Aloft above the Mining City of Butte, a kid seeing the grandeur of Montana’s Rockies for the first time is destined to become passionate about aviation. Those early flights in a neighbor’s Bonanza motivated young John McKenna to obtain his private pilot license at the age of 16.
For forty years, he’s rarely traveled any other way, accumulating over five thousand hours, many in his Cessna 185. An IFR rating is attached to his ticket, but looking out the window at the mountainous west is John’s favorite method of navigation.
A series of airplanes have served the McKenna family pleasure trips as well as John’s New York Life Insurance practice that has spanned 37 years. John’s wife Trish also flies and enjoys her Cub. They have three children who consider the airplane the family station wagon-it’s just “how you get there.”
