Bill Kershner Goes West

Aviation legend Bill Kershner, renown throughout the GA community as an instructor and author, has died.

Dog-eared copies of Kershner’s Advanced Pilot’s Flight Manual are on the bookshelves of countless pilots.  He’d been flying since 1945, and by my count, he must have been in his late 70s.

Kersher was cool.  He lectured at the UT Space Institute.  Kershner was old, but not crotchety.  He was modest, yet confident.  AOPA has a page of video clips and article reprints on the man.

We’re in an era when aviation is more synonymous with “money” than ever before.  The flying world tends to pay you little notice unless you’re in a half-million dollar composite SR-22 or Columbia.  Or the aerobatic equivalent, an Edge 540.  Bill Kershner did his thing with an old C152 Aerobat, training “over 600 students, including 45 Army aviators, FAA test pilots, lectured and flew spins at the Navy Flight Test School at Patuxent River, MD three separate summers, and taught aspiring Navy and Air Force pilots”.

That’s what I call “the right stuff”.  RIP, professor.

  1 comment for “Bill Kershner Goes West

  1. March 9, 2007 at 7:21 am

    I too owe a debt of gratitude to Bill Kershner for his excellent manuals. Thanks for letting me know of his passing. He’ll join that great Hangar Flying Session in the sky with the likes of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and Ernest Gaan, and so many others. Thankfully we still have their books to remind us…

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