Aviation Whizz, 5, Spots Pilot Manual Flaw
A five-year-old aviation enthusiast from Colorado, US, has astounded experts by identifying a crucial discrepancy in a Southwest Airlines pilot training manual, earning him a VIP tour of the airline's headquarters.
The world's youngest aviation expert put a budget airline to shame after he spotted a discrepancy in its manual. William Hines, five, was leafing through Southwest Airlines’ manual when he noticed that something didn’t match up on the pages teaching pilots about the aircraft.
The eagle-eyed boy, from Colorado, US, was reading the manual brought by a pilot family friend when he pointed out that two graphs looked different. He was drawn in by the details, spending almost two hours going through what most people would reluctantly glance at if they had to.
A Five-Year-Old's Sharp Eye
William explained: ‘I discovered that two monitors did not match; they did not match at all.’ His mum, Amber, elaborated: ‘One was very, very zoomed out while the other one was zoomed in. He was able to identify the fact that these should look the same, but they looked different because one was drastically zoomed out from the other one.’
The pilot took William’s findings all the way to the top, informing Southwest’s boss, Robert Jordan. The CEO of Southwest Airlines, one of the biggest airlines in America, surprised the young plane enthusiast and his sister by inviting them for a VIP tour of the company’s headquarters.
However, the airline was quick to clarify that there was ‘no error in the training manual,’ but a slight discrepancy in the way the terrain was shown and how zoomed in they were. William, who dreams of becoming a pilot one day, got his first taste of the job in a cockpit simulator.
A Budding Aviation Expert
Despite his young age, William has also spent hours at his local Rocky Mountain Metro Airport in Colorado, spotting aircraft. He also enjoys memorising materials and plane models. William’s mum described him as ‘really mechanically inclined.’ ‘So it was a natural progression to want to know about more fascinating things,’ she told WVUE-TV.