Flood Zone
Prose: Richard Souza
Photography: Richard Souza, Ryan Kelly, James Woodard, Ryan Tykosh, Joe Diantonio
If this were a movie, the camera slowly brings the dusty family photo album into focus. A hand enters; mine, and opens the album as the camera dives in deeper. Page after page, I scan old photos my father took. Memories stir with each page. I pause on a photo of me with a friend playing in a park. I imagine the camera panning to my eyes in the photo, showing the stare that speaks when there are no words to draw from. There is a recollection of when this photo was taken, but how did I and that friend ever meet?
In this digital age, the albums and photographs slowly disappeared or ended up in boxes stored in the attic along with their memories. The new albums consist of giga and terabytes of thumbnails stored on a drive or in my mind. One cold February morning, standing on the observation deck at Westfield-Barnes Regional Airport with Brodah and RyTy, waiting for F-15s to take off, one of those memories was stirred into vivid color once more as I looked down a familiar taxiway. I was reminded of a photo taken of me and my friend Jason some years ago in that same place.
Photo Credit: Maia Kennedy
As I recalled that airshow moment, I thought hard and asked myself the same question I had asked myself earlier, leafing through the family photo album: how did Jason Flood and I ever meet? I dug deep into my drives until I found the answers in lost photos. The first time I saw Jason was at the New Garden Festival of Flight. He was this baby-faced kid, wearing a red and white flight suit, flying a matching red (white stripes) Pitts S-1S. This kid was full of swagger and was working the crowd like a rock star. When I saw him, I thought, very sarcastically, to myself, “oh, look at this guy!”.
It wasn’t until a couple of years later, (at the New Garden Festival of flight), sitting inside the hangar between performances, that this same young pilot in the red flight suit came up and asked, “did you get any good pictures? I like pictures”. That was the first time that I spoke to Jason Flood. Every show after that day, I would get a message asking if I got any good photos of his performance. I began following Jason on social media and enjoyed how he would post photos of his training and leisure flight out of his home base in Cross Keys, NJ. It was through his posts, that I learned that my birthday is three days after the anniversary of Jason’s rebirth. This is the date Jason returned to the world following a catastrophic engine failure on August 2, 2011.
On the eve of my 50th birthday, we exchanged messages. I told him that I wanted to mark my half century by watching the sunrise. That morning, I was up bright and early. I stepped outside and realized the clouds had other plans. While the sun rose that day, as it has every day since, the overcast sky did not allow me to take in the sight of what many of us take for granted. Later that evening, I received a message from Jason. He was asking me about the sunrise. Once I told him mother nature betrayed me, he sent me a photo of the sunset that he took while flying his Pitts. The message read, “I know it isn’t a sunrise, Happy Birthday”. That was an unexpected gesture that meant the world to me. This was the gesture of a Friend. I knew then, I needed to get down to Cross Keys and thank Jason in person.
Like this story, getting to south Jersey took time and was easier said than done. One day we chiseled the date on the calendar, and I told Jason I was coming down. When I drove up to the hangar, I was greeted by my friend with a “Hey Buddy. Welcome to the Flood Zone”. This was the first time we had the opportunity to be one-on-one and just talk about things… life, aviation, and the business. I want to say that the timing of our first meeting was right, but that would not be true.
Like most of us in our professions and endeavors, there are good times and there are bad times. Jason was flying through some turbulent air. The airshow business is finicky and peculiar. Bookings were down and Jason was having difficulty dealing with the fact he wasn’t performing. The Jason I saw that day was a sad Jason. He was not that same kid, full of energy, full of life. I arrived to a Jason that was not in the best of places, personally or professionally. He paced around in his hangar for the better part of the two hours I was there. He talked a mile a minute, telling me how he was trying to do the right thing but couldn’t help but feel that he was fighting the strongest of head winds. Jason seemed to be struggling to find his place. He knew where he wanted to be, but the path was thornier than he expected.
I will be honest; I was not expecting that our conversation would go down this road. But I understood. This was a friend venting to another friend. All I could do was give Jason an outsider’s perspective. Joe Sr. (Jason’s Father) was just sitting in the back minding his own affairs. From time to time, the elder Flood would chime in. “Do your own thing” he would say, I looked at Jason and said… He is right, Father knows best. I am sure many pilots would agree that, when life gets you down, there is only one thing to do… Fly. It clears the mind and soothes the soul. That was exactly what Jason did. I stood on the grass at the end of the runway as Jason took off in the Red Ghost. He made some passes for my camera and when he landed, Jason seemed much more relaxed. As I drove home, I knew that I wanted to do something for Jason. Maybe an exclusive photoshoot would cheer him up, but for that, I would need reinforcements.
As was the case with the first encounter, a return trip to Cross Keys proved just as challenging to schedule. As strange as it may sound, it took the world coming to a covid standstill to be able to arrange a Pitts stop at the Flood Zone. This time, I was accompanied by a double shot of Ry (Ryan Kelly and Ryan Tykosh) James Woodard and Full Disc Aviation Friend and Collaborator Joe DiAntonio. When we arrived at the little south Jersey airport, we were greeted by the Floods, Jason, his father (Joe Sr.) and oldest Brother Joe Jr. All three of the Floods are pilots.
