Ueltschi Honored For Orbis Project

"It doesn't matter how much money I make­I'd give it away anyway." On Tuesday, FlightSafety founder and chief executive Al Ueltschi accepted NBAA's American Spirit Award, presented to an individual in the business aircraft community who has made important contributions outside it.

Ueltschi is best known for FlightSafety, which he started as a part-time business in 1951 and sold to Warren Buffett for $1.5 billion in 1996. He was also one of the founders of Project Orbis, which sends an L-1011-based flying hospital, staffed with volunteers, on worldwide missions to treat and prevent blindness.

"I'm probably the luckiest guy in the world," Ueltschi said in accepting the NBAA honor. He recalled his father's advice to work at something "that you can't wait to do every morning and don't want to leave," but added that "the kicker is doing it well enough to get paid."

Ueltschi, who once fell out of an open cockpit airplane in his early dollar-a-flight barnstorming days, had one final piece of advice for his audience: "There's no sense to getting killed in an airplane. That's a stupid thing to do."