License to fly available in area

For those looking for adventure that lasts a lifetime, there is an ex-fighter pilot and retired U.S. Customs enforcement agent in town who can teach you how to fly.

Robert Viator, a Broussard native, decided several years ago it was time to retire from chasing drug smugglers around the world in airplanes. He and his wife, Debbie, who is originally from North Carolina, set their sights on returning home to the Teche Area and recently completed construction on a new home in Cade.

Quickly tiring of the slow pace of retirement, the Viators, along with longtime friend and business partner Mike Roberts, owner of Honda of Lafayette, recently opened the doors of Acadiana Flight Center at the Acadiana Regional Airport.

Offering a new streamlined licensing option called a light sport certification, students at the school can get a license to fly a plane in roughly half the time of a traditional private license with a much cheaper price tag. Debbie Viator estimated the light sport certification would cost a student $3,900 and take 20 hours to complete, which Viator said could feasibly be done in four months time.

A private pilot’s license that requires 40 hours of flying time in addition to bookwork would cost approximately $6,200. Acadiana Flight Center offers both.

“The light sport license is a new certification offered by the FAA and is just a cheaper way to get started being a pilot, getting to fly around and log flying time,” Robert Viator said. “Then you can continue on to get your private or commercial license, eventually flying jets if that’s what you want to do.”

The Viators shopped around for a new, state-of-the-art plane for lessons. They settled on a $150,000 Flight Design CTLS Sport Pilot, which Debbie Viator said looks like a dragonfly.

Currently, the flight school has eight students, though Viator has instructed hundreds of pilots during his years in the Air Force and with U.S. Customs.

He still displays a boyhood enthusiasm for flying, something he said he always knew he would end up doing.

“All I have ever wanted to do was fly. I never had any doubt,” he said. “I went to college knowing that I would be going to the Air Force to fly.”

Debbie Viator said her mother-in-law used to say that when he was a boy, Robert would look up into the sky, point at a plane and say he would fly too one day.

Robert Viator shares that enthusiasm with his students and said it is priceless to see a student go from “a deer in headlights to thinking flying is easy.”

Only open for a month, Acadiana Flight Center is already looking for ways to expand its operation.

Robert Viator said he is certified as an instructor for single engine, land and sea planes and multi-engine planes. He will soon start shopping for a seaplane so the school can utilize the airport’s seaway for training.

“Most people interested in getting their seaplane rating just want it to say they have it,” he said.

“There are Navy and Air Force guys that come through here that would be interested in their seaplane rating, and it would only take them five hours.”

The couple said the Acadiana Regional Airport Authority has been supportive of their endeavor, and the facilities at the airport are a good fit for a flight school.

Debbie Viator said compared to Lafayette Regional Airport, which also has a flight school, there is little commercial traffic, which means students spend less time on the airstrip and more time actually flying. For students paying for lessons by the hour, the more time in the air, the better.

Apart from hard work at their fledgling flight school, the Viators are just happy to be home in the Teche Area.

“For us, home is wherever we are together,” she said. “But being together here, where it is all about the down-home friendly Cajun atmosphere, that is what makes being back special.”