Ed Kudzia

Born and raised in Kalamazoo, Ed grew up at the beginning of the space age and was enthusiastic about the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. When in high school his parents took him to Florida to witness the launch of Apollo 11, the first lunar landing. He attended college the first two years at Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, majoring in Space Sciences and Mechanical Engineering, then transferred to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor majoring in Aerospace Engineering.

Upon graduation he spent a year in Tokyo Japan teaching the English language to Japanese students, then returned to Michigan where he began work at the Ford Motor company in Dearborn working in Engine Engineering. From there he moved to Florida working at the Kennedy Space Center for United Space Boosters, Inc. which was part of United Technologies Corporation, working toward the launch of the first Space Shuttle. Subsequent to that he worked at Martin Marietta in Denver Colorado on the Space shuttle Manned Maneuvering Unit and the Space Shuttle Tile Repair Kit.

Following his engineering work he was recruited by the US Navy for pilot training and reported to Pensacola Florida for Aviation Officer Candidate School (AOCS) and was commissioned an Ensign in February 1982. He then received initial and intermediate flight training at nearby Whiting Field, Florida, followed by multi-engine training in Corpus Christie, Texas where he received his Naval Aviator (pilot) wings in 1983. He then reported to Patrol Squadron Forty-Six at Moffett Field, California where he flew the P-3C Update I in pursuit of Soviet Union submarines during the Cold War.

Upon the completion of his Naval service he did some work as a test pilot for California Microwave developing payloads for Unmanned Air Vehicles, then began flying for Wings West Airlines, which would later become American Eagle Airlines, and is now known as Envoy Air. He would fly the Fairchild Metro III, the British Aerospace Jetstream, the Saab 340, and the Embraer 145. During that time he also worked part-time at the NASA Ames Research Center developing software for Intelligent Flight Controllers and helping run air traffic control simulations at NASA Ames’ Future Flight Central facility.

Ed retired from Envoy Air in 2018 with nearly 18,000 hours of flight time, most of it as a Captain in the Embraer 145. He began teaching full-time at Western in the College of Aviation, instructing in the LOFT class first in the Canadair 200 simulator, and now in the Boeing 737 simulators.