Al Banen is more comfortable up in the air than on terra firma.

Although he’s well-grounded in terms of his family, retirement, dream home and all that, Al spends a lot of time soaring through the lower atmosphere.

It’s been that way since he was a boy, when at the age of five he first started building model airplanes and day-dreaming about gliding through the sky.

“I’ve always been fascinated with airplanes and aviation,” he says. “I’ve owned quite a few over the years.”

With taking to the sky like a bird comes certain responsibilities, however, and Al has always been about “safety first.”

Too many deadly crashes over the years prove that axiom.

He started flying in 1954 – he learned in a J3 Cub – and by 1961 he became a certified flight instructor.

“I’ve been instructing ever since as an avocation,” he says.

His dedication over the decades was recently recognized by the Federal Aviation Administration when he was given the Arizona “certified flight instructor of the year” award for 2013.

The honor was bestowed at the Aviation Safety Advisory Group of Arizona’s 41st annual awards banquet.

“It came as a complete surprise,” he says.

Even better – in late December Al was chosen among two finalists as the “regional” instructor of the year, making him tops in the 13 western states.

He’ll find out in spring if he wins the national award, which is given out each July at the well-known Oshkosh air show (EAA AirVenture) in Wisconsin.

As a master instructor, Al has worked his way into a specialty niche in the aviation industry.

He instructs throughout the country, mostly with private individuals who need additional training to get recurrent instruction or an advanced rating.

He has more than 25,000 flying hours and has instructed in almost all general aviation single-engine and multi-engine aircraft.

He has taught thousands of pilots how to fly.

Al now specializes in high-performance airplanes. Many times owners or potential buyers will contact him to check out a plane and its avionics equipment.

Al takes pride in being a Beechcraft pilot and instructor. He has served as a CFI for the life of the Beechcraft Bonanza and Baron Owners annual training program. He knows the specifications for every Bonanza and Baron ever produced by Beechcraft.

As we roll into 2014, avionics remains the biggest challenge for Al as he needs to stay current with technology and how it is used in the cockpit.

He sold his last airplane two years ago, “but I fly enough to stay current; you especially need training in new avionics.”

While computers and other technological advances have changed the way we operate in society and at the office, the same obviously holds true for airplanes.

Those “high performance” airplanes of the 1960s aren’t quite the same as they are in 2014.

Yet for all the advances in equipment, Al is convinced pilots cannot simply rely on technology alone. “Human error” still needs to be monitored and put in check.

Al has been in too many training situations to know otherwise.

Has he had a lot of close calls while giving instruction to novice pilots?

“A lot of people have tried to kill me over the years,” he chuckles. “Let’s leave it at that.”

Not ironically, his CFI area of expertise is “loss of control.”

In 2009 he was awarded The Wright Brothers “Master Pilot” Award for 50 years of furthering the cause of aviation safety.

Changing industry

While living in California during the 1960s and half-way through the ‘70s, Al spent a lot of time training Hollywood movie stars how to fly airplanes, folks such as James Arness, Gene Hackman and Max Baer Jr.

Despite that image, however, Al maintains that the private aviation industry really started out as a “poor man’s hobby” that has changed over the decades.

“It was similar to a sport on the weekends, with a lot of camaraderie involved,” he says.

“We took a lot of family vacations with the airplane, the kids saw a lot of places they ordinarily wouldn’t have seen.”

Yet with terrorist attacks and heightened security concerns, even the small airports are “locked up” and the costs have increased significantly for airplanes and private flight.

“General aviation will be gone in the future except for corporate jets and the very rich,” Al says.

Yet the award-winning flight instructor has no intention of slowing down or staying grounded.

“I will keep doing this until I can’t,” he says. “As long as I can pass a FAA medical exam, I’ll be up there.”