From On the Air to In the Air
/
I guess you can call her the flying Anchor.
Many viewers know Lauren Sanchez from her Anchor days at KTTV (she still fills in from time to time). But, this Anchor is showing people that there is life after TV news and it's in the air.
Sanchez is now a helicopter pilot specializing in aerial filming.
The Hollywood Reporter says that Sanchez cut her teeth consulting on Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk; has filmed a commercial in the Bahamas and Los Cabos, Mexico, for high-end residential developer Discovery Land (Tom Brady and George Clooney are among its homeowners); and recently finished a flight with Catherine Hardwicke for the Twilight director's next film, Miss Bala.
She had been learning how to fly while working as an anchor, which was not a completely left-field scenario. Sanchez-Whitesell's father, Ray, worked as a flight instructor and mechanic who helped rebuild planes. "I was always in the hangar growing up but knew nothing about flying," she says — save for one important fact. "I went into flight school and I had an instructor who asked, 'So what do you know about flying?'" Her answer: "Stay away from the prop."
Once she realized how much she loved being in the air, Sanchez-Whitesell doubled down on her flight studies. "I had my job, I had a career, and then I found a calling," she says. "I loved entertainment and I loved filming, and so I got to combine all of it." But pursuing this passion came with extra challenges for her. "I’m dyslexic and I literally had to put myself in a room and just cram to figure it out," she says without a wince of shame. "They call them learning differences now, which is really sweet, but growing up I just thought I was stupid. My co-anchors knew I was dyslexic but not many more [did]. I felt like I had to hide it because it just wasn’t something that people talked about."
She started flying planes in 2011, but getting certified as a helicopter pilot was even tougher. "I literally cried — and I don't cry," she reveals of a moment in the cabin when she was ready to give up while trying to steady the chopper. "You go to school for a year, take a test, then you do a check ride — you go up with an instructor, and they take you through the emergency procedures. If you lose your engine, he turns off the throttle, and you have to get down. It's like life. It's good if everything goes right, but if shit hits the fan, can you survive?"
She earned her license in June 2016 and formed Black Ops Aviation, partnering with Steve Safford and his Studio Wings production company. "Steve has taken me under his wing," she says, not registering the pun, adding that Safford guided her in how to track cars and navigate specific shots required for films. Her hangar at Santa Monica Airport — not far from Harrison Ford's and David Ellison's — now houses her Cirrus plane and her Astar 350B helicopter, Whiskey Whiskey.
"I want to be in a helicopter all the time," she says. "Life can be so chaotic with so much going on. Lift off and you’re in an energy space that no one else is in. It's calming. When I’m up there, I’m completely satisfied. I’m like, 'This is where I need to be.'"
