When you have a passion, sometimes it overtakes you. You find yourself doing something you never considered without much thought, but a feeling that you need to do it. Greg Hughes is a pilot whose passion project is giving back to his community through aviation.

Hughes first laid eyes on the once beautiful Cessna 150 in the San Marco, Texas, airport. Before he knew it, he was talking to the owner, Roland, about his plan of restoring the plane, starting a flying club, and give kids to young people as an introduction to aviation. Ronald’s’ response? “I’ll bring you the keys tomorrow.”

The plane was in rough shape to start with peeling paint and flat tires, but once Hughes got over the “What have I done?” moment, he got to work.

Three years later with the help of one online fundraising campaign called Lil Angels, the Lil Angels Flyers of Austin, Texas started in December. It was exactly what Hughes imagined: volunteer pilots giving young people rides as part of the EAA Young Eagles program. We’ve actually written about them in a previous article and all the wonderful work they do. You can read about their 2.2 million ride milestone they reached here.

Now, Hughes is planning on loaning the plane to local students with the AOPA’s High School Aviation STEM curriculum. Pat Brown, AOPA’s Texas ambassador, describes his friend Bubba Hughes as “a force of nature.” Which you’ll understand why after hearing him talk. Hughes is a former McDonnel Douglas 5-4 Phantom pilot who retired from the Air Force in 1992. He enjoys flying anything from Beechcraft Bonanza to Cessna Citations.

He also returned to flying medical transport in 2017 with the BasicMed program. What a guy! He describes flying the restored Cessna for the first time “truly did fly like a little homesick angel.”

We can’t wait to see what’s in store for this amazing pilot with an amazing passion for aviation and his community.

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