Interview with a Pilot: Shayler Mortenson

In this episode of the American Heritage School’s Patriot Podcast, students interview Air Force pilot and Delta Airlines captain Shay Mortenson. Shay shares his inspiring journey from a childhood dream of flying planes to serving 14 years on active duty in the Air Force, continuing in the Air Force Reserves, and building a career in commercial aviation.

Families won’t want to miss his reflections on leadership, Christlike character, and the difference between transactional and transformational leadership. Shay also shares insights about balancing family life with a demanding career, pursuing continual growth, and finding purpose through service.

Gather the family, press play, and enjoy an uplifting conversation about aviation, leadership, personal development, and following dreams with faith and determination.

What is American Heritage School's Patriot Podcast?

Welcome to American Heritage School's Patriot Podcast, hosted by the students of the podcast class at the AHS campus in downtown Salt Lake City. Each episode features students interviewing professionals, experts, and inspiring guests to explore real-world experiences through the lens of The Seven Principles of Personal and Civil Liberty. These conversations are designed to uplift, educate, and spark meaningful dialogue within the family.

Tune in with your family each week to learn together, reflect on the values that matter most, and be inspired to live with greater purpose and principle.

Learn more about The Seven Principles of Personal and Civil Liberty here: https://slc.americanheritageschool.org/the-seven-principles

Hamna: 00:23

I am Homna. Welcome to the American Heritage School Patriot Podcast.

Lucas: 00:27

And I'm Lucas. And today we are privileged to talk with Mr. Shayler Mortenson. He's gone by many titles, captain, first officer, major, elder, and lieutenant. But he prefers Shay.

Hamna: 00:39

Shay grew up in Seattle, WA where he played many sports before starting school at BYU. He was during his mission while serving on Air Force training base that he realized his childhood dream of flying planes were also his career dream. After returning from his mission, he met and married his amazing wife, Elizabeth.

Lucas: 00:58

Shay graduated from BYU and commissioned into the Air Force in 2008, earned his wings in 2010, and served on active duty with distinction for fourteen years. He now serves in the Air Force Reserves and flies for Delta Airlines. He and Elizabeth have been married for twenty adventurous years and have three amazing daughters, Regan, Lila, and Emmeline, who keep him grounded.

Hamna: 01:21

So Shay, will you tell us what your path was like becoming a pilot, both in the Air Force and for Delta? And how did you realize your childhood dream could become an actual reality for you?

Shayler Mortenson: 01:32

Sure. So we'll start with what was the path? So the path was you have to have a degree in order to commission into the Air Force. And in the Air Force, to be a pilot, you have to be an officer. So I got my degree from BYU.

Shayler Mortenson: 01:47

While I was there, I was going through the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps, the ROTC.

Hamna: 01:52

Right.

Shayler Mortenson: 01:53

And that's the commissioning source that I had. Cool. And then from there, you compete in order to go do pilot training. And it's a very competitive process that includes you have a score out of a 100. And out of the 100, you get points based on how well you do in the ROTC course.

Shayler Mortenson: 02:10

That's a big portion of it, like how you rank amongst your peers. Then your GPA is part of it. Your physical fitness is part of it. We go to between your sophomore and junior year, you go to a field training. So it's basically our basic training and how you score there amongst your peers determines that 10 points.

Shayler Mortenson: 02:32

So if you are number one in your class, you'll get 10 points. If you're the last, you'll get one point. And then the last one is, do you have good hand eye coordination, and do you have good spatial awareness? So we actually were put into this little tiny room and it was funny. We walked into this room.

Shayler Mortenson: 02:50

Was a locked room that they had this little video game in there that they wanted you never have seen before until you went to go take this test. And it was just to grade how well your spatial awareness and your hand eye coordination. But they didn't want you to practice on it. They wanted it to be the same for everyone. The first time you saw it was the time you took the test.

Hamna: 03:10

So how that? How did you feel like that when you went over there to take

Shayler Mortenson: 03:14

Well, the mean, it was it wasn't much, really. Right. You know, I I mean, I grew up in the area of you know, Super Mario Brothers came out when I was, three. And so, you know, I played some video games. Right.

