“It’s Never Too Late” is a series that tells the stories of people who decide to pursue their dreams on their own terms.
Live music was no more. Patrick Milano could come to no other conclusion. But maybe it could spin.
It was a summer day in 2020, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, and Mr. Milando, a French horn player, was walking through a locked, empty Times Square. By then, 67, he had spent nearly half a century as a professional musician, from the Metropolitan Opera to more than a dozen years with “The Lion King.” Now that musical, along with so many others, had closed. At an age when his peers were getting their work done, Mr. Milando found himself thinking of a new way to pay the bills—5,000 feet above his old way.
Sometimes we jump happily into a brand new life. Sometimes we jump for joy at a push.
Mr Milando had started flying single-engine planes before the pandemic, but purely as a hobby. (He had logged about 300 hours of flight time.) Now, he wondered, could he really become a professional pilot? He was too old to fly for the major airlines (cutoff is 65), but there was no age limit on teaching others to throw.
Mr. Milando found a small flight school in New Jersey and set out to earn his commercial pilot’s certificate. The other pilots there tended to be decades younger, and not once did he spot a French colleague. (Most seemed to be working on computers, he noticed.) But he felt right at home. flying unlocked something inside him.
“There is a freedom, an autonomy. You are the master of your own destiny,” he said.
Today Mr. Milando, 71, has two careers — it turns out that the death of live music was greatly exaggerated. He divides his time between the orchestra pit and the friendly skies, where he teaches budding pilots as he once was. (The following interview has been edited and condensed.)
How did you get interested in flying?
Being a musician, I traveled a lot. I was very excited about the flying aspect. I got a flight simulator game for fun when my kids were little. You’d hear me in the basement yelling, “Pull up, pull up!” When I turned 60, my wife gave me flying lessons. From there, I got my private pilot’s license.
What do you like about flying?
It is very peaceful. One of the most enjoyable moments is when you’re going through the clouds and relying on your instrument training, then suddenly you’re above the clouds and you have this beautiful panorama in front of you.
It’s a rush. The first time you do it, it’s life changing. Life change and life-confirming.
It seems a bit riskier than playing the horn. Was it ever scary?
The scariest was landing for the first time. I remember having an opera in West Palm Beach, and I’m up there with my instructor at 1,500 feet, looking down at the tarmac, thinking, Well, I’ve just got to land this plane. Then, I felt like I was going to cry. It was so intense and amazing.
What made you consider flying professionally?
When the pandemic came, all of us musicians were like, “Oh my God, what are we going to do?” The prevailing feeling was that the music was about to stop. Broadway was never to return.
I remember driving through Times Square one day and seeing everything boarded up. It was really scary and I thought, OK, let’s just try career No. 2. I’m not one to sit around and do nothing.
So how did you do it?
I found this little flight school in New Jersey called Sky Training and got my commercial rating. Then I flew to Minnesota later that summer to get my certified instructor rating so I could teach other people to fly. I also got a seaplane score, just for good measure. I finally flew a seaplane over Lake Como in Italy and was like — who lives there? George Clooney;
Anyway, I now teach people to fly everything from a single-engine Cessna to a multi-engine Piper.
Are there similarities between music and flight?
My success as a musician always comes when I am completely focused on the moment. When you put aside all the extraneous things happening around you. That’s kind of what you have to do when you fly an airplane.
As a teacher, I had a student freeze 100 feet down the hall. I had to push his hands off the controls and take them. He was in a mental freeze, he couldn’t get out of it. You must always be in the moment.
How often do you fly now?
That’s the hard part because I’m responsible for eight shows a week on ‘The Lion King’. Monday is dark, so I usually plan my day with students and just keep up to date when flying on different planes. Then I usually hire someone to play for me another day that week and teach more people. So I end up flying maybe 15 hours a week.
Any advice for people who are interested in making a change like this but are worried that they are too old to learn something new?
I say go for it, definitely go for it. There’s no reason not to.
Done making big changes?
I’m like a shark, I have to keep moving. I have run eight marathons. I like to learn languages. Now I’m kind of wondering about an Air Transport Pilot Certificate, ATP, so I can start flying people to the Caribbean. It’s pretty much the last step in aviation.
Every time I say I’m done, my kids say, “Yeah, I’ve heard that before.” So I guess I’ll take that ATP
