Hal Shevers, the flight instructor who built Sporty’s Pilot Shop from a car trunk into the world’s largest pilot supply company, passed away on Tuesday, May 12, 2026. He was a pioneering force in pilot training and a beloved leader in the aviation community whose life’s work shaped the landscape of general aviation for more than six decades.
Every pilot in America has heard of Sporty’s. Most have ordered from it. Many learned to fly with its training courses. The story behind the brand — and the man who built it — is one of the most remarkable in general aviation history.
A Pilot Who Was Told He’d Never Fly
Hal Shevers was born with 20/400 vision in his right eye — a lazy eye condition that, had it been caught before age five, could have been corrected. It wasn’t. For most of his youth, everyone around him delivered the same message: you’ll never be a pilot.
Every aptitude test he ever took said otherwise. Pilot topped the list every time.
Shevers grew up in New York and enrolled at Purdue University to study mechanical engineering. In the summer of 1957, he landed a job in the flight test engineering group at Sikorsky Aircraft. His boss there was a member of the Sikorsky Flying Club and told Shevers something no one else had: the FAA had a medical waiver process for pilots with vision deficiencies.
Back at Purdue that fall, Shevers visited a flight surgeon in Lafayette, Indiana. The doctor laughed and told him to forget it. Shevers didn’t forget it. He pursued the waiver, received it, joined the Purdue Flying Club, and soloed a J-3 Cub on October 30, 1957.
He never looked back.
Selling Radios From the Trunk of a Car
After graduating from Purdue with his engineering degree, Shevers took a job at Cincinnati Milling Machine Company. By his own account, he wasn’t a very good employee, and they weren’t very good managers. They parted ways.
With no clear plan, Shevers picked up as many flight students as he could find. Around the same time, he discovered a small transistorized radio — made by Realtone — that could receive airport control tower frequencies. He liked it so much that he bought a batch and started selling them to his students out of the trunk of his car.
That was 1961. It was the birth of Sporty’s.
The radios sold fast. More products followed. Shevers set up a small retail store at Cincinnati’s Lunken Airport. Customers started calling the business “Sporty’s” — a nickname that stuck and eventually became the official name.
At the same time, Shevers partnered with Joe Vorbeck, chairman of general aviation technology at Purdue and a fellow NAFI Hall of Fame member, to develop a comprehensive ground school course. Together with AOPA, they pioneered the first three-day ground schools — intensive courses that prepared pilots for their FAA written exams in a single long weekend.
For the next seven years, Shevers traveled the country giving these ground schools, earning a reputation as one of the most effective aviation educators in the country. His last was a Beechcraft ground school on June 27, 1970 — his 35th birthday. He was burned out from traveling three out of every four weeks. After that, he devoted himself full-time to growing Sporty’s.
Building More Than a Pilot Shop
What Shevers built over the next five decades was far more than a catalog business.
Sporty’s grew from a trunk-of-the-car operation into a company that shipped 2,000 to 5,000 orders per day, employed roughly 170 people, and offered a catalog of more than 7,000 aviation products — from charts and headsets to GPS units and leather flight jackets.
But Shevers always insisted that Sporty’s was, first and foremost, an educational institution. That philosophy drove every major business decision.
In 1987, he founded Sporty’s Academy, an FAA-approved Part 141 flight school based at Clermont County Airport in Batavia, Ohio. The school provides flight training to hundreds of students each year, including those enrolled in the University of Cincinnati Professional Pilot Program — a partnership Shevers personally established.
Sporty’s became an early adopter of every new media format for pilot training. VHS tapes gave way to DVDs (which won a Flying magazine Editors’ Choice Award in 2001), which gave way to streaming video and dedicated apps. Today, the Sporty’s Learn to Fly Course is one of the most widely used pilot training programs in the world.
Along the way, Shevers transformed Clermont County Airport itself. Under his stewardship, the airport evolved from a quiet county strip into a premier GA hub. The airport is now officially named Clermont County/Sporty’s Airport (I69). Sporty’s owns and manages the airport’s FBO, Eastern Cincinnati Aviation, handling all airport operations from fuel service to T-hangar management. The airport is also home to Sandy’s Airpark, a gated residential airpark community where owners can live with their airplanes.
The Sporty’s Foundation and Giving Back
Philanthropy was never an afterthought for Shevers. It was woven into the business from the beginning.
In 2007, he and Sandy formalized their giving by launching The Sporty’s Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization with a clear mission: ensure a healthy general aviation community for the next generation.
The Foundation’s flagship initiative was the Next Step program, created in partnership with EAA’s Young Eagles. The problem the program addressed was simple but critical: Young Eagles gave kids a free introductory flight, but there was no structured follow-up after the ride. Shevers saw the gap and filled it by offering every Young Eagle free access to Sporty’s Complete Pilot Training Course online, plus a logbook to record their first flight and future aviation experiences.
Since its launch, the Foundation has donated millions of dollars to aviation causes, supporting AOPA’s Air Safety Institute, Aviation Explorers (part of the Boy Scouts), scholarship programs, and a range of other youth aviation initiatives.
“The focus of our business remains educational,” Shevers said. “We want to introduce the next generation of pilots to aviation.”
Flight Instructor First, Always
Despite building a global brand, Shevers never stopped identifying as a flight instructor. He earned his instrument instructor rating in 1961 and maintained it continuously for more than 60 years. By 2007, he had logged over 12,000 hours in the cockpit.
In 2007, he was inducted into the National Association of Flight Instructors (NAFI) Flight Instructor Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Oshkosh, Wisconsin — one of only a handful of instructors ever to receive the honor.
“At the foundation of Sporty’s operations is my pride in being a flight instructor and my belief that the CFI is vital to the future success of general aviation,” he wrote in a letter marking the 50th anniversary of his first solo.
That wasn’t corporate messaging. Visitors to Sporty’s over the decades routinely encountered Shevers on the floor, in the hangar, or at the ramp — often mentoring a visiting pilot or welcoming a student. One pilot recounted landing at I69 on fumes after a dead-stick scare, only to have a tall, friendly stranger approach him at the fuel desk, ask about his Decathlon, and gently walk him through the decision-making errors that led to the emergency. That stranger was Hal Shevers.
Retirement and Passing
In January 2024, Hal and Sandy Shevers formally retired. It was the final step in a transition that had been underway for several years, with the couple spending increasing time at their home in Sarasota, Florida.
On May 12, 2026, Hal Shevers passed away. The aviation community lost not just a business leader, but a mentor, educator, and friend to generations of pilots.
Sporty’s remains under the leadership of a team Shevers built over decades. Chairman and CEO Michael Wolf has been with the company for more than 50 years. President John Zimmerman has been there for over 25. “We’ll be right here, doing what we’ve always done,” Zimmerman said when the Sheverses retired.
The company Shevers founded continues to operate from the same building at Clermont County Airport that it moved into in 1990. The flight school still trains students. The catalog still ships thousands of orders a day. The Foundation still funds youth aviation programs. His fingerprints are on all of it.
What He Left Behind
Hal Shevers’ life is a reminder of what happens when a flight instructor takes the long view.
He started with a radio and a car trunk. He leaves behind the world’s largest pilot shop, a Part 141 flight school, a transformed airport, a charitable foundation that has introduced thousands of young people to aviation, and a Hall of Fame induction that recognized what he valued most — being a CFI.
“Too bad you’ll never be a pilot,” they told him. He proved them wrong for more than 60 years. General aviation is immeasurably better because he did.