Sometimes the greatest flight of your life begins after you step away from the airplane.
For pilot and entrepreneur Donald R. Payseur, walking away from a near-fatal encounter with Crowders Mountain should have been the moment that changed everything. It wasn't.
That day was only the opening scene.
The real turning point came later, on the ground, when the very structure, precision, and discipline Don had mastered in aviation, which were the cornerstones that helped him build a thriving career, was the same discipline that he ignored, and that drove his business toward a devastating crash. What once kept him safe and confidant in the cockpit became unforgiving when mixed with pride, fear, and misplaced confidence.
The collapse was total.
It forced Don into the hardest descent any pilot can face, not through clouds or turbulence, but into shame, depression, loss, and the disorienting question of who you are when everything you built falls apart. There were no checklists for this kind of failure. No airspeed indicator. No easy recovery.
In Flying High, Don invites readers into the cockpit of his life, not just for the dramatic moments in the air, but for the long, quiet struggle that followed on the ground. Through turbulence, rebuilding, and raw introspection, he shows how the uncompromising principles of aviation became the blueprint that ultimately saved his life, restored his business, and reshaped his faith.
Drawing from real flights, hard-earned business lessons, and moments of brutal self-honesty, Don reframes aviation not as a metaphor, but as a discipline, one that demands preparation over hope, humility over ego, and truth over comfort.
From the discipline of checklists to the power of the Three P's - Purpose, Procedures, and Practice,
and the NTSB-style honesty every leader must eventually face, Flying High is a story of recalibration, redemption, and second chances.
This is not a book about airplanes. It is a book about course corrections.
It is a book about what happens when life stalls at altitude - and what it takes to regain control when the horizon disappears.
