Amaya Burns

Hi! My name is Amaya Burns. I am currently a senior in high school and I have a passion for aviation.
My dad took me to the Connersville Municipal Airport on Father’s Day in 2004. I was about three years old and had never seen an airplane before. My Papaw came too, and we had a blast. I have been fascinated by aircraft ever since. When I was about five, after my Papaw had passed away, my dad asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday. I immediately said “I wanna see the airplanes.” My birthday is in October, whereas Father’s Day is in June, so we couldn’t see any airplanes at Connersville, but my dad did a little research and found the National Museum of the United States Air Force (NMUSAF). We keep going back year after year to see what’s new and what we may have missed.
Also, when I was six, my dad started taking flying lessons. He couldn’t take passengers, which made me sad, but he said that I would be his first official passenger once he had his certificate. I took my first flight with a friend of my dad’s. Hank Morrissey took a group of us up in a little Cessna 172 to see the Christmas lights. About six months later, I got to fly with my dad in that same airplane, just the two of us. That’s when I decided that I wanted to do that too. I was forever hooked by “The Romance of Flight.”
In about 6th Grade, I decided that I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer who designed airplanes for a living. I loved aircraft and the ability to “defy gravity,” though I knew it was really just the forces of thrust lift that made gravity less effective. As time went on, I discovered that I am a hands-on learner and sitting behind a computer all day looking at technical drawings might not be a good fit for me. While on a trip to EAA AirVenture, I discovered from a Purdue student that they have a program called Aeronautical Engineering Technology, or AET, that is much more hands on and mechanical than straight Aeronautical Engineering, and that graduates from both degrees usually wind up with similar job opportunities after college. In January, I was accepted into the program.
In November of 2018, I took my first flight lesson with an instructor and was able to log my first half hour of flight time. I am excited to continue my journey in flight and hope to share it with the world.