As the 2021 college football season wound down, then-BYU backup linebacker Drew Jensen had an excruciatingly difficult decision to make as the Cougars prepared to play UAB in the Independence Bowl.
Should the oft-injured redshirt sophomore return for his fifth year in the program, just as the former three-star recruit was starting to make the impact expected of him out of Brighton High, or embark on a longtime dream of attending flight school and becoming a commercial airline pilot?
As the Deseret News chronicled in this 2021 profile of Jensen, he visited several flight schools in Arizona a couple weeks after making a critical interception in BYU’s 66-49 win over Virginia and the coach who had recruited him to BYU, Bronco Mendenhall, and became more convinced that he wanted to fly for a living.
But his football career was just starting to take flight as well, after a devastating ACL injury he sustained in his very first play in a BYU uniform — the last play in a 30-3 blowout of McNeese State in 2018 — slowed his progress considerably upon his return from a mission to Argentina for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Realizing that he had the instincts, size and speed to be a bigger contributor in 2022, BYU coaches told Jensen there was a spot for him on the 2022 roster, if he wanted it.
“Right now, it is 50-50,” Jensen said of the decision in mid-November of 2021.
A few weeks later, Jensen made the call to hang up the cleats and attend flight school. Just look at him now.
Jensen, 28, is a full-fledged commercial pilot, currently flying chartered jets, including the Cessna Citation X, one of the fastest civilian business jets in the world, with a max speed of approximately 700 miles per hour. While some of his former BYU teammates — such as quarterback Zach Wilson, running back Tyler Allgeier and offensive lineman Blake Freeland — have gone on to make millions in the NFL, Jensen is flying millionaires around the country in multimillion-dollar corporate jets.
“Right before my mission, right after I signed to go play at BYU, we went on a discovery flight in a (Cessna) 172 (Skyhawk), and I just fell in love. ... I just became obsessed with it all.”
— Former BYU LB Drew Jensen, a jet pilot for Paragon Airways
Nearly five years later, he believes he made the right decision — it is hard to argue against that notion — and, most importantly, he’s content and grateful.
“I am extremely happy with where I am at,” he told the Deseret News recently. “I loved all the experiences I had at BYU, but the timing was totally right to (move on). You never really know in the moment, but then you look back and you are like, ‘Oh wow, I actually made the right decision,’ which feels really good.”
Flying around the wealthy and famous
Jensen is currently living in Irvine, California, with his wife, Fallon (a Utah grad), and their dog, Roger. For the past year, he’s been flying jets for Paragon Airways, a charter company based out of John Wayne Airport in Orange County.
“We fly multiple types of aircraft to cities throughout the country, but mostly on the West Coast,” Jensen said. “It is a super awesome company. They treat us really well. They’re great people.”
Here’s the most exciting thing about the job: Jensen also gets to fly great people to some of the most beautiful parts of the country.
He says he’s not allowed to reveal names, thanks to some strict nondisclosure agreements, but he humbly acknowledges that he has flown Fortune 500 CEOs, well-known movie stars, entertainers and producers, celebrities, famous professional athletes and owners of professional teams, and other notables — all in the last year.
“If you can think of someone who would probably be on a private jet, that’s who we fly,” he said, noting that the tongue-in-cheek joke around the company is that they are employed as flight attendants, then get to fly jets as their reward.
“We fly some very, very important people. The fun part is we get to interact with a lot of very interesting, and just really good people,” he continued. “It’s awesome.”
Staying grounded among the stars
Does Jensen ever tell the passengers, especially those from the sports world, including Olympians, that he was a decent college athlete himself, back in the day?
“I try to avoid talking about it (to them) when I can, but I’ve flown some pretty high-end, Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks from multiple generations,” he said. “I’ve had some small conversations with them, here and there. We have crossed paths with a lot of people that they might know that I played with in college, or something like that. It’s been really cool.”
Along the way, Jensen has flown into some of the most exotic airports in the country, the Santa Monica Airport in SoCal being “one of the most interesting and challenging” because the runway is only 3,500 feet.
“Not the most comfortable feeling in the world, I guess you could say,” Jensen said. Kind of like telling BYU football coach Kalani Sitake in late 2021 that he had done his last up-down drill in Provo, attended his last meeting in the linebackers room.
He still follows the program religiously, when he’s not in the skies and concentrating on his profession.
“I’m obviously a huge fan of Kalani. He offered me (a scholarship) at Oregon State, he offered me at Utah. He offered me at BYU. I have a lot of love for Kalani, and so I still follow BYU as much as I can,” he said. “It was a really exciting season last year. It was fun to watch. I don’t watch with as much (nervousness). I don’t let it affect me as much as it used to. But I do love just watching them play, and I try and catch them every game that I can.”
He has also flown to Aspen and Telluride in Colorado, Sedona in Arizona, various airstrips in Hawaii, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and almost anywhere else the wealthy and famous like to go.
Bottom line, says Jensen, who did not seek out this attention or article, is that he’s extremely grateful for all the people who have helped him get here. From a neighbor who flies for Delta and remains a mentor and career adviser — Capt. Jim Carrigan — to his parents (Richard and Shawna) to his high school and college coaches and teachers, and instructors at Sierra Charlie Aviation in Scottsdale, Arizona.
