It all started on a Thursday in 1997. I was in second grade, and my dad was recently out of a job. I never asked to go to the airport. I still don’t know why we went. My dad picked me up from school at 2:15pm one day and we simply drove to the airport. That was a 36mi drive for us. It took less than an hour back then, and soon we were at “Airplane Landing View Point,” a place I had always known as “In-N-Out Burger Park,” since that’s exactly where it is. There, you are treated to a spectacle not afforded at many other airports around the world, a comfortable place to watch with a coke and a smile as hundreds of thousands of pounds of metal, composite materials, combustable fuel, cargo, and human beings pass 150ft overhead, less than 10 seconds from landing. The combination of noise, moving parts, bright colors, and pure excitement was all I needed to be instantly hooked. I would go on to spend almost every weekend at the airport until age 16, and most of my free time when not in school was spent doing research, reading, designing, or planning my contributions to aviation.

While most people see airplanes and flying as a way to get around, I see art, science, business, and politics all in synchrony together. From the designs of airports past and present, to the drama of the airline industry. My heroes growing up were Sir Richard Branson, Robert Crandall, and Joe Sutter; a maverick Billionaire, a hard-nosed captain of industry, and a humble engineer who gave aviation one of its greatest and most beloved gifts, the 747.

The Pursuit isn’t about reaching any sort of end goal. I will never see, photograph, touch, fly on, or pilot every single aircraft out there. But I certainly can try! I literally chase airplanes. I have scaled fences, ran red lights, been questioned by the police, and had my photographs featured in official Los Angeles World Airports press releases. The pictures, videos, stories, and opinions posted here are the product of a father-son hobby that spans 20+ years, and that has been passed down 3 generations. I took my first flight at 18 months old. I have flown on over 25 different airplane types, on 20+ airlines (some of which no longer exist), over a half-million miles, so far. I book flights based on airplane type, then arrival/departure time. Sometimes I fly somewhere for the weekend just to enjoy the experience of flying.

A plane can be flying overhead and I can identify it by sight or sound, tell you the make and model, where it’s going, coming from, and who owns and operates it. The beautiful mechanical melody of a jet engine is something  I will never tire of. Some people love the sound of a Stradivarius cello, or a Les Paul guitar. Me, I’ll take the hum of a thunderous GE90 or the signature shriek of a Rolls-Royce RB211. The louder the better.

I welcome you all to reach out with your questions, comments, stories, observations, and curiosities. I love nothing more than to share this wonderful hobby with others. The bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, glasses-wearing 7 year old with an insatiable curiosity for aviation lives on, and he’s excited to share this new project with you all. Cheers!

-D.S.