Shayler Mortenson: 03:28

And so that really wasn't too difficult to grasp.

Lucas: 03:31

So you were

Hamna: 03:31

ready for that. Right.

Shayler Mortenson: 03:32

Right. And and we knew like, you knew going in that, like, hey. If this is a video game, you know, I I knew I was pretty good at video games. I would be I'd do okay on that.

Hamna: 03:41

That's great.

Lucas: 03:41

Yeah. You also mentioned the ROTC. I know that there's also like a JROTC program that's like for younger kids. What's like something you can kind of get out of that sort of military style training?

Shayler Mortenson: 03:53

So the JROTC there are two pathways out of the JROTC. You can go to the JROTC and then enlist in the military. So it kind of is a preparatory to joining the military as an enlisted person. So that's not an officer. That's just kind of that's your lowest rank for well, you can do that right out of high school.

Shayler Mortenson: 04:13

But some of the kids in the JRTC that are really excelling, they can use that as a scholarship opportunity to then be accepted to a four year school that has a ROTC, and then they can start as a freshman on an Air Force scholarship that'll pay for their school.

Lucas: 04:33

Great. Cool. Any other experiences you had while at BYU that kind of helped you understand a bit more about piloting or made you love it more than you already did?

Shayler Mortenson: 04:44

Yeah, sure. We would go once a semester, we would actually go do a shadow where we'd shadow different career fields or we go to a couple of different bases. And every time you went to a base, you wanted to go meet the pilots. And that was just that was always exciting. And it certainly gave you a lot of excitement for the potential career field.

Shayler Mortenson: 05:05

When you did get selected to go to pilot training, if you earned, we called it a pilot slot. So if you got a pilot slot, you could start wearing a flight suit around, which was instead of just the normal Air Force uniform that you'd wear for ROTC, wear a flight suit. And that was always exciting because like, yes, this is the first step. So

Hamna: 05:29

how could a high schooler student begin to explore a career in flying either for the Air Force or for commercial airline? What is your advice?

Shayler Mortenson: 05:36

Sure. So first off, when you when you see airplanes up in the sky.

Hamna: 05:40

Right. Super exciting. Yeah. Super excited.

Shayler Mortenson: 05:44

Super exciting. Being in an airplane, entirely different experience. The most of the schools around like the the aviation school. So you go find an airport, they'll have a an introductory offer. Right.

Shayler Mortenson: 05:57

You can say, hey, I wanna just try this out. Mhmm. And you'll go out with an instructor. And it's not an instructional flight. We're like, hey, we have these items that we're trying to accomplish.

Shayler Mortenson: 06:08

It's like, no, we're just going to go and just see if you like it.

Hamna: 06:11

Right.

Shayler Mortenson: 06:11

And it's not super expensive. It's something that you might have to save a couple months for because it's it's, you know, maybe a couple $100. Yeah. But it gives you that opportunity to just go up there and experience what it's like being in an airplane.

Hamna: 06:27

Yeah.

Shayler Mortenson: 06:27

And some people love it. Some people don't.

Lucas: 06:29

So what would you describe is your feeling when you're up in the airplane?

Shayler Mortenson: 06:34

If I were to use a couple of words to describe flying an airplane, it's majestic. Like one of my mentors that helped me get into the Air Force.

Hamna: 06:45

Right.

Shayler Mortenson: 06:45

When I was on my mission, there was an instructor pilot that I admired him. And that's he had just joined the church and we talked a lot. Yeah. And he's like, you know, it's really hard to convert pilots. And I was like, really?

Shayler Mortenson: 06:59

Why is that? And he goes, because we've already been to heaven. Is majestic. Somewhat like the views that you see, the sunset, the sunrise. Yeah.

Shayler Mortenson: 07:09

It's amazing. There are times, though, where you have complete sensory deprivation.

Hamna: 07:14

That's great.

