Red Rock Camping Trip

Every year Red Rock Flight School takes an annual camping trip with all of their employees up to the Payson airport. Here, at the airport, there are camp grounds where anyone can come and use for free. The campsite is stocked with bathrooms, a covered seating area, a cozy fire-pit, and multiple trees and grounds for tents and hammocks. This tradition began back in 2021 and the flight school was excited to all fly up and begin a yearly retreat. In years past, the instructors would tell stories and share their favorite memories from working at the flight school. The trip is truly about making lasting memories with individuals briefly passing by on their journey of becoming an airline pilot.

Red Rock prepares about a week in advance for the trip, giving out plane assignments and ensuring they have all of the food and necessities for a successful camping trip. To fly up to the airport, the school uses their planes and with two passengers per plane, majority of the planes fly up to the campsite.

This year the planes that went up were 6RB, 60W, 83W, 53W, 60T, 53651, 45Q, the Aztec, the Lance, and the Wolfkiller.

Staff that joined the trip were the owners Jordie and Jim, office staff Cloe, Bridget, Suria, and Hailey, and flight instructors Grace, Anika, Tyler, Andrew, Ryan, Lilly, Albert, Hunter, Kyle, Cameron, Carl, Max, Cal, Misty, and John. Others that joined the trip were our head of maintenance Russ and the owner's daughter Brie.

The weekend trip begins with everyone meeting up at the flight school with all of their camping gear and start packing it into the planes. Once the team had everything packed they took off for Payson, Arizona where they camped for the night. They did an assortment of activites including bean bag toss, dinner of hotdogs and hamburgers, sitting around the campfire drinking and telling memorable stories, taking group photos, and just overall bonding with one another.

The following morning the group headed over to the airports diner, The Crosswinds Restaurant, and enjoyed a delicious breakfast. The group then packed up their campsite, ensuring everything was as they had found it, and departed back to Falcon Field Airport!

Red Rock truly priotizes their employees and ensuring that the school feels like a family where everyone supports one another in their own aviation journey. This trip happens every year and will continue to happen in the years to come as the school watches instructors leave for the big airlines and we get more enthusiastic instructors.

Thank you to everyone that helped make this trip happen and Red Rock cannot wait for next years trip with more exciting faces creating lasting memories!

Huge thanks to Misty for taking photos and allowing me to use them! Also thank you to Bridget for providing all the details regarding the camping trip.