Clear skies ahead

Those aboard can rest easy in their plush leather chairs with gold accents because Lepper is at the helm. The charter jet pilot has 50-years of violation-free flying under his belt and will receive the prestigious Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award award on June 23 in honor of his clean record. The award is given by the Federal Aviation Administration and fewer than 5,000 pilots in the U.S. have received it.

“It’s an honor — an accomplishment I guess — to have been able to do that,” Lepper said, from his office at Glacier Jet Center. “I’ve been very fortunate being in the right place at the right time.”

When Lepper was just seven or eight years old, he realized he wanted to become a pilot.

He was one of six in his Cub Scout den that was treated to a flight in an amphibious airplane for selling the most boxes of doughnuts for a club fundraiser. They departed Long Beach, California and landed in the water in Avalon Harbor on Santa Catalina Island where they spent the day before catching a return flight home that afternoon. Each of the boys got to spend 10 minutes of the flight sitting between the pilot’s chairs at the front of the airplane and Lepper drew last.

“It worked out well for me because as we were getting ready to land, the pilot says, well do you want to just stay sitting right here while we land?” Lepper recalled. “I pretty much knew then that this is what I wanted to do.”

After high school, Lepper joined the Air Force — not as a pilot — but to work in computer maintenance. Off the clock, however, was a different story.

He was stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls and convinced a buddy who had a car to drive the pair of them up to the airport on Gore Hill, now known as Great Falls International Airport.

Along the way they passed a sign advertising private pilot licenses for $649. It was quite the sum back then, Lepper, now 71, recalled, especially when he was making “a whopping $94 a month.”

But Lepper persisted and convinced his father to cosign on a loan for his flying lessons and the rest, as they say, is history.

In 1967 Lepper received his private pilot license and earned his commercial rating five years later, along with more advanced endorsements in the years to come. He flew everything from passenger charters to air ambulance flights and helped grow a California company, now known as Ameriflight, from 21 planes to a fleet of more than 100.

In the 90s, while working for Holman Aviation, Lepper met the Broussards. They were repeat charter passengers of his and in 2001, they enlisted Lepper’s help to consult on purchase and later to fly a Bombardier Challenger 604.

“Airline flying, they’re always going to the same place, but we go different places all the time — we never know where we’re going to go,” Lepper said. “I enjoy the adventure, getting to see different places.”

As a charter pilot, he’s been all over the world to locales like Switzerland, Japan, Iceland and even to Hong Kong for the summer Olympics in 2008. Sometimes on longer journeys his wife Mary will tag along as a flight attendant and the pair will take the opportunity to do a bit of touring after dropping off their passengers.

But not all of his trips go so smoothly.

In the early 80s, Lepper got a call one early afternoon requesting a flight to Guatemala. He would be piloting one plane in a two airplane convoy transporting ultraviolet lamps and special ink to Guatemala City in the middle of the night. The country was holding elections, but fraud was rampant. Citizens would vote once and then return to the back of the line and vote again — but they wouldn’t be able to do so when officials got hold of the ink in Lepper’s cargo.

“They would stamp their hand and you could only see it with an ultraviolet lamp,” he said. “If they tried to come back around, they would see the ink.”

He touched down in a joint military-civilian base in total darkness. Section by section, taxi lights illuminated his path, until Lepper arrived at a ramp where he was met by roughly 30 young teens holding machines guns to oversee the transfer of goods. It was a tense moment to say the least and Lepper was happy to return to the skies once the goods were deposited.

Some of his charters were memorable for positive reasons, too.

Lepper has flown the likes of Rod Stewart, The Police, Prince and his personal favorite — Lucille Ball.

“She was really just a very nice person,” Lepper said.

As far as Lepper is concerned, there’s plenty more people to meet and places to explore in his future.

He’s far from ready to hang up his wings just yet.

“It’s just a different world when you’re up there at 40,000 feet,” Lepper said with a smile. “Just gives the world a different perspective.”

Reporter Mackenzie Reiss can be reached at 758-4433 or mreiss@dailyinterlake.com.