As told by North Georgia Aviation owner Mindy Lindheim on episode 14 of the Turning Base podcast.
It started with a question typed into a search bar in the middle of the night.
Mindy Lindheim was 18, enrolled in pre-med, and worried about how she’d pay for medical school. So she went looking for another way and found military medicine, which led her to aerospace medicine, the doctors who care for pilots. By the end of that 4 a.m. rabbit hole, she wasn’t reading about the doctors anymore. She was reading about the pilots.
She told her mom about it the next morning. Her mom had a suggestion: their neighbor flew for Delta, so why not ask him? He took one look at the kind of person she was, a water-sports-loving adrenaline junkie, and told her to drive out to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and try it.
“I’m a first-generation aviator,” Mindy told listeners on Turning Base. “It’s not in my family.” She toured the campus, and by the end of the day her pre-med plans were behind her.
Corporate Aviation Careers Beyond the Airlines
Embry-Riddle pointed students toward the airlines, and Mindy planned to follow. Then she took a corporate aviation course, one of the few she ever had with a female professor. The professor talked about flying for NASCAR and other corporate flight departments, and Mindy realized that Lowe’s, Home Depot and Walmart run flight departments too.
She was a business and law minor who, unlike most people, enjoys the administrative side of things.
“I was like, how can I merge all this?” she said.
The answer came through her master’s program, where she organized a conference of aircraft manufacturers and airlines. She got to know people from Textron, Cirrus, Piper and Diamond. One of them casually mentioned flying a brand-new airplane in for the event, and she asked how to get that job. Two weeks later she was moving to Chicago to sell new Cessnas and Beechcrafts for Textron Aviation.
Teaching a Spouse to Fly…When an Instructor Should Hand Off
Years later, her husband Kevin, then an air traffic controller, decided to learn to fly. Mindy started teaching him in her tailwheel Cubcrafter, but she was an experienced instructor who was new to tailwheel flying, and she wasn’t sure how far to let a student go before stepping in. Her sales career kept her traveling constantly too.
So she made a call she describes plainly: he would train in a Cessna 172 at another school, she would handle ground instruction when she was home, and she told him not to let her hold him back. He earned his license, and the two of them began flying farther, which is how they ended up buying a 1957 Cessna 182 they named Mojo.
Resisting the Pressure to Fly
Every flight she makes, whether in Mojo, a contract jet, or a flight school aircraft, gets the same professional standard of briefings and go/no-go decisions.
She told the Turning Base host that the pressure to go is the real danger, and gave an example everyone in aviation will recognize. Your mom is in town for only 24 hours, the weather is marginal, and you hold an instrument rating, and she doesn’t understand why you can’t just fly.
“I just never want to have an ego too big to say, ‘Well, I’m rated and the plane is rated, so I can do this,'” Mindy said.
Discovery Flights at North Georgia Aviation
A window in Mindy’s office looks into the hangar of North Georgia Aviation. Every day, students walk in from their discovery flights, and she watches the moment it clicks for them.
“Taking someone for their first flight is one of the greatest things that I ever get to do,” she said.
On the side, she co-hosts Captain John Doe, a podcast of anonymous aviation stories inspired by late-night hangar talk, where they read each story live and then reflect as flight instructors on what they would have done differently.
Learn to Fly at North Georgia Aviation
Asked how she’d spend a free day with Mojo fueled and the weather perfect, Mindy knew right away: she would fly toward water, whether to Charleston, Florida, or the Gulf Coast near Naples, her husband’s hometown. It’s a fitting answer from a pilot who has flown a dual-control P-51 Mustang and ridden with the Blue Angels in an F-18 Super Hornet, and who still has a fighter jet on her wish list.
Anyone who wants to learn to fly, brush up their skills, or fly a Cirrus for the first time can find her at North Georgia Aviation.
“We’ll take great care of you,” she told listeners.
The full conversation is on episode 14 of the Turning Base podcast. Mindy can also be found on social media as @Schmiiindy.
About North Georgia Aviation
North Georgia Aviation is a flight school in Gainesville, Georgia, offering flight training, skills refreshers and discovery flights in a fleet that includes Cirrus and Cessna Skyhawk aircraft.
About Mindy Lindheim
Mindy Lindheim is the owner of North Georgia Aviation. She holds an ATP certificate and flight instructor and jet type ratings, earned her aviation degree, and works as an aircraft broker with Lone Mountain Aircraft. She co-hosts the podcast, Captain John Doe.
Keep following Mindy’s adventures on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
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