Shayler Mortenson: 07:15

Well, not necessarily great. Like you're in the middle of a cloud. You can't see anything. And you're looking down at your instruments and you're going, I really hope all this is right because I'm flying up through the valley in Salt Lake. And I know there's giant mountains over there and giant mountains over there and over there and behind me.

Shayler Mortenson: 07:34

And I can't see them.

Hamna: 07:35

Surrounded by

Shayler Mortenson: 07:36

them. Really hope that this is accurate. So it's a little bit nerve wracking. You know? So you don't have those sensory to help you.

Shayler Mortenson: 07:45

It's exciting and there's never anything is the perfect flight. So if you're kind of the person that's like, hey, I just want to get better and I'm always striving to be better. Right. It's a great career. There it's not a it's not a career for someone who's complacent.

Shayler Mortenson: 07:59

It's not something where you're going to start this job. And if you haven't improved in thirty years, we got rid of you twenty nine years ago.

Hamna: 08:05

Right. Mhmm. There any training that you find, like, really hard for you or you didn't like it?

Shayler Mortenson: 08:12

Training that was hard? It was all hard.

Hamna: 08:14

It was all hard. Was all It was all hard.

Shayler Mortenson: 08:17

Pilot training was the most incredibly stressful

Hamna: 08:23

Right.

Shayler Mortenson: 08:24

Challenging, fun, rewarding experience Great. That I've ever done. The the worst training I've ever experienced was survival training.

Hamna: 08:33

What was that?

Shayler Mortenson: 08:33

Survival training. Oh. It's called SEER. Survival, evade, resistance, escape. And that's where they teach you how, let's say, go down behind enemy lines, how to survive behind enemy lines, how to not get captured.

Shayler Mortenson: 08:47

And if you get captured, how to survive in captivity. And so, you know, we role play a lot. So guess what? You get captured, you get beat up, you get thrown into a little tiny room and you get questioned just like you see on those movies where you have an interrogator coming in and screaming at you and beating you up and asking you questions. Did

Lucas: 09:06

you know the interrogator at all or was it like random people beating you up?

Shayler Mortenson: 09:10

People I've never met before.

Hamna: 09:12

Oh, that's crazy. I

Shayler Mortenson: 09:13

don't ever wanna see them again.

Hamna: 09:15

You mentioned that you were A Cargo Pilot. Cargo Pilot. Yes. So so my question is that, so why did you not choose to become a fighter pilot instead of the the Cargo Pilot?

Shayler Mortenson: 09:26

So a couple of things. The personality of a a fighter pilot

Hamna: 09:30

Right.

Shayler Mortenson: 09:30

Is different than my personality.

Lucas: 09:32

Great.

Shayler Mortenson: 09:32

So it is kind of the, you know, the awesome, cool job that everyone thinks that they wanna have when they go. Like, hey, this is gonna be really cool. Fighter pilots, imagine like when you're watching like a high school movie

Hamna: 09:46

Right.

Shayler Mortenson: 09:46

And you have like the kid who's the alpha male top dog athlete Yeah. And then combine him with the valedictorian.

Lucas: 09:54

Right. Oh,

Shayler Mortenson: 09:54

wow. Those are your fighter pilots. Crazy. They're incredibly intelligent and incredibly driven. They have they have to have a ton of confidence.

Shayler Mortenson: 10:03

We and that's we want them that way. We want them that where we're gonna give you a mission. That mission is to fly 500 miles past friendly lines into enemy territory. You're gonna go attack a target, and we want you to believe that you can get there

Hamna: 10:18

Right.

Shayler Mortenson: 10:19

Accomplish the mission, and get home. Great. We need incredible confidence. That takes a lot of swagger. And the mentality is the mission and the squadron comes first.

Hamna: 10:32

Right.

Shayler Mortenson: 10:33

And I was a family guy. I like to go in. I got my work done. I went home. I spent time with my family.

Shayler Mortenson: 10:37

It's party hard, play hard, work hard. And I was like, yep, I work hard. I don't party hard. And I play hard when I want to, but I like to dial it back and enjoy some downtime. And that's so personality wise, it wasn't the right fit for me.

