“Daddy,” one of the children might say, peering at Eric Guster’s phone, “It’s sunny in New Orleans. Can we go get some beignets for breakfast?”
Some mornings, the answer is yes.
Within an hour, backpacks are packed, and the family is heading toward a private terminal near Birmingham-Shuttlesworth.
Another Saturday, the kids might be eyeing Orlando on the map.
“Can we go down to Disney today?”
Often, the answer is, “Why not?”
For Eric Guster, a Birmingham lawyer and real estate developer, flying began as a practical decision. He earned his pilot’s license hoping to scout development sites across the Southeast and still make it home for dinner.
Somewhere between work trips and weather reports, the airplane became part of family life.
“The best part is my family can fly on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, and we can go wherever we want to go in the Southeast within a couple of hours,” he says. “It’s just so much fun.”
Now, Nashville feels nearby, and Orlando is a simple outing.
“It makes the world so much smaller,” Eric says.
“On the weekends, my kids think it’s an Uber,” he says, laughing.
For all the novelty of private flight, much of the plane feels familiar: crayons tucked nearby, books within reach, and headsets waiting for small travelers.
“Our plane looks like an SUV,” Eric says. “Our kids have their books, binoculars, and crayons in seat organizers.”
His youngest, Jordan, now 1, climbs aboard as though this, too, is simply part of family life.
Eric’s wife, Jamie, remembers hearing the plan while pregnant with Jordan.
“So, I’m six months pregnant right now with two small children, and you’re gonna go pick the most dangerous hobby that you can think of?” she says, laughing.
Still, she knows her husband.
“He’s a dreamer, but he’s a doer,” Jamie says. “When he dreams something up, you can pretty much guarantee that he’s going to make it happen.”
From the first flying lesson, she could tell where things were heading.
“Once we were paying for lessons,” she says, laughing, “I just knew, ‘This man is going to buy a plane.’”
Eric never treats flying casually.
Before taking the family on their first trip, he flew the route eight times alone.
“Safety is number one,” he says. “Having my whole family on this plane is something I do not ever take lightly.”
Flying proved harder than Eric expected.
“It’s the most difficult thing I’ve ever done,” he says.
He still flies at least twice a week to stay proficient.
If the forecast looks questionable, they stay home.
“If there’s a five percent chance we’ll have problems on the flight, like weather, we don’t go, period,” he says.
That matters to Jamie.
“I trust him,” she says. “I would trust him to walk me off a cliff if he said we needed to.”
These days, even the children know the routine. Erin, 6, checks weather maps and already knows which clouds to avoid.
“We make sure there are no cumulonimbus clouds!” she says proudly.
Sometimes, weekend plans end at Café Du Monde, where powdered sugar comes first and the playground nearby proves harder to leave than the city itself.
By now, the Guster children have become playground connoisseurs.
“My kids were on the last playground for two and a half hours,” Eric says. “I finally told them, ‘We’ve got to fly home, kids.’”
Sometimes, weekend plans come together a few days ahead. Other times, they begin with a passing wish.
Recently, Ella, 4, announced she wanted to watch the sunrise from the airplane.
“All she had to do was tell her daddy that,” Jamie says.
So, one Saturday at 4 a.m., the family was headed to Memphis, sleepy children tucked into their seats as morning slowly arrived outside the windows.
Ella was the first to notice.
“The sky is turning yellow!” she announced.
By lunchtime, the family was at the Memphis Zoo—one more Saturday for a family waking up to the wonder of where the day might take them.