Nick Tramontano; an Aviator's Legacy of Kindness

Nick Tramontano; an Aviator's Legacy of Kindness
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.
Consider this quote from Irish aviation executive WillieWalsh talking about the boss of a competing airline, Virgin's Richard Branson."I don't like him, I don't admire him, I don't buy his bullshit." Orconsider Michael O'Leary of Ireland's Ryanair, "I don't give a shitif no one likes me. I'm not a cloud bunny or an aerosexual. I don't likeaeroplanes. I never wanted to be a pilot like those other platoons of goons whopopulate the airline industry."
The world of aviation is full of arrogant, combativeindividuals who may be providing a service to a world growing ever more relianton air travel. But they are at the same time helping the industry's descent toever-lower levels of respect.
Then consider Nick Tramontano, who, along with his long-time friend, retired Sikorsky president Jeffrey Pino, died in a crash on Feb 5th in Arizona. He was a class act.
Called the "Mayor" of Connecticut's Oxford Waterbury Airportby the airport's actual manager, Matthew Kelly, no one has anything but nicethings to say about Nick.
"He was wonderful," Kelly told me. "You always left a conversationwith him, with a smile."
I met Tramontano last summer while working on my book, The Crash Detectives which will be published by Penguin in September. I had atheory related the crash in Northern Rhodesia that killed UN Secretary GeneralDag Hammarskjold and 15 others. The accident has been the subject of many investigationssince 1961 and remains clouded in uncertainty. I wanted to suss out whether a mechanicalmalfunction on the DC-6 might have played a role.
"Talk to Nick Tramontano", more than one person advised me. "Heis such a wealth of knowledge" pilot and plane builder David Paqua told me.
And so I did.
It was late August and what was supposed to be an hourinterview turned into a half a day. We toured the airport and a crawled aroundinside the DC-3 he maintains for Tradewinds Aviation. We had lunch and theinterview morphed into the beginning of a friendship.
During our time together, two teens came into the hangarwhere Nick keeps his beautiful silver Twin Beech. Garrett Fleishman, then 16and a student pilot wanted to show the plane to his younger brother, Zach. Then heasked to go to another hanger to show Zach something else.
"I would go play with you," Nick told the two after tossingthem the keys, "but we got business here."
I had no doubt then that the 73-year old would have eagerlyspent the day with the kids and enjoyed it as if he too were just starting alife in aviation. In fact, Tramontano had a half century both flying planes andfixing them.
"Anything you wanted to know about war bird aircraft andradial engines, he was a master at the radial engine," Paqua said.
Tramontano started as a mechanic, his friend and former co-workerKen Kahn told me, but in 1967 became a pilot. Tramontano and Kahn workedtogether at Seaboard Airlines, now a part of Fed Ex. "Everybody gets experiencebut not everybody gets good judgment. He had good judgment about operating anairplane," Kahn said.
Last Friday night, Garrett's phone rang as his boss atTradewinds called with the news that Nick had been killed in the crash of theP-51 Big Beautiful Doll in Arizona along with former Sikorsky president Jeffrey Pino.
"I was in shock I didn't believe it at first," Garrett toldme.
A few weeks earlier he and Nick had flown to Florida in a1948 Cessna tail dragger. "It's slower than a car," Garrett said. It was oneof many flights they'd made together in many different aircraft. The two hadlots of time to talk.
"He would say, 'Don't do this, I've lost friends, don't do that'."If it sounds in the telling that the older pilot was lecturing the younger,that's not how Garrett heard it. He welcomed the advice. "I learnedmore visiting his hangar in an hour than in 2 months at school."
On September 20, 2015, Garrett's 17 birthday, hegot his private pilot's license; credit going to his instructors at the Oxford Flying Club. Butoutside of his official lessons, there was Tramontano.
"I've learned a lot of things," Garrett said, including howbig is the responsibility of aviators. "You can impact or hurt a lot of people,"he told me. "It's a big deal."
In an email, Fed Ex pilot Ed Ruhl, another friend ofTramontano wrote that with his death, "There's a hole in the world." To those who knew him that's undeniably true.
But if you look at Garrett Fleishman, you will see Nick's contribution was bigger thanany hole left with his passing because he set such a good example for the nextgeneration. At a time when it is sorely needed, NickTramontano left a legacy of responsibility, civility and kindness.

Popular in the Community

Close

HuffPost Shopping’s Best Finds

MORE IN LIFE