Shayler Mortenson: 10:56

I actually thought I wanted that. I went to pilot training thinking that I wanted I was around a bunch of the other fighter pilots. My flight commander pulled me aside because you also once again were within the Air Force, you are always ranked amongst your peers.

Hamna: 11:10

Great.

Shayler Mortenson: 11:10

So you get if there's 25 in your class Right. There's a ranking somewhere of number one through number 25, and your name is somewhere on that list. So in order to go to fighters, you have to be in the top of your class. My scores were in the top where I could have gone, but my flight commander pulled me aside and was like, hey, look, like, I know your personality. There's a couple of other guys who have a similar score that that you do.

Shayler Mortenson: 11:38

Yeah. And their personality matches the fighter personality. Your personality matches more of a cargo mobility pilot. And so he made the recommendation Oh. That I'd not pursue a fighter pilot, and I'm grateful that he did because I enjoyed my mission a lot.

Shayler Mortenson: 11:57

I enjoyed what I did.

Hamna: 11:58

Yeah. That's

Shayler Mortenson: 11:59

I enjoyed the opportunities that came there. And I was my personality matched in the squadron I went to.

Hamna: 12:06

That's awesome. So do you like flying in the morning or at night?

Shayler Mortenson: 12:13

Well, I'm not a morning person.

Hamna: 12:15

You're not a morning person?

Shayler Mortenson: 12:16

I'm a morning person.

Hamna: 12:17

So you like to fly at night?

Shayler Mortenson: 12:18

I like to fly at night. In fact, there's been several times where I'm flying over the Atlantic Ocean Right. And the sun is coming up.

Hamna: 12:25

Uh-huh.

Shayler Mortenson: 12:26

And that's the second time I've watched the sun come up that day since I woke up. So it's like, why am I still awake? Why is the sun coming up a second time? I am so But watching the sunset, amazing.

Hamna: 12:39

Yeah. It's great.

Lucas: 12:41

Yep. You mentioned that you care a lot about your family. When did you like first meet your wife and how did that play into your whole career of being a pilot?

Shayler Mortenson: 12:51

Okay. So fun story. My one of my best friends that I I've met, we were we were not companions on the mission, but we were we served side by side, like adjacent in the same district three different times. So I had been around him for almost a whole year while we were on our mission. He came back from his mission just when I started school at BYU.

Shayler Mortenson: 13:12

So when he came home, I went to hang out with him and Uh-huh. Saw his, like, welcome home. And I met his little sister who Oh. Was like, oh, this is really cool. Great.

Shayler Mortenson: 13:25

And we headed off right away. Actually, the funny thing is I went up and was like, hey, do you wanna go to a movie together? And not to her, to my to my buddy. And he's like, yeah, sure. Sure.

Shayler Mortenson: 13:34

Let's let's go to a movie. And he's like, is it cool if my sister comes along? I'm like, sure. She's cute. Let's do it.

Shayler Mortenson: 13:38

You know, let's bring her along. And he was kind enough to sit in the back seat and let his sister sit in the front seat, and I was driving to the movie theater.

Hamna: 13:47

Right.

Shayler Mortenson: 13:47

On the way back from the movie theater, he was in the back because he was the third wheel.

Hamna: 13:52

That's great.

Lucas: 13:53

That's awesome. So I guess with American Heritage School, we also have a kind of our own way of learning. We try to live by the principles of personal and civil liberty. And so with, like, your own unique experience with the army and all the different things you learned there, what's no. I should say the air force.

Lucas: 14:12

Which of the principles do you feel is, one that you relate to the most?

Shayler Mortenson: 14:15

Honestly, this was kind of a hard one to narrow down because I I I found there were so many different things. But there I actually had two careers in the Air Force. They were kind of distinct. One, I was a pilot, And that occupied maybe 10% of my time doing my training, flying to maintain currency or actually flying to the different missions that I had. The other is being an officer.

