HALLIE GOLDEN & THOMAS PEIPERT
Jake Hutzler spends his workdays directing planes from an airport tower. Once a week, he gets there by strapping a propeller to his back and taking to the skies of Colorado.
Before his commute, the 28-year-old air traffic controller lays out a large wing on the road outside his apartment complex, fires up the motor and starts running. Within seconds, his feet leave the ground.
For the next 20 minutes, Hutzler flies at a leisurely 35 mph (56 kph) above the expansive fields around Pueblo, a city near the Front Range mountains, listening to his favourite music. Once airborne, he keeps colleagues updated on where he’s at and how high he’s flying.
“I’m very small, and I don’t show up on radar,” Hutzler said, “so they’ll want to keep track.”
As the airport comes into view, he waits for the OK to land on the ramp. Pulling down on toggles to slow down the paramotor, he lets his feet dangle and meets the ground with a brief jog. He packs up the wing, strips off his jacket to reveal his collared work shirt and begins his shift telling planes when it’s safe to land and take off.
Fascinated with flying since childhood, Hutzler says it’s as close as you can get to flying like a bird. “You have a view that almost nobody gets to experience… You’re just sitting there in the air with freedom to go wherever you want.”
His grandfather used to take him up in a small four-seat aircraft. In college, Hutzler put in about 20 hours toward getting a pilot’s licence, but the costs were too high for him to continue.
Everything changed when he came across a viral video of a man flying a paramotor to McDonald’s and eating a hamburger. “After I saw that, I was like, ‘I’m sold,’” he said. “I gotta do that.”
Hutzler started training to fly the contraption — also known as powered paragliding — in 2021 in Florida and later became an instructor.
For paramotors, there’s no licence required, and the price tag is a fraction of the cost of many other forms of flying. However, they’re still subject to federal rules on ultralight vehicles, including operating during the day and avoiding congested areas.
The sport became a part of Hutzler’s life story. He trained the woman he would go on to marry, and when he was ready to propose, he used fake engine trouble on his paramotor to lure her to the contraption, where he had left a ring. Now he’s looking forward to the day their 2-year-old daughter is old enough to go on a tandem ride.
But after Hutzler started working in air traffic control earlier this year, his job left him less time to fly. The solution: Start flying to work.
He approached his manager, and they went through the rule book and made sure he’d have two-way communication with the tower when he entered their airspace. He made his first flight to work in June and has been doing it ever since, weather permitting.