From Zero to Instructors, Together: Oswaldo and Shahryar

One grew up in Karachi, Pakistan. The other in Tangerang, just outside Jakarta, Indonesia. Neither had ever touched the controls of an airplane. Today Shahryar Dodhy and Oswaldo Nanda are FAA flight instructors at Pelican Flight Training, and they got here side by side.

This is the story of two strangers who signed up for the same program, started from the same blank logbook page, and ended up sharing a cockpit, a career and a friendship.

Two countries, one blank logbook

Shahryar came from Karachi with a plan that had been years in the making: become a professional pilot, and do it properly. Oswaldo arrived from Indonesia with an FAA first-class medical already in hand and the same goal. Both enrolled in our Full Professional Pilot Program A on an F-1 student visa. That is the path that takes a student from zero hours through Private Pilot, Instrument, Commercial, CFI, CFII and MEI in about 15 months.

They met in their first weeks at North Perry Airport. Different languages at home, different food, different time zones to call family. What they had in common was the schedule: the same ground school, the same early mornings on the ramp, the same nerves before the first lesson.

The first solo

Every pilot remembers the day the instructor steps out and says, "Take it around the pattern, three landings, I'll be watching." Shahryar and Oswaldo reached that moment together. One flew, the other stood by the runway and watched, then they swapped places.

After the second landing, there was no question anymore. They weren't just classmates who happened to share a start date. They had pushed each other through the same checklists, quizzed each other before stage checks, and now they had the same story to tell their families back home.

Rating by rating

After the solo came the long middle of the program, and it is where most of the real work happens. Cross-countries. The instrument rating, flying with a view-limiting hood and trusting the gauges over your own senses. The commercial maneuvers. Then the instructor ratings, where you stop learning to fly and start learning how to teach someone else to fly.

They studied together for every written exam and practiced lesson briefings on each other. When one had a rough day in the airplane, the other was the first to say it was just one flight. Checkride after checkride, they kept pace.

Hired together

At Pelican, our flight instructors come from our own graduates. It is how we keep the training consistent: the people teaching you were trained here, the same way you are.

When Shahryar and Oswaldo finished their CFI, CFII and MEI, they were both hired as flight instructors at Pelican. On their F-1 visas, that work counts as practical training, so every hour they now teach builds their own flight time toward the airlines.

So the two students who once waited at the edge of the runway for each other's first solo now walk out to the ramp as instructors. Different countries, different lives, one dream, and they are still chasing it side by side.

Start your own story

Shahryar and Oswaldo started exactly where most of our students start: no license, no hours, just a goal and a plane ticket to Florida. If you are thinking about becoming a pilot in the United States, the Full Professional Pilot Program A is the same path they took.

Write to us at admissions@pelicanflighttraining.com or on WhatsApp at +1 (305) 877-9069, and we'll walk you through the program, the cost and the F-1 visa steps for your country.