The doors were opened to FDA and we began exploring every corner, nook and cranny of the two hangars that house the Flood collection. Besides the fleet, there was plenty more for us to focus on. There was a tendency to zoom in on the aircraft. I for one, was focused on every object around. Every item in the hangar was a sentence, which when added together, told the story of a flying family. They told the story of a young kid who dreamed to fly and lived and relived to do it. In between the tools, oil and model R/C aircraft, there were posters of past airshows and photos of friends from the aviation community. There was even an interestingly placed family portrait. The hangars are an aviation menagerie of the Flood Family History.
Life journeys are long and sometimes bumpy. Joe Sr. began flying R/C airplanes with his father (Jason’s Grandfather) at the tender age of five. Before Joe Sr. finished high school, he purchased his first plane: a 1939 Aeronca Chief. He flew the Chief to fly-ins and airshows. Friends and acquaintances encouraged Joe Sr. to restore the aircraft and take it to Oshkosh. The Flood Patriarch had never heard of such a place. Following everyone’s advice, Joe Sr. restored the aircraft, flew it to Oshkosh and in 1983 came home with the award “Best Closed Cabin Antique Monoplane”. Not bad for a rookie who prior to that wasn’t even a member of the EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association).
Obviously, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Jason took to the skies before his first birthday. It was at the age of six that Jason first felt the thrill of flying as he took control of the family Skybolt. At the age of ten and seated in a Pitts S-2A, the young Flood was bitten by the aerobatic bug. It was only a matter of time before the bugs venom morphed Jason’s blood to type A – “Aerobatic”. By 17, Jason began to learn and fly aerobatics. Many kids his age look up to sports stars and musical artists. Jason looked up and aspired to be like Bill Finagin. Bill is an East Coast Pitts guy. Jason wanted to be like him and fly airshows, compete (in aerobatic competitions) and teach other pilots everything Pitts.
Aerobatic pilots in general inspired Jason but it would be Sean D. Tucker and Matt Chapman who would be a part of Jason’s airshow build up and would evaluate him on some of the required waivers. When Jason competed, aerobatic coach Dennis Thompson helped and coached him through every competition. In 2009, Jason acquired his current ride, a modified Pitts S-1S (built by Stewart Aeroplane Factory), and the aircraft was baptized the Red Ghost. It would be a year later (at the controls of the Red Ghost), at the New Garden Festival of Flight, where local Airshow legend Kevin Russo (Kevin Russo Airshows) would christen Jason into the Air Show industry. Among the many trophies and awards that Jason has amassed as a young aerobatic pilot, it is a framed photograph of Kevin Russo “christening” Jason following his debut performance on June 12, 2010, that is highly cherished. This was the first of an innumerable number of shows to date.
Photo Credit: Stan Piet Jr.
Photo Credit: Stan Piet Jr.
It is hard to believe that there was a time this kid was a stranger. I remember straining to watch (along with every other spectator) the “high altitude show”. This would change over the years as Jason worked his way down to a surface waiver. Airshows are what connected us. While Jason was bringing his routine down closer to the public, I was working my way, (thanks to my association with Air Museum Network and Full Disc Aviation) towards gaining access that would get me closer to the cross hairs of the Red Ghost and its young driver.
Photo Credit: Noel Kline
Over the years, I photographed Jason at different shows in the Northeastern United States. He is the first airshow performer I got to know personally. It was at the New Garden Festival of Flight that I first approached Jason about writing this story. I was thankful Jason agreed. But I had one stipulation. I did not want to write and or talk about the accident. It wasn’t how or what happened that mattered, it was what changed that mattered. Who was the Jason before and who is he now?
The pages on the calendar flip with every passing month and the calendar gets replaced with every passing year. With every solar revolution, we hope that we gain some wisdom. Jason wrote his script of life. It was his masterpiece. Like many good scripts, they get rejected, rewritten, or thrown in fire for kindle. I understood Jason’s plight and his frustrations, for I, too, once wrote a script. I had visions of a career and was hell bent on being the king of the hill. Writing this story made me reflect on my past. I realized that I was that kid that walked into his first job, full of swagger and maybe an ounce or two of arrogance. As I look at Jason today, I see that, like myself, he rewrote his own script.
Jason has incorporated a second plane in his act. First, he flies a comedy routine with a clipped wing cub that once belonged to legendary airshow performer Giles Henderson of Charleston, Illinois. This act is followed by the powerful aerobatic routine with the Red Ghost. The show never looked better. Professionally, Jason fulfilled his dream of becoming a corporate jet pilot. After a couple of years with storm clouds over the Flood Zone, the sun has begun to shine. During the first years of covid, the Floods focused their energy on becoming a Pitts Shop. From Pitts annuals and inspections to flight instruction (in the Pitts), the Floods have never been busier. Bygones have become bygones and life goes on.
I finally understood why it took me two years to find the right opening for this story - I couldn’t start a story without knowing how it was going to end. After several years, we were reunited at the 2022 New Garden Festival of Flight. The now-veteran performer and veteran photographer greeted each other with a hug. Where once we would talk about airshows, that day it was about Jason and his recent marriage to Nicole. The change in him was evident. I think we all changed over these last few years. The difference is that I’m an old man living my life according to the many revisions to my script. Jason still has another lifetime ahead of him. I no longer see Jason as that cocky kid flying a flashy red plane. Now I see a man that finally found HIS way and is living the aviation dream.
Full Disc Aviation would like to Thank the Flood Family for their friendship and hospitality. To follow Jason, please visit the links below.
Follow Jason on Instagram
Jason Flood Airshows
Thanks Maia Kennedy, Stan Piet Jr. and Noel Kline, for the use of their photographs
