Corona del Mar High’s Asher Green is flying high
Asher Green was about 13 years old when he started making radio handoffs from his pilot dad’s single-engine Mooney Ovation to air traffic controllers in the busy airspace over John Wayne Airport.
“I just thought that was pretty cool,” Green said. “I definitely remember when I was first making radio calls, I’d always try to lower my voice.”
Now 18 and about to graduate from Corona del Mar High School as a co-valedictorian, Green is qualified to fly solo. Soon, he hopes, he’ll upgrade his student pilot license to private pilot license, which will allow him to have passengers. Along the way, he’ll attend Princeton University.
By land, air and sea, Green has been an accomplished student — he was a member of the CdM varsity sailing team, which he gave up during his junior year to focus on his flight training. He was also president of the speech and debate team.
Green is halfway to his private pilot license, which started last summer with ground school at Orange Coast College. He recently passed his written test, wearing a mask in a room where “there was Purell everywhere.” A practical exam is next. Once he’s fully fledged, he can pursue some ratings that will allow him to fly more advanced aircraft into some more adventurous places. He’s already planning to make Catalina Island — with its well-known narrow and sloping, but stunningly scenic, runway — one of his first trips.
Green is the son of Todd and Nancy Green and elder brother to Ella, an incoming senior at CdM. He’s lived in Newport Beach his whole life, attending Harbor View Elementary and Corona del Mar Middle schools. He’s ready to go beyond Newport to study public policy and international relations at Princeton but expects to miss the California weather while in New Jersey.
The Newport-Mesa Unified School District Board of Trustees decided Tuesday to cancel in-person graduations at its six high schools in favor of a virtual commencement.
He admitted to being a little disappointed that he wouldn’t have a traditional high school graduation, but he was forgiving of the school district officials who decided to cancel in-person ceremonies in favor of online video tributes.
“I know they’re doing what they can,” he said. “The situation is what it is, and I understand they’re doing what they have to do.”
As a pilot, perspective is something Green literally has.
He’s already put his aviation skills to philanthropic use. In early May, he sat in the co-pilot seat alongside his father and journeyed the 20 air hours to Chicago and back to pick up 11,000 N95 masks bound for the Navajo Nation. The sprawling reservation, which reaches into Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, and a volunteer network of private pilots committed to help deliver much-needed supplies to health care workers.
The back two seats in their four-seat Ovation was filled with masks, like groceries in the back of the family car.
It wouldn’t have been an especially comfortable flight for a non-pilot, Green said — their plane doesn’t have a pressurized cabin, and with limited power, they had to fly low over the Rocky Mountains.
But over the flatlands, without the bumping around, there was plenty of opportunity for good conversation.
Honoring this year’s graduating seniors from high schools in Newport Beach, Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Fountain Valley, Laguna Beach and other parts of Orange County.
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