The Wright stuff: Local pilot honored by FAA for 50 years of aviation expertise

Danny Hall of Kewanee has been honored several times during his career as a crop duster pilot. His most recent award was presented in January by the Federal Aviation Administration. He received the Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award for his 50-year-plus career in aviation. (Jill Bock/Standard Democrat)

KEWANEE, Mo. — Danny Hall’s career dreams took flight as a child watching the crop-duster pilots fly their planes over the fields of New Madrid County.

On Jan. 11, 2024, Hall was one of three pilots to receive the Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award. It is presented by the Federal Aviation Administration to pilots who have flown 50 years or more.

“I was always crazy about airplanes and my daddy knew that,” Hall recalled. “My daddy sharecropped for Mr. Ernest Carpenter and when he knew that Mr. Carpenter was going to have his crops sprayed, he would take me to work with him.”

The young Hall would ride into the fields with the flaggers. While the flaggers worked outside the truck helping the pilot mark the rows as he flew over the crops, Hall would sit for hours, fascinated by the plane’s movements and the pilot’s skills.

He still recalls the airstrip that once sat at the intersection of Highway 61 and Route U. There, he would watch pilots refuel and load the chemicals for spraying.

As one of nine children of a sharecropper, Hall said he didn’t think flying would be in his future.

After high school, Hall was drafted into the Army. When he returned from Vietnam and was being discharged, he was asked if he would like to return to school, which would be paid by the G.I. Bill.

“I told them no; I didn’t like school when I went,” Hall said. “Then they asked me if there was anything else I wanted to do and I said I always wanted to be a crop duster.”

After explaining just what a crop duster did, Hall was told if he could find an approved flight school, the G.I. Bill would pay for his training. According to Hall, at that time every airport in the Bootheel had a flight school so when he had time off from his job with Southwestern Bell, he would go to the nearest school and train.

He made his first solo flight in 1972 and earned his private license that same year. In 1974, Hall received his commercial license and went to work flying for Buddy Dolan as a crop duster.

“When I first started, I could hardly wait for daylight to get back in that plane every day. I loved it. I just loved it,” he said.

In 1976, Hall began his own crop dusting service.

“It is a unique business,” he admitted. “Not everybody is cut out to be a crop duster, but it really helps if you have a farm background. I had been raised chopping and picking cotton and driving tractors. This was just a different way to farm.”

Having friends who farmed helped him build his list of clients. However, he continued, friendship won’t keep clients coming back unless a crop duster works hard and does a good job.

Most of his days would begin before daylight and would end after dark.

“You have to do that to get the farmer’s crop sprayed because if there is a worm infestation, a plant bug infestation or a stinkbug in the rice, it has to be sprayed right now,” Hall said. “Instead of being fun all the time, it turns into a hot, hard job.”

It can also be a dangerous job.

When he first began flying as a crop duster, it was in plane owned by his boss. Occasionally, as Hall made a steep turn, the carburetor would stick, cutting off the gas until he was able to level off and the engine would start again. Then, one time it didn’t.

Hall said the plane went down on a road and rolled nose first into a ditch. Fortunaately, someone saw the crash, picked him up and took him back to his boss. Using a pickup truck and a log chain, they pulled the plane from the ditch then used a sledge hammer to straighten the propeller.

His boss was able to fly the airplane to have it repaired and replaced the carburetor.

On May 9, 1980, Hall said he was spraying a field west of Lilbourn, Missouri, when the plane struck a guy wire, tearing off a wing. The plane was further damaged as it hit trees before coming to a stop in a ditch bank.

“The good Lord was watching over me and I didn’t get hurt, but I tore the airplane all to pieces,” Hall said.

He borrowed a plane and was back up in the air at work by 1 p.m. that day.

While he said that crash was his fault; his most serious crash was a result of equipment failure.

On July 12, 1987, Hall was spraying a field when his plane began shaking violently. Working to control the plane, Hall began slowing it down only to have it flip upside down and slide into the bank of an adjacent floodway.

When the plane stopped, Hall was hanging upside down in his cockpit with his left leg soaked by gasoline. He could hear fire crackling in the engine so he unstrapped his seatbelt only to drop headfirst into a pool of gas in the plane’s canopy. Unable to open the plane door, Hall kicked out a window and crawled onto the wing.

“It never did explode, it just ‘poofed’ and started burning,” he said. “If it had exploded, I would have burned up because I had gas all over me.”

Hall describes the close calls as similar to those who do a lot of driving.

“You are going to bend a fender every now and then,” he said.

While Hall has given up his crop dusting service, he hasn’t given up flying. Today he flies what he describes as a “people airplane. I’m a fair-weather pilot though, I don’t go in bad weather.”

And it is still fun to fly. The view is so much better from the air, Hall insisted.

He also has remained involved with farmers, working as a crop adjuster for an Iowa-based company.

Hall, who has maintained his membership in the Missouri Agriculture Aviation Association and the National Agriculture Aviation Association, said he was surprised by the award from the FAA. Named after Orville and Wilbur Wright, American aviation pioneers, the award is given to U.S. citizens with 50 or more years of military or civil flight experience. Recipients must have exhibited professionalism and expertise in their careers and be nominated with at least three letters of recommendation.

It is a career moment Hall takes pride in.

He added the average person doesn’t really understand the work of a crop duster.

“A long time ago, everybody called them barnstormers and stuff like that. You can’t stay in business like that now. You have to be a professional,” he explained.

Those in the business today attend schools which specialize in agriculture aviation and continue taking classes in ways to reduce the drift of chemicals and make the profession safer. The cost of a plane and the proper equipment is now in the millions of dollars.

While there are alternatives to flying a plane to battle a crop infestation, Hall said it is still a good choice.

“There are places that airplanes don’t need to be,” he said. “But when something needs to be done quickly and efficiently, most farmers call a crop duster.”