5-Year-Old Spots Detail in Pilot Manual Adults Missed

A five-year-old from Colorado just proved that passion and attention to detail have no age limit.

William Hines has been obsessed with aviation since he was a baby. His mom Amber says he spent tummy time studying how wheels moved and taking apart toy cars to understand how they worked.

The family made regular trips to Rocky Mountain Metro Airport so William could watch planes take off and land. When Amber connected with a commercial pilot named Josh through her daughter's school, the pilot showed up at their house in full uniform.

Josh spent two hours walking William through aeronautical charts and the details of commercial flying. As a parting gift, he handed William a Southwest company training manual, the comprehensive guide pilots use to learn aircraft systems and safety procedures.

William started flipping through it immediately. Within minutes, he found something that caught his eye.

"I discovered that two terrain monitors did not match," William said. "One side's farther and one side's closer."

He was right. One terrain display was drastically zoomed out while the other was zoomed in. Southwest later confirmed the displays were intentionally shown at different zoom levels, so it wasn't technically an error, but the observation still impressed everyone involved.

A newly minted five-year-old had looked at a dense technical document full of cockpit instrumentation and immediately noticed an inconsistency most adults would have skipped right over.

Sunny's Take

What happened next shows how much joy comes from encouraging a child's passion. A family friend at Southwest passed the story to CEO Bob Jordan, who invited the Hines family to Dallas for a VIP tour of the pilot training facility.

William got to sit inside a full-motion flight simulator where real pilots train. He met team members throughout the facility and created memories his family says they'll treasure forever.

When asked why he wants to be a pilot, William gave an answer more thoughtful than most adults manage about their careers. He wants to "transport people to a place and not just myself, like 140 people to a place."

He also offered the simplest possible case for aviation: "I don't have to walk 7,000 miles."

The Internet had fun with the story too. "Buddy is going to have airlines sending headhunters for him when he gets out of flight school," one commenter wrote.

William's mom sums up her son perfectly: "He's a details guy, and he notices things. He listens to everything, and he really absorbs information."

Southwest just might want to keep his contact information on file for about 13 years.