It’s very hard to believe that a 14 year-old Canadian-born boy who has never attended a Jewish day school can speak Hebrew like an Israeli. That’s the case of Mike Domb, a grade 9 student at Fieldstone Day School in Toronto, who is Canada’s youngest airplane pilot.

Domb, whose father is Israeli and whose mother was born in Canada, speaks fondly of Israel. “When I was a child I took many trips to Israel and about a year ago, when I was in grade 8, I decided that I wanted to live in Israel,” he says. “I had my Bar Mitzvah in Israel and afterwards I stayed at a boarding school there. I didn’t really like the boarding school in Israel and it was hard being so far away from my parents so I came back to Canada. I still visit Israel all the time because I have family and friends there and I feel very comfortable in Israel.”

When he turns 18, Mike is hoping that he can enlist in the Israeli Air Force. This is no surprise considering that despite his youth, he recently received a pilot’s license which allows him to fly solo. He started flying at the age of 12 with his uncle who is a pilot as well. His dream was to continue to fly so Mike started a ground school course at Buttonville Airport, where he studied subjects such as Aeronautical Meteorology, Aeronautical Navigation, Airplane engines and the like. In a class where most of the students were between the ages of 30 and 50, Mike finished with top marks.

After ground school, Mike began training as a pilot in the air. He learned about engine failures, spins, steep turns, how to fly without being able to see out the window, and much more. “I always planned on my 14^th birthday to fly solo and to get my license. That’s the youngest you can legally be in Canada in order to fly solo. So, on June 25, on my 14^th birthday, I went to get my license,” he explains. “It was stormy and raining and I thought I wasn’t going to fly solo. Eventually the weather just cleared and I got a very short window and I flew one circuit around the airport, about 5 minutes, and right when I landed it started to rain.”

Mike currently flies a Cessna 172 and is based out of Toronto City Centre Airport. He trains with Canadian Flyers International, which is one of the largest flight training units in Canada, currently operating out of three bases in the Toronto area. It’s not easy to fly at City Centre Airport and he explains a bit about the danger he faces: “It’s very hard at City Centre because of the planes that belong to Porter Airlines. It’s dangerous when you fly a small plane behind a large plane like Porter’s. The planes disturb the air and if you fly too close to the plane it can literally tear apart the plane and turn it over and crash in a few seconds; but I really like flying at City Centre because it’s a newer airport and you really feel like you’re doing something there.”

Seeing as he’s so prone to danger while flying, a question that comes to mind is what do his parents think about it? “When I first started to fly, my parents didn’t really want me to be a pilot,” Mike says. “They said ‘it’s okay to be a pilot, but you’re too young for this right now’. I kept asking them to let me do it and in the end they let me go to ground school, and afterwards I just continued to study.”