High-flying opportunity
Boy with special needs gets up in plane, courtesy of Dream Wings
When asked about what he did last weekend, Luke Reddick jumps up off the couch and shouts: “Woo hoo. It was awesome!” The nine-year-old took his first airplane flight on Sunday, not only getting to ride in the Cessna 172, but also taking over the controls for part of the trip. He could barely contain his excitement when talking about the experience, drum rolling with his hands, and saying: “It was the best time of my life!” “I had headphones on and I got to talk to the plane tower. I made the plane go up and down and left and right,” he said excitedly. The Riverton boy was flying with hobby pilot Dimitri Neonakis, who started the charity Dream Wings a month ago, to give children with special needs the opportunity to fly. Neonakis started Dream Wings because he thought it would be a nice thing to do for these kids, but he never imagined it would be such a good experience for him as well. “It is extremely rewarding personally.” He said the idea is to give children with special needs, who have never been in a plane or cannot afford it, the chance to experience the thrill of flight. Since June, he’s flown with 35 children and some parents in more than 25 flights. Reddick was born with a condition called optic nerve hypoplasia, which means he can’t see well. “I can’t see stuff too far away. I can’t see small things,” he said, adding that he can see a sign on the wall of his mother’s sitting room, but he can’t see any of the detail. His mom, Jody Holley, explains that he’s learning Braille but that he can read regular books on an iPad if he zooms in on the words. “He can read size 72 print,” she said. Holley said her son has always been interested in flying. “He’s wanted a jet pack, and a helicopter and a plane,” and even built a set of wings to hook onto himself. She said he would fly to school if he could, not being a big fan of the school bus. He said he’d really like to be able to use a jet pack to go to Dr. W.A. MacLeod Consolidated, where he will enter Grade 4 in the fall.
When he was little, Reddick wanted to become a clown, a pirate or a cowboy when he grows up, but Holley said since her son was four, his dream has been to be a pilot. Flying out of the Debert Airfield on Sunday, Reddick and his mother spent 45 minutes flying over Masstown, Wentworth and Truro with Neonakis. “I loved it. I liked going up and down,” said Reddick, noting that he could only look out the side window because the dashboard was too high. Holley said she only found out about the Dream Wings organization on Saturday night, and she signed up her son for a flight around 11 p.m. She said by 11 a.m. the next day she had already received a call asking them to arrive at the airfield that night. Neonakis said Reddick was “super excited,” and that it was “probably one of the best flights I’ve had in 20 years flying planes.” The pilot describes the flight, with a little chuckle. “So we take off, and as I level the plane off… he says he wants to fly the plane.” Neonakis said Reddick put his hands on the control and was flying straight. “I thought: How does he do that?” He then instructed Reddick to make a turn to the left. “He executed the turn perfectly. He was feeling it – I was amazed.” After making a right turn, Neonakis asked the boy to make a turn 10 degrees to the left, talking him through the turn. “The next time I asked him to do 10 degrees, he did it without me. Then he gave me a 360 degree turn without losing altitude.” Neonakis said pilots with hundreds of hours of flying experience often lose altitude while doing this. “That’s when it hit me, this little kid has extra senses. He’s feeling flying. I was amazed.” With a laugh, Neonakis said Reddick even wanted to land the plane. Instead, he let him line up with the runway, and Neonakis landed the aircraft. “It was an incredible experience to me as a pilot. It was so much fun up there, I wish I had a video camera to tape the whole flight.” Neonakis offers the flights free of charge, and doesn’t accept donations, saying that he has a budget to fly through the year for himself, and he uses that for the Dream Wings tours. He said when he’s on one of the trips, he’s only thinking about performing his flying duties safely. But later, when he’s driving home in his car and has a moment to himself, he thinks about the touching and heartfelt moments he’s shared with the children. “I cannot explain… it’s a beautiful thing.” Holley said what Neonakis does for these children is “super” and “amazing.” And she said the pilot invited them back for another flight, which Reddick is eager to do. She said he’s interested in learning what all of the switches on the control panel do.