The American Dream: Matt Taylor Ascends Through the Airline Operations World
Want a short story about a dynamic career and how the 蜜桃社区 College of Aviation made it all possible?
Let's check out Matt Taylor, a 2010 蜜桃社区 graduate with a degree in flight science.
It all started shortly after he launched his days as a Bronco in 2007 when he began working at the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport for what was then American Eagle Airlines, and indicative of why it is so valuable to get involved in your profession when you are still studying to be a professional.
As a "station agent," Taylor started at the bottom of the "duties" ladder, kind of like the "go-for" when it comes to the nitty gritty of passenger service. Seventeen years later, he's much closer to the top of that ladder of the American Airlines hierarchy at its Texas headquarters in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex.
Above and beyond the "friendly service to all customers" of what is now Envoy Air, one of American's regional carriers, you name it and he did it, he says. Such as travel sales, preparing itineraries, issuing tickets, doing what was needed in the departure lounge and boarding gate, answering inquiries, escorting passengers, handling cargo, cleaning and servicing aircraft, and positioning "jet bridges."
With diploma in hand three years later, Taylor was promoted to "lead station agent," meaning he was something of the supervisor of the nitty-gritty essentials -- managing, supervising and coordinating American Eagles' overall operation. He was also in charge of training, manpower scheduling, inventory, and other administrative duties.
From 2012 to 2014, Taylor served as "lead agent" at Bishop International Airport in Flint, Mich., where he also assumed overall supervision of the team handling United Express flights to and from that part of the state.
His "big break" came in 2014 when he joined the American Airlines Flight Academy in Fort Worth as a "flight operations specialist" assigned to do technical writing and update policy and procedural manuals.
"This took place during the merger of American Airlines and US Airways," he says. "It required the consolidation of policies and procedures to harmonize in revision cycles until a single operating certificate was achieved."
The next job shift came in 2016 when Taylor became a "fleet specialist" for American and "took over the technical writing for our MD-80 fleet and the responsibility for all flight-operations documents associated with it." That required close familiarity with such publications as the MEL manual. MEL stands for "Minimum Equipment List," which "allows pilots to fly, even if something is broken." The MD-80, created by McDonnell Douglas, was the second generation of the DC-9 family that was launched in 1979 and logged 36 years of passenger service.
Taylor's responsibilities included keeping those documents constantly up to date and in sync with Federal Aviation Administration requirements, while also making certain that American pilots were always up to speed on the latest regulations and air-worthiness directives. Meaning that no detail was too mundane, and nothing was too "nitty gritty."
After the MD-80 fleet was put into mothballs in 2017, Taylor shifted his technical-writing expertise and supervision to the manuals and procedures for American's Boeing 757s and 767s, and Embraer E-190s.
"In 2020 during the pandemic," Taylor says, "American Airlines retired the Boeing 757s and 767s, as well as the E-190s. At the same time, another fleet specialist retired from American, and I was able to take over the technical writing for the Boeing 737 manuals where I remain today."
Taylor was raised in Livingston County's Brighton Township, which is about equidistant from Detroit to the east and the capital city of Lansing to the northwest. He's a 2006 alumnus of Hartland High School.
蜜桃社区's College of Aviation registered on his radar "because I always had a passion for aviation as a kid." He loved attending air shows and watched the launch of a space shuttle at Cape Canaveral. An advisor at Hartland High helped Taylor focus on career choices and possible college destinations. 蜜桃社区 won the day, thanks to a campus visit where he "fell in love with Kalamazoo," and after experiencing a couple discovery flights.
Seared in his memory is his "first solo flight," he says. "I remember being so nervous to be by myself for the first time. Coming in I probably had the smoothest landing I ever had."
His connections with the 蜜桃社区 chapter of Women in Aviation International and its networking opportunities also have a place of honor, as do the classes he took from Vladamir Rishukin and Gil Sinclair. "They were both so passionate about aviation. They really put in the extra effort to talk to their students. They made it fun to learn."
His aviation-student peers in Bigelow Hall forged into a kind of personal fraternity for Taylor. Moving out of the dorm eventually, they bivouacked in the same off-campus housing. They were in each other's weddings and have been there for the birth of children. "It was really great that we all were in aviation together in the same dorm hallway," he says. "We all connected right away, and we still are."
Taylor frequently reflects on his job, and he likes what he sees. "The best thing about working in 'flight ops' at the world's largest airline," he says, "is I'm as close to being an airline pilot without being gone from home often. I've had a better work-life balance and been able to attend almost all of my kids' events, while at the same time allowing the family to travel quite often (for free) to visit friends and families whenever we want."
The family includes spouse Torii, who attended Saginaw Valley State University, and children Archer (10) and 6-year-old Finlee. He frequently takes the kids from their home in Grapevine, Texas, to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport's airplane-viewing park to see the Airbus 380 come in -- it's the world's largest passenger aircraft, a double-decker with a seating capacity of as many as 853.
"My job allows me 'jumpseat access' on all mainline American Airlines flights," he says, "so I have ridden the jumpseat quite a few times on almost all of our planes. The MD-80 had little foot pedals for us short people. The 787 jumpseat is the most comfortable. The mini-jumpseat on the 757 and A321 is the worst."
Be it a comfortable ride or not, those seats have carried Taylor to London twice, Rome, Puerto Rico, the ski mecca of Aspen in Colorado, and Cheyenne, Wyo. Another of those hitched rides took him to a Detroit Red Wings playoff game in California, followed by one of those infamous "red-eyes" back home.
Family excursions have included snowboarding in both Colorado and Canada, biking and backpacking at such national parks as Olympic and its Hoh Rainforest in western Washington, the Everglades, and the Grand Canyon, as well as enjoying what his home state has to offer -- Isle Royale, the Keweenaw Peninsula, and the family cabin near Lewiston, Mich.
Yet Taylor is looking even beyond that. "American Airlines has a retirement plan where you can have flight benefits for life if your age and years of service equal 65," he says. "I want to retire the earliest that I can from American so that I may return to Michigan to pursue other careers in aviation. Doing float-plane flights to Isle Royale or commuter flights to Beaver Island is something I've dreamed of riding off into the sunset in Michigan. But, as well, I have often thought of returning to the College of Aviation."
Why the latter? "Just graduating from 蜜桃社区 helped me get my job at American," he says.