17-Year-Old Becomes Youngest Black Pilot In North Carolina History

Garner has also earned the praise of his mother, Melissa Dixon, who believes his achievement has laid the groundwork for any future pilots that come after her son

Ryan Garner, a 17-year-old North Carolina pilot, recently became the first and youngest Black pilot to receive his license at Concord’s Goose Creek Airport. He also became the youngest Black pilot in North Carolina history. At first, Garner wasn’t sure he wanted to be a pilot, but after talking with a Delta Airlines pilot, he changed his mind.

According to WSOC-TV, the City of Concord honored Garner during the week of July 12 with an official proclamation from the city’s mayor, Mayor Dusch. Garner has also earned the praise of his mother, Melissa Dixon, who believes his achievement has laid the groundwork for any future pilots that come after her son.

As Dixon told WCNC, “He’s the footprint … he is actually the footprint to future generations to come and say it’s possible. I trust his ability,” Dixon said. “I trust what he’s capable, actually, of doing. So yes, I am willing to go up and get that experience and actually just see life on a different level.”

Garner told WSOC that it was only after conversations with the pilot that he began to understand what was possible for him beyond being a ground crew member. Now, he dreams of one day being the pilot for a major airline.

“I actually never wanted to be a pilot at first. I wanted to be a grounds crew member that would bring in the planes or marshal them in. I got to talking with a Delta pilot about flight school, and that’s how I got into it.”

Garner’s path from flight school graduate to airline pilot could be made somewhat more comfortable if programs from airlines like United, Delta, and Southwest are allowed to flourish and diversify their pilots.

According to Eilieen Bjorkman, a retired Air Force colonel and author who wrote an op-ed for the Chicago Sun-Times in 2023, the results of these aviation diversity programs have been encouraging. In 2023, the first class of United Airlines’ Unite Aviate graduated with a class that included 80% women or minorities. In a profession that is 90% white men, any kind of diversity is seen as a welcome change.

The backlash from conservatives who seemed to assume that pilots who weren’t white men weren’t qualified to fly commercial airplanes was largely met with derision and scorn from aviation experts like Bjorkman. In her op-ed, she argued that those arguments were nonsensical at best, measured against the actual requirements of getting into any of these programs, which required 1,500 flight hours and a substantial financial commitment from the pilots.

Garner, meanwhile, just wants to do what he has loved since he was a child, as he told WCNC, “I have always loved it (aviation) since I was a kid…It’s a little adrenaline rush coming into the plane…I want to take it to the majors and go to the airlines.”