Susquehanna Valley HS senior earns his pilots license

SUSQUEHANNA VALLEY, NY (WIVT/WBGH) — A local senior in high school recently earned his pilots license and got to take his father up in the air for his first flight.

Anthony Palmeri is a senior at Susquehanna Valley, and received his pilot’s license a few weeks ago. Palmeri says he first started getting into flying when he was just 15 years old.

According to Young Aviators, the number of certified pilots under 22 years of age was just shy of 6,000 in 2021. Palmeri rents and flies a Cessna 172 ‘November’ model out of the Greater Binghamton Airport.

He says to get your license, he had to pass the oral test and the practical portion.

“Start up the plane and do a pre-flight inspection. All of the basic stuff like that before you take off. But then there’s like short field takeoffs and soft field takeoffs and then short field landings and soft field landings. So, like landing on grass or gravel,” Palmeri said.

After getting his license, Palmeri brought his father with him, for his first official, licensed flight. He plans to attend Marywood University to study Aviation Management and Flight Operations.

Palmeri says he’ll be flying out of Scranton Airport. He says in the long term, he is teetering between becoming a commercial pilot, or flying in the military.

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