessmen, or entrepreneurs or athletes, just so many different walks of life that just put little nuggets into my brain that helped me become the person that I'm still becoming, but that I am right now.

Emanuel Prince:

One of the hardest things for me was I was comparing myself to my peers. You can't do that. You can't. And I think it was Tony that mentioned it earlier. Coming from a family who had pilots in the family, we're not the same. We're not on the same level just to start with. You had instant information that was flowing up to you. You had instant resources. Some of us had to figure it out and we had to, as they like to use the term, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps in order to get to where we need to get to. And when you measure your success based upon the things that you do and where you started, you start to have a new vision on what your success is going to look like on the long run.

Matt McCants:

Well, guys, I want to thank you so much for coming on with us today. I want to wrap up by asking you both from your perspective, where has the industry come as far as being a place where people who don't look like me and Tony can excel, and is there anywhere it could be better?

Emanuel Prince:

I would most definitely say there has been an improvement in our industry as far as the first thing is actually being able to acknowledge that there's an issue. I think that any times you have some things you want to change is you need to first acknowledge that there is an issue. Come up with a resolution, and then actually stick to it. And if something doesn't work, figure out ways, why it's not working, and figure out how we can make it work.

So what I think about this industry so far is obviously things have a lot of improvement to do, but we, the works that Jared and I have talked about today of being mentors. I don't care what you look like, you can be white, brown, whatever, whatever color you look like, mentor somebody. I'm going to challenge you. One challenge I'm going to give to you is how about you take up somebody who would not have had that opportunity? So somebody that doesn't live in your community, somebody that doesn't look like you because those around I'm pretty sure ... Just like today, my niece and nephews, they have that opportunity, my kids' going to have that opportunity because I can afford to do those things, but it's about those that are under-resourced, give them the opportunity to be able to do that.

If I can stress anything, it's not about those that are immediately around you because they have access to you. Having access to you meaning that they have access to your resources, so therefore they are not under-resourced. The ones that are under-resourced are those that you have to actually go out and reach out to, those the ones. And if you give back to them, I guarantee it'll feel so much more rewarding. And not only that, you'll see the fruits of your labor turn around and help this industry to become a little bit more diverse, and diversity is not a bad thing. If anything, if we set ourselves around people who think differently than us, it'll help us all to grow and we'd be light years ahead of different parts of the world because we have that surrounding and instilled in us.

Jared Savage:

I think that the notion that so much has changed in a sense to where people are getting hired unqualified is not really a true notion that I think that a lot of people have. They interview ... The interview that I went to was the same interview that every other pilot that was in my class went through. And the same standards that everybody has to get here are the standards that when I was hired were the standards that were set. So I think it's just a really good idea to just remember that everybody that was hired at this airline and everybody that's got a job went through some sort of selection process. Southwest is really, really good, I believe, at choosing who they want to work for the airline and I just think it's important to bring up. We may not have gotten here the exact same way, but we're all here and we're all here to do the best job that we can and to have fun doing it.

Tony Mulhare:

So gents, let's close today with point us towards if there's some organizations that could use our help, either by our involvement or our funds, which organizations would you point us towards?

Jared Savage:

There's a lot of good ones out there. OBAP, which is the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals, is probably the largest one in terms of membership and they give a lot of scholarships. They have a conference every year and they do a lot of great mentorship. There's a lot of other organizations, too. There's Black Pilots of America, which also gives scholarships, and do a lot of local outreach and give scholarships. There's a Sisters of the Skies scholarship that is specifically designed for women in aviation, specifically women of color in aviation, and they do the same thing as the other organizations with a lot of mentorship and a lot of scholarships.

I do get questions from time-to-time or from captains on how they can get involved and how they can donate, and I would say that the best way is to go to our website. It's rtfa.org. And all of our information on how to get in contact with us, all of our scholars' stories, so everybody whose come through the scholarship, all of their information is on there. All of our donation information is on there. And all of our numbers are on there, in terms of how many pilots we made. Like I said, we're around 153 total check rides, about 60 of those are privates and then it goes all the way up to CFIs, and then even helicopter pilots, and lots of guys in the military and the airlines.

So it's a blessing. It's just like Prince's work with Tuskegee NEXT, it's super important. I definitely believe that these are the type of organizations that keep pilots of all types coming through the pipeline, and getting hired, and going on to live their best lives and careers.

And there's also a lot of historically Black colleges and universities that have their own aviation programs. Kind of like Prince was alluding to earlier, it is really, really nice. Training is training. We all take the same check rides. But I know a lot of people are comfortable going to HBCUs and would like to go to an HBCU and still get the aviation experience. So there's a number of historically Black colleges and universities that actually have aviation programs built into their curriculum. Tuskegee, Western Michigan, Texas Southern, Hampton, Delaware State and there's a few others as well. So I would say some of those organizations and any organization that really focuses on helping out any pilots, but specifically minority pilots.

Emanuel Prince:

Just to finish up answering your question there. I failed to mention it earlier, but one of the organizations also to look at and to also volunteer to help out, I'm actually the president of, it's called The Aimsir Foundation. It was founded actually by a few Southwest Airlines pilot, Captain Sean Smith, I believe he's Baltimore based, and a few other guys that are currently on the board. And our whole mission is to really expose others to aviation, mentorship, which we talked about which is really important. And then we also give out scholarships as well annually to those that are driven, motivated and want to get into aviation.

And kind of what Jared said earlier, the standards have not been cut for none of us. The only thing is we need to make sure that, it's all of our civil duty to make sure that we give back to the community that comes in behind us, but then we also need to make sure that we mentor somebody. So check out those foundations, the ones that Jared listed. The Aimsir Foundation, you can check us out at theaimsirfoundation.com, we have a website there. Whatever, if you want to help out, just get involved, get involved. And again, it doesn't have to be all the time, but when you have some spare time, just help out. And believe it or not, it'll help make our jobs easier, but also continue to make the world a better place.

Matt McCants:

We'd like to thank Jared and Prince for sharing their stories with us. Without a doubt, there's something here that we can all try and embody. It's proof that the servants' heart is still alive and well in the pilots of Southwest Airlines, and we're equally proud and fortunate to count Jared and Prince in our ranks. If you have any feedback for this podcast or any of our comm products, please drop us a line at comm@swapa.org.

Tony Mulhare:

Finally, today's bonus number is 12. That's the number of SWAPA pilots we showcased last year in the reporting points from The Jumpseat. If this story reminds you of a pilot you know, we'd like to know about it, too. This membership is filled with great people doing great things all the time.