Shayler Mortenson: 14:42

And the the being an officer, learning how to lead learning how to lead people that are that you outrank. So your subordinates versus learning how to lead your peers. Those are two entirely different skill sets that that I had to learn. That's where I feel like the the biggest growth I had as an individual came as being an officer. And so I picked Christ like character because as a leader, there's there's a couple different ways you can you can lead.

Shayler Mortenson: 15:12

And two that I really wanted to point out were there's transactional leadership.

Hamna: 15:17

Right.

Shayler Mortenson: 15:17

You think about a transaction. Right?

Hamna: 15:19

Yeah.

Shayler Mortenson: 15:19

Like, I do something, you get something in return. Right? So a leader says, hey, if you do this for me, I'll do this for you. Right. The leader is trying to accomplish something.

Shayler Mortenson: 15:28

Right? He's trying to reach a certain goal.

Hamna: 15:30

Yeah. Yeah.

Shayler Mortenson: 15:31

And so he incentivizes those that work for him by saying, hey, if you help me reach this goal, I'll help you with you getting the assignment that you want or you getting the time off that you want. That's transactional leadership. Great leaders use transformational leadership. Yeah. That's awesome.

Shayler Mortenson: 15:49

So they they're what they try to do is they encourage people. They try to get the best out of those people. Right. Get the people excited about the mission, excited about the goal. Find what motivates them and use that to help them be a better person and therefore a better soldier or better airman and a better pilot.

Shayler Mortenson: 16:12

And they're excited about accomplishing that goal. And there's there doesn't have to be this this. I give you this and I get this in return. And if we think about how Christ worked with, you know, his disciples and the followers, right? He was always encouraging them to be more, not necessarily to do more.

Shayler Mortenson: 16:31

Right? He wanted them to be more because if you knew if you if they would be more, naturally, they're gonna do more.

Lucas: 16:37

Yeah.

Shayler Mortenson: 16:37

And then also, you think about like the Apostles, right?

Hamna: 16:41

Yeah.

Shayler Mortenson: 16:41

It was almost the antithesis of transactional when he said, do you love me? Feed my sheep. He said, do you love these fish? Leave them. Come follow me.

Shayler Mortenson: 16:52

So it wasn't transactional. It wasn't like, I'll give you something in return for helping me out or following me. It's like, no. I'm gonna help you be more. I'm gonna I'm going to help you like, what are the two great commandments?

Shayler Mortenson: 17:06

Love God. Love your. I'm going to help you get closer to God by showing you how to love your fellow men.

Lucas: 17:14

Yeah. It's interesting that you bring up, like loving one another and also loving yourself. It's because it's a bit more focused on the improving yourself and the way you look at others as opposed to doing everything for everyone.

Shayler Mortenson: 17:26

Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Well,

Lucas: 17:29

just to wrap up, before the end of each of our interviews, we like to ask our guests a what their favorite joke is.

Shayler Mortenson: 17:37

Sure. So I'll I'll give you two.

Lucas: 17:39

Okay. The

Shayler Mortenson: 17:40

the the first one is just pure silliness, and the second one is, you know, great for this top. And that is never under any circumstance take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

Lucas: 17:54

That does not sound good.

Hamna: 17:57

That's okay.

Shayler Mortenson: 17:59

Like the second one. How do you know that somebody's a pilot?

Lucas: 18:02

How? How?

Shayler Mortenson: 18:03

They told you.

Hamna: 18:04

Oh, Yeah. That's a good one. Okay. Well, thank you so much, Shay. It's been a great time to have you with us.

Hamna: 18:12

Yeah.

Lucas: 18:12

Thanks for taking your time to come.

Shayler Mortenson: 18:14

Absolutely. My pleasure.

Lucas: 18:16

Thanks a lot.

Hamna: 18:21

We hope you enjoyed listening to this episode. A special thanks to our guest for joining us. And to the Lyceum Orchestra for providing the music.

Lucas: 18:28

That's

Hamna: 18:28

it. For the American Heritage School Patriot Podcast. If you learned something new, check out our other episodes.

Lucas: 18:33

And share with a friend.

Hamna: 18:34

Bye. See you. Goodbye.