Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer
When people say, “Shoot for the sky,” they don’t mean it literally, but Paul “P.J.” Harper, 1990 Pocahontas County High School graduate, decided to do just that.
Harper knew he wanted to go into engineering when he started college at Virginia Tech, but it wasn’t until his sophomore year when he had to specify what kind of engineering he wanted to do, that’s when he chose the sky.
“It’s not like I knew my whole life I wanted to be an aerospace engineer,” he said. “I kind of narrowed it down between aerospace or chemical engineering, or maybe even general mechanical engineering. I think at the end of the day, I was just drawn toward planes and the idea of that was super compelling to me. Planes are cool. That was about as complex as my decision making was at the time.”
Not one to limit himself, Harper got not one, but two engineering degrees – aerospace and ocean. The year he graduated, Harper was interviewing with Newport News Shipbuilding to work on the submarine development program there, when he learned Delta Air Lines contacted Virginia Tech, looking for aerospace engineering grads.
Harper went to Delta’s headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, for an interview.
“The headquarters for Delta in Atlanta is like a college campus – green trees, brick buildings, beautiful place,” he said. “So, I was like, ‘yup, this is it.’”
One of the perks of working at Delta is free air travel. Another draw for Harper, who has a passion for traveling.
“I love to get out and explore new places,” he said. “I related that back to my high school experience and middle school experiences. I took a lot of French classes with Dr. [Denise] McNeel at the time. The French class went to Canada. France and Switzerland were my first international trips.
“I think I always enjoyed travel, so when Delta came in, I was like, ‘that sounds super cool,’” he continued. “It lines up with my degree and I want to be able to travel around the world, so it all worked out.”
Another perk about the job in Atlanta, was that Harper met his wife, Lisja, there.
Harper worked in the technical operations department at Delta for 12 years and, while there, earned an MBA from Emory University.
It was at that time he weighed his options – either be a Delta employee until retirement or see what else he could do. He chose the latter.
“I got recruited by a headhunter for a company north of Seattle to lead their engineering team and design aircraft interior parts,” Harper said.
It was a tough decision to make. His family is in West Virginia, his wife’s family is in Georgia. Plus, they had a small son to consider. But they chose to move out west and they have been there ever since.
Harper was at that particular job for five years and moved on to another small company that did maintenance on airplanes for airlines based where the Boeing headquarters was in Everett, Washington.
After five years with that company, Harper made a choice to change over to the consulting side of aerospace engineering.
“Both [of those companies] sold through private equity transactions, which is kind of why I left both of those,” he said. “I decided I’ve got to do something else because I kept going to these smaller companies and then they’d get bought up and sold off as part of a bigger company.
“So, in 2017, I joined this consulting company that was a bunch of guys I knew from back in my Delta Air Lines days.”
That company, too, was bought out recently, but this time, Harper stayed on with the new owner and continues to consult for all major airlines in the nation and several in other countries.
“About probably a third of our work is with OEMs, the manufactures, Boeing is a big customer of ours and nearly every domestic airline and then some Middle Eastern and European airlines, as well,” he said. “Mostly, maintenance related or aircraft modification related work.”
Harper explained that modification related work may consist of adding 20 first class seats to a plane and figuring out how to adjust the economy seating area to accommodate those new seats and keep the plane safe, as well.
The focus is maintenance related, making sure all planes are in tip top shape so there are no delays, cancelations or, worse, malfunctions.
“You can envision as a passenger, the most frustrating things – if your flight to wherever you’re going on vacation gets canceled because there’s a maintenance problem on the aircraft,” he said. “Everybody gets frustrated, and the airlines have to put people in hotels or whatever the case may be.
It gets expensive, really quickly for airlines if they have a maintenance problem.
“Their programs are built around making sure that that plane is always in the safest condition to fly,” he continued. “That’s why when you look at the safety record for U.S. Airlines when it comes to crashes or incidents, it is stellar.
“It’s called predictive maintenance – making sure that you never put that plane in a position where it’s going to put anyone in any kind of danger.”
The company Harper works for has offices in Atlanta, Georgia; Seattle, Washington; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Fort Worth, Texas; and London, England; – all of which he travels to as part of his job.
That doesn’t leave much time for the couple and their two children, the aforementioned son and a daughter, to travel back home to see family, but luckily, family comes west to visit, too.
As he reflects on his time at PCHS and in Pocahontas County, Harper said he is happy to have grown up here, adding that he never felt limited to only pursuing certain careers because he was from here.
“I think I grew a lot in college, but I had the foundation from high school that set me on that right path,” he said. “Being open to new opportunities is how I lived my life. There’s something about just keeping an open mind to opportunities as they come up and having confidence in your foundation.
“That’s what I think [PCHS] gave me,” he continued. “Some great teachers over the years that helped solidify that notion. You can do whatever you set your mind to. It takes a lot of hard work for sure. It won’t be easy, but you can do it and be confident of where you’re coming from.”
Harper is the son of Karen and Kermit Friel and Paul Harper.
