Pilot Luana Torres:
Hey Everyone! My name is Luana Torres, I was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and I’m a licensed Commercial Helicopter Pilot. Believe it or not, I wasn’t always in love with aviation (yes, I think that hard to believe too). My brother is a Helicopter Pilot and I grew up with him talking about helicopters all the time, which as you can imagine was a little bit annoying for a little girl that just wanted to know about barbies.
Over the years, I started to realize how awesome my brother is. I remember being so proud to say ‘My brother is a HELICOPTER PILOT! He has the most amazing profession in the world and he’s awesome’. Yep, I used to say that... But still, no interest in flying myself just wanted to brag about my big brother (hahaha). Until one day, (I was still in College at the time, studying Economics and would recieve my Bachelor degree 2 years later), I went on a vacation to Australia and it was there where I took to the skies in my very first helicopter flight! In the Australian skies, I fell in love with aviation. After that, I started flying in Brazil, got my first PPL there, moved to the US and got my second PPL there and finally moved to Canada, where I got my Commercial License last year (March 2019).
Flight School was actually pretty smooth. I’ve met my husband there and it was great to be able to share with someone all the steps to become a Pilot. We used to spend a lot of our date nights studying together. I still don’t call myself an Instagram Influencer (I don't think I ever will). What I try on Instagram is motivate people. To inspire them! So if I had to call myself something it would be an 'Instagram Motivational person' (if that makes any sense). In relation to my Instagram everything started in 2015 when my hubby and I moved to the US. I started sharing pictures of my daily training and only pictures of helicopters at the time. It grew faster than I thought and nowadays it’s something I love to work with.
More recently, The Can-Am On-Road ambassador deal is my most recent partnership and I like the brand more and more each day. At present, I'm not sure what the future holds. With Covid-19 plus the restrictions in place at the moment, I’ve never been so uncertain about my life. COVID-19 came to change the world and it’s affecting my hubby and I a lot. That being said, we don’t know where we’ll be in the future but we know that whatever happens, it’s for the best! My advice to my younger self would be, don’t worry too much about life and always have a 'Plan B.' We tend to worry about things that we can’t control in life. Make a Plan B and stop overthinking.
Hope you liked my story!