A Lifetime of Leadership and Discovery
With decades of experience in sales, marketing, and organizational design, Mike now focuses on helping small airports maximize their economic impact.
Professional Journey
Dr. Mike Jones is a seasoned business leader whose career has been defined by a relentless pursuit of excellence. Before focusing his efforts on aviation consulting, he spent forty years in the business world. Starting in marketing with AT&T and building a software company in Seattle, he eventually joined a small industrial company in Connecticut. He helped that firm grow from three employees to a global operation with 200 employees, offices in four countries, and distributors in more than sixty.
A graduate of Grove City College and Columbia University, Mike eventually combined his business acumen with his lifelong passion for aviation. Establishing himself as a prominent leader in airport stewardship, he has served for eight years on the Moore County Airport Authority, including time as its chairman.
Embarking on what he calls his "third career," Mike returned to the classroom, completing his doctorate in business administration and advanced statistics at the University of Florida at age 72. His extensive 180-page dissertation focused on using publicly available data to understand and improve small airport governance. Today, he uses this research to consult with small airports across the country, helping them unlock their economic potential and operate more efficiently.
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The Pilot, The Scholar, The Advocate
Mike Jones has spent a lifetime pushing the boundaries in the aviation community. A veteran of the U.S. Air Force, he served as a lieutenant and air traffic controller in Southeast Asia at the end of the Vietnam War. Today, he is a 4,000-hour commercially rated pilot who has been exploring the skies for over thirty years.
Aviation has always been a way to for Mike to give back to his community. Over the years, he has flown more than 900 Young Eagle flights, over 100 AngelFlights, veteran relief flights, and even animal rescue missions. He is also a well-known aviation writer, contributing more than 100 articles to journals like Cessna Pilots Magazine, General Aviation News, and Professional Pilot Magazine, all while sharing his adventures from the cockpit of his beloved burgundy and gold Cessna 210.
When he isn't flying or creating content for his YouTube channel, Mike enjoys golf, gardening, and cooking. He is married to his bride of almost 50 years, Annie, and togther care for their three small dogs.
Want to Connect?
Whether you have a story to share, a question about aviation, or just want to say hello — Dr. Mike would love to hear from you.
A Explanation of Editorial Updates and the Deployment of Artificial Intelligence in this Website
My writings assembled here for your enjoyment reflect my personal intellectual labor, analysis, experiences, aeronautical training, and creative expression. While I certainly leverage modern digital tools for reference and administrative management, the thoughts, arguments, synthesis, and reviews presented on this website are strictly my own.
Which can be good or bad. For better or worse, I am sure there are mistakes in some of these articles. I am sure some content is now obsolete. I am sure I have mis-quoted somebody, and I know for certain my reporting skills have improved over the decades. But these articles are what they are, presented as they were first submitted to each journal or newspaper.
I feel it would be inauthentic to use automated digital tools to create, update, or improve these articles. As a minor member of the Fourth Estate, I hold myself to the highest standard of reporting and integrity, and strive to ensure that everything I produce remains 100% human-authored and original.
However, it would be incorrect to say these articles are exactly as they were published, ten or twenty years ago. First of all, they are not formatted as they were printed as that would include advertisements and other intellectual property which is rightfully the property of each magazine. Second, as I have reviewed them to publish on this website, I have been compelled to make a few editorial “tweaks.” I have found a smattering of typos and incorrect grammar, which I have corrected. I found a few sentences that were garbled or clumsy and have endeavored to make them more coherent. Another adjustment is with overly-long paragraphs and run-on sentences, which in these editions will be broken into smaller, more digestible thoughts. Additionally, I found some of the captions used with the photographs and illustrations were excessively parsimonious. In these editions I have expanded those captions to be more informative. Lastly, in recent years I have become a convert to the Oxford comma, and I have been most diligently adding improved punctuation when it is appropriate. I trust and pray these minor updates will make these writings even more intelligible and useful to all my readers.
So here is my pledge: every article, summary, and document presented on this website was written entirely and independently by Mike Jones. Writing aids such as artificial intelligence, automated text generators, or algorithmic writing tools have not and never will be used to draft, generate, fine-tune, or alter my work. For better or worse, this is all on me.
Enjoy,
Dr. Mike Jones
