Jeff Baker’s Airline Dreams Take Flight 
By Jeff Baker

Jeff Baker dreamed of being a pilot from the time he was seven years old. His mother worked in the aerospace industry after the war and he was introduced to the thrill of flight by one of her co-workers, who happened to be one of the women pioneers of flight.

Jeff’s career path was in education, but his heart was sailing in the heavens. Thirty years after it was ignited, his dream of flying was realized. Once Jeff took to the skies he never stopped. He continued to accumulate ratings and had soon completed all the training needed to teach flying. Everyday after school he would head for the airport.

Jeff began to feel that God would use his love for flying to His glory, but he didn’t see how. So, Jeff started a free ground school class at his church. He participated in “career days” at local schools and he searched for a way to use flying to serve God.

When Kenneth Copeland spoke at a Crenshaw Christian Center Men’s Advance in San Diego, Jeff believed God to meet him and have him sign his pilot’s license, but the Advance ended without Jeff’s hope coming to pass. Jeff had flown to San Diego for the meetings, so he headed to the airport to fly back home. He had just finished the pre-flight inspection on his plane when a car drove up and parked next to the plane. Out of the car stepped Kenneth Copeland and his son John. God is able to accomplish above and beyond what we can think or imagine. He helped pre-flight the Copeland plane and Kenneth not only signed his pilot’s license but prayed in agreement that Jeff’s desire to serve God with his flying would come to pass.

In 1992, a good friend suggested that Jeff start a flight school and put his education to use. That was all Jeff needed to hear … someone who believed he could do it! And so it began… one airplane (Cessna 172) borrowed from his flight instructor, and his daughter’s boyfriend recruited as his first student. Jeff found his teaching skills easily transferred from the classroom to the cockpit.

Jeff began to fly as a charter pilot and eventually got a job flying a man of God across the country. His first stop was Eagle Mountain, home of Kenneth Copeland Ministries. Ken came out to see the plane and Jeff was thrilled to remind him of their first meeting so many years before when Kenneth had prayed for him. Ken remembered the incident and again laid hands on Jeff and prayed. What a good God we serve!

Over the past thirteen years the flight school, Alliance International Aviation, has continued to grow. Jeff knows it was established by God. AIA is known as “the Christian flight school.”

“Many of our students want to fly in some ministry capacity,” says Jeff. “We have trained pilots who now fly their pastors to speak around the country. We have missionaries who have learned to fly, and we have former students now flying for all the major airlines around the world. Currently we have a small fleet of nine planes and seven flight instructors, and we praise God that He has allowed us do serve Him doing something we love to do.”

Jeff’s next goal is to establish Ministry Air Service, a charter company that will focus on transporting missionaries in comfort and safety.