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IVINS, Washington County — Ivins, Washington County, resident and lifelong pilot Capt. Eric Wickfield recently received the Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award, the most prestigious award of the Federal Aviation Administration.
Wickfield said the award requires that a pilot be sponsored, then two other pilots beside the sponsor must submit letters to the FAA, stating that they feel the potential recipient is an "outstanding" candidate.
"It takes the FAA a while to do their research," he said. "It takes several months to go through all that."
After this lengthy research was done, a senior representative of the FAA, inspector Robert Jeffs, arrived in Ivins to present the award to Wickfield at the end of September. In addition to the award, Wickfield also received a Blue Ribbon package, consisting of nearly 300 pages, which contained most of the documentation from virtually his entire career, going all the way back to when he was 18 years old.
