Eyes on the prize

“He said, ‘Why don’t you come. You can sit in the back seat.’ I said, ‘OK,’” Moulton recalled. The instructor was the late Sparky Imeson, author of several well-respected books on mountain flying.

“He said, ‘I’m having a ground school at my house. It’s free if you want to come.’ I said, ‘Well, that sounds interesting.’ I went to the ground school and it just took off from there,” Moulton said.

Today, Moulton is a corporate pilot with more than 16,000 hours total time. He and his wife, Sandy, until recently had half ownership in Yellowstone Aviation, a seasonal fixed-base operator at Yellowstone Airport in West Yellowstone, Montana. It’s a 19-minute drive from Yellowstone National Park’s west entrance. Sandy was the manager.

Three thousand of Moulton’s hours were earned as a flight instructor working for Imeson. “All of our students had to spin before we could solo them. All our students had an hour of basic aerobatics before they had their private. I never was really into aerobatics,” Moulton recalled.

Now, he primarily operates a Pilatus PC–12 for two owners. One had been his boss as an owner-pilot of an Israel Aerospace Industries Astra jet (a model later taken over by Gulfstream). Moulton flew the jet with the owner about 240 hours a year for six years. When it came time for the owner to retire, Moulton found a second owner to join in the purchase of the Pilatus. How did he find the corporate pilot job in the first place? “It was luck. It’s who you know,” Moulton said.

His flying is a year-round job. “We go to Seattle a lot. We go to California and the Phoenix area. In the summertime, we go up into Canada. In the wintertime, we go to Mexico and Belize. It is business and pleasure, both,” Moulton said, adding that sometimes Sandy will go along on the vacation trips to Mexico and Belize. The second owner of the Pilatus is semi-retired and works in development, building warehouses and office buildings around the country.

“Between the two of them, we’ve been putting about 425 hours a year on the Pilatus. Quite a bit. For the owner who is retired, we go to the East Coast eight or 10 times a year.” In June and July 2016 they did an around-the-world trip, Moulton said.

The Astra jet was necessary when his boss had to be on the East Coast one day and the West Coast the next. Today the Pilatus better fits the mission profile. “The Pilatus is inexpensive to operate. It will go into anywhere. We go into some dinky little airports in Canada. It carries a good load. It is a good all-around plane to do what we do,” Moulton said. Trips to Canada are primarily for fishing.

Fishing brings up another point: He and Sandy wanted to do more of it, so they decided to sell the FBO. Since March 30, FBO services at Yellowstone Airport have been provided by Choice Aviation out of Cody, Wyoming. “We decided 35 years is long enough and we’d like to have our summers back so we can go camping, fishing, and traveling. I will probably keep my job flying the Pilatus another two to four years,” Moulton said. “We fly probably three times a month and we’re usually gone two to five days, so I do have quite a bit of time off. It’s a great job. Great guys to work for.”

R.J. and Sandy aren’t the only family members who have warmed to aviation. A daughter, Ashley, has a lead design position at Greenpoint Technologies, which designs interiors for Boeing Business Jets and private airliners serving heads of state. These aircraft have full dining rooms, bathrooms with showers, bedrooms with large-screen TVs, and offices complete with large desks.

Living in a scenic area of the country close to two national parks came as fringe benefits to a life of flying. Flying was always first. Moulton kept his eyes on the prize.