‘I like taking somebody who is a total bumbling groundling and turn them into a flier.’

When Steve Mason flunked high school algebra, his counselor told him to drop his desire to become a pilot, and he “wiped it out of my mind.” He studied journalism and advertising in small schools in Ohio and his native New Jersey, joined the Coast Guard and took up the sale of industrial metals before “somebody told me that if I could add and subtract I could fly,” and the dream began nagging him again . Equipped with his instructor rating and small savings , Mason and a pal bought a Cessna 150, hung a shingle at a Gillespie Field office in El Cajon, and began teaching groundlings 19 years ago. After 7,000 hours in the air, the 46-year-old co-owner of Golden State Aviation now spends more time administering a business with 22 planes and 18 employees. His love of teaching persists in ground school, and he still takes to the air for the euphoria of flying alone. Times staff writer Nancy Reed interviewed him and Dave Gatley photographed him.

One great thing about flying is that you can totally lose yourself.

You could be having a heart transplant tomorrow at 2 o’clock--you get up in the air for an hour and all of that just goes away.

Because it is such a great diversion, I have found over the years that a lot of people use flying as an escape from the trials and tribulations of life.

If I look into people just starting out, there has often been a major upheaval in their life--they lost a job, their spouse left them, or their kid just got thrown in jail for smuggling.

We get people who ask to work around the building, paint or pull weeds to pay for their flight lessons, housewives up to doctors and lawyers who take two lessons and go buy an airplane.

We get 50% dropout. The largest reason is not enough money--and fear of taking tests is a big thing. As a student, you are constantly being put to the test, and there is that constantly nagging thing that you are going to look stupid. It’s one to one, and students feel a lot of pressure.

I am not consciously a romanticist about flying. At Disneyland you have a ride, and . . . this is the top-of-the-line ticket.

It is total freedom of movement, you can go up and down and left and right. Operating the airplane is virtually nothing once you are airborne, other than looking around for traffic and an occasional radio communication, there is really nothing to physically flying the airplane at all.

But it is absorbing. Not because you are busy, but because of the sensation, the feeling. All you have is the sound of the engine.

To me a lot of it is no phones. In a world when you are constantly being called upon, you are up there by yourself.

I have always had this feeling, here I am up here and there are all you people down there in the smog and the traffic and the burglaries and the highway patrolmen and the IRS, and here I am way above all that.

It’s not like working, either. Flying is fun. One of the things I wanted to be was a teacher, but didn’t know if I could handle kids that well.

I like taking somebody who is a total bumbling groundling and turn them into a flier. Learning to fly encompasses one big psychological thing, the fear of flying itself. A lot of people who come in here have never even set foot in an airplane.

The youngest I have flown with is 12. And there are 60- and 70-year-old men who will walk in here and say they have wanted to fly since they were that high--they are finally retired and now have the time and the money to do it.

It never occurred to me that it was dangerous. In all those years, all those hours and all those students, I never had what I would consider a close call. I would be a lot more scared in a car.