Flight Plans

“A banker, a risk manager, a computer guy, a landscape architect and a lawyer walk into a bar,” says Chad McGowan. “And they end up buying it.”

The founding partner of McGowan, Hood, Felder & Phillips in Rock Hill lived that punchline when he and four friends opened a brewery in 2014. It started around his kitchen table, as the quintet decided to try the so-called best beers in the world. This led McGowan to revisit his home-brewing hobby from law school, and enter local competitions to surprising success. Then the friends decided to take it further. They acquired a vacant car dealership and, with the help of state tax credits, opened Legal Remedy Brewing. “At its height, it had 100 employees and $6 million in sales,” McGowan says. 

In 2023, McGowan stepped away due to the demands. “Because everybody’s looking to you when things happen at 6:30 on Friday—the sewage backs up, the electrical has an issue, or the fryer goes down.”

So he shifted gears, trading beer flights for literal flights as a commercial instructor. McGowan logged 12 hours back in 1999, “but then life got in the way,” he says. Fast-forward 24 years: “My kids got old, went to college and I said, ‘Now’s the time.’”

He has logged roughly 1,000 hours, gained a commercial rating, and continues adding certifications while serving on the South Carolina Aeronautics Commission. He even flies regularly for work. “My wife calls it the minivan in the sky,” he says, adding that one hour in a plane is equivalent to six hours driving. “What I’ve realized the older I get is that time is the most invaluable commodity. You never get it back. If you can afford it, you realize it’s not an airplane. It’s a time machine.”

It’s a surprisingly stress-free experience, he adds. “If something weird is going on—the weather’s bad, the plane is not behaving right—you just get a hotel room and try again tomorrow,” McGowan says. “Careening through the air on a lawn chair, two miles above the ground, is more relaxing than practicing law somehow.”