A 5-year-old Colorado boy with a passion for flying got a first-class tour of Southwest Airlines’ headquarters after spotting a small discrepancy in training materials used by the airline.
William Hines, a pre-kindergarten student at Campbell Early Learning Center in Arvada, developed his love of airplanes early on through regular visits to Rocky Mountain Metro Airport, where he would watch aircraft take off and land with wide-eyed excitement.
William’s enthusiasm soared after his mom, Amber, connected with a staff member at her daughter’s school whose spouse was a commercial pilot, leading to a meeting with Southwest pilot Josh. In uniform, Josh visited William’s home and spent two hours teaching him the basics of aviation, even gifting the youngster a company training manual. It was while looking over cockpit layouts in the document that the 5-year-old spotted a tiny discrepancy that caught the airline’s attention.
“I discovered that two terrain monitors did not match. They did not match at all,” William told 9 News, explaining that “one side’s farther and one side’s closer.”
Amber Hines clarified that it wasn’t an error, just that the child’s eagle-eyed attention to detail caught two terrain gauges in the training manual that didn’t match.
“One was very, very zoomed out while the other one was zoomed in,” Amber said. “He was able to identify the fact that these should look the same, but they looked different because one was drastically zoomed out from the other one.”
Amber shared the interaction on social media, where it reached a friend who works at Southwest Airlines. With Amber’s permission, the friend passed it along to company leaders. The story, as well as other YouTube videos of William talking about aviation, ultimately landed at the desk of Southwest CEO Bob Jordan, who invited William and his family to Dallas for a VIP tour of the airline’s training facility.
“Bob especially loved his use of ‘ailerons’ in a sentence,” a Southwest spokesperson told The Independent about a November clip in which the child explains the hinged surfaces on airplane wings that control roll or banking.
During the visit, William met Southwest team members, including a flight simulator pilot, and even got to sit inside a flight simulator.
“It was amazing,” Amber told 9News. “Everyone there was very, very welcoming, and we definitely had the tour of a lifetime.”
For William, the experience only reinforced what he’s always known: he loves flying and is determined to become a pilot one day.
“Then, I can transport people to a place and not just myself, like 140 people to a place,” he said about his future.
A Southwest spokesperson told The Independent that the airline supports William’s dreams.
“We were happy to help inspire his love of aviation and hope he keeps us in mind once his feet can reach the pedals,” the spokesperson said.
Amber said William’s curiosity about how things work began as a baby, watching wheels and axles during tummy time and taking his toys apart – a spark she believes naturally led to his love of aviation. She described him as a true “details guy” who notices everything, listens closely and absorbs information like few children his age.
She said William’s passion for planes is entirely his own, despite her interest in planes and his father’s past as a pilot, ultimately changing course after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
"We never pushed him, honestly," Amber said. "We never really mentioned it before. This is entirely on his own, and as soon as he started to take an interest, of course, we were supportive of that, but it's never been anything that we hoisted upon him. That is 100 percent his passion."
