Upon his retirement as a non-routine flight operations captain from a fractional operator in 2015, Dr. Veillette had accumulated more than 20,000 hours of flight experience in 240 types of aircraft—including balloons, rotorcraft, sea plans, glides, war birds, supersonic jets and large commercial transports. He is an adjunct professor at Utah Valley University. In June 2023, he won the prestigious Bill Gunston Technology Writer of the Year Award.
Larry, we're going down!'' Those words were uttered by Roger Petit just seconds before their Air Florida 737 hit Washington, D.C.'s 14th Street Bridge less than one minute after takeoff from National Airport. It's ironic that as ``Palm 90'' waited patiently on that snowy Jan. 13, 1982, Capt. Larry Wheaton pointed at the run-up pad and said, ``THAT's where we should be deicing.'' Wheaton went to an icy grave in the Potomac River not knowing how right he was.
