Meet Austin Fontenot—a small-town Louisiana kid who went from racing dirt bikes down gravel roads to flying turbine-powered crop dusters across America. In this episode of Flight Tales, Austin shares the unfiltered truth about becoming an ag pilot: the training, the tight tree runs, the bird strikes, the fertilizer loads, and the weird-shaped fields that make every job different.

He talks about:

• Why vet school wasn’t in the cards

• Learning to fly in high school

• Tailwheel and swath training in Bastrop

• Working fields from Louisiana to Minnesota

• Flying just 10-15 feet off the crops

• Hitting birds, dodging power lines, and landing on grass strips

• The real cost of flight training and what he wishes he did differently

• Tips for anyone dreaming of getting into agricultural aviation

If you’ve ever seen a crop duster and thought, “What the heck is going on up there?”—this one’s for you.