He’s also thankful for the parents of former BYU teammates Gunner and Baylor Romney, who housed him in Phoenix for his first six months of flight school.
“When I left BYU, I never thought I would ever do an interview again,” he said, chuckling, when the Deseret News called.
Growing up with an eye to the skies
When Jensen was 6 or 7, his family flew to Hawaii for a vacation. He was invited before the flight to visit the cockpit.
“I just loved it,” he said. “From there on, I always loved the concept of aviation. I began dreaming about doing that for a living.”
It also helped that his great-uncle — Frank Christensen — founded Christen Industries of Hollister, California, the company that introduced the Christen Eagle II to the sport aviation community in 1977. The Christen Eagle is a kit-built aircraft, and Frank Christensen was the former competition pilot for the team that won the U.S. National Aerobatic Championships, among other accomplishments in the aircraft he invented.
The Jensen family would travel to Hollister every summer to spend a couple weeks “flying around with Uncle Frank,” Jensen said.
“So my dad and I really bonded over this my whole life,” Jensen said. “Right before my mission, right after I signed to go play at BYU, we went on a discovery flight in a (Cessna) 172 (Skyhawk), and I just fell in love. I was like, ‘This is the coolest thing in the world.’ I just became obsessed with it all. But back then, it was just a pipe dream to become a pilot. I didn’t know if it was even possible.”
Jensen said that the aforementioned Carrigan “walked me through just about every step and process that there could be in this, and that’s where it really all started.”
Jensen said Carrigan helped several people from that neighborhood get started in aviation.
“We called it ‘Jimbo’s Intern Program,’ but he was not paid for it, I will tell you that,” Jensen said.
On to flight school in Arizona
Flight school is expensive, and incredibly time-consuming, with hundreds of hours in the air required before would-be aviators can become certified instructors and pilots. Each aircraft requires its own training and certification process.
Jensen estimates that it cost him about $90,000 to complete the program. “But that was five years ago. I would say it is anywhere between $100K and $120K now.”
He borrowed the money for tuition from his father, Richard, and was able to finally pay the bulk of it back this year.
“If you are going to do it as a hobby, it is really expensive,” Drew Jensen said. “If you’re going to do it as a career, it is crazy expensive, but very worth it.”
He said his favorite moment in aviation, and the most rewarding, to this day, was the moment when he passed his private pilot checkride. It reminded him of the thrill he felt when he came up with his first college interception, against San Diego State in BYU’s COVID-interrupted 2020 season.
“That’s when I really understood that I was capable of doing it, and that it was now more than a dream,” he said. “Getting that first certificate is the hardest first step in aviation.”
It didn’t get easier, however.
Jensen remembers getting married while living in Scottsdale, and getting his first flight instructor job after logging more than 250 hours in an aircraft, and wondering if he would ever get to the needed 1,500 hours to become a certified commercial pilot.
“I remember thinking, ‘This is going to be the longest journey of my life. I don’t know if I can do this,’” he said.
But he did. When Jensen finally hit 1,500 hours, he began the process of “applying at every single aviation company under the sun,” but to no avail. He got one rejection letter after another, usually within weeks of applying even though he was one of the fastest, if not the fastest, students in the history of Sierra Charlie Aviation to get each license — private, instrument, multi-engine, commercial and the like.
Another difficult aspect of the climb to paid commercial pilot is that when you are rejected by a company such as SkyWest, Envoy Air or NetJets, you have to wait six months before applying again.
“I was so beat up (mentally),” he said. “I was like, ‘I don’t think this is going to be possible. I can’t keep flight-instructing because I’m not making enough money to actually survive.’”
On to Irvine and a ‘fortunate’ job opportunity
Both Jensens said the biggest obstacle was the financial aspect.
After getting certification on several different aircraft, Drew made $25 an hour as an instructor, teaching the skills for a couple of years in Arizona before his wife got a job that took them to Southern California.
Fallon Jensen is on the marketing team for Rakuten. They met through mutual friends while on a camping and river rafting trip to Moab, just before Jensen’s fourth year at BYU.
“I didn’t even have a job here in Irvine when we came here,” Drew said. “I was going to be the first commuting flight instructor ever, going back and forth from Scottsdale to Southern California for a week at a time. Luckily, my wife had a great job. Even still to this day, she is basically our breadwinner.”
Then good fortune peeked through the clouds. There was an opening at Paragon Airways, which on its website tells potential clients: “Take your flight to the next level.”
And Jensen was suddenly soaring through the clouds — with celebrities.
From initial skepticism to proud father
Drew’s given name is actually Richard Andrew Jensen, and he’s now known by that professionally. But everybody still calls him Drew.
Richard Jensen — the father — admits to not being fully on board when his son told him he was giving up a promising football career for flight school in 2021.
“As a dad, I was like, man, maybe you shouldn’t leave football for a couple more years, years that you will never get back,” Richard Jensen said. “He was just starting to run with the ones (first-string) in certain packages, and was moving up the depth (chart). But I think he made the right decision to try and do it when he did.”
Richard Jensen knew that his son was a finisher, the type of person who can put his mind wholeheartedly into something and accomplish it. For instance, Drew n ever needed to be told to wake up for school, church or work when he was growing up, his father said.
“It has been so impressive watching him accomplish this,” Richard said. “At first, I didn’t know if he could do this. Just to see him finally do it is so rewarding.”
