Jonathan Spano’s eyesight ended his Navy dream; he flew for ‘Top Gun: Maverick’

Image: Gustaf Lundberg Toresson Every childhood dream meets an obstacle, and for Jonathan Spano, it arrived in the form of an eye chart. Fascinated by aircraft since boyhood, he wanted to fly for the Navy, only to discover that his eyesight would never qualify him. Rather than abandon aviation, he built a business that paid for it. That business, a traffic control company started with his brother as teenagers, spans dozens of locations and, by his account, earns more than one million dollars daily. Here is how a pilot hopeful turned ambition into a camera jet, a film credit, and a lesson in persistence.Why a failed military pilot eyesight test led Jonathan Spano and his brother into traffic controlAs a boy, Jonathan Spano built model aeroplanes and hung them from his bedroom ceiling on fishing line. After watching the original Top Gun film, he became determined to fly for the Navy and land on an aircraft carrier. Then came the discouraging discovery. Spano told Fortune that naval aviators needed vision at least as sharp as twenty-twenty, and his eyesight, which required glasses since childhood, fell short. That door closed for good. Raised in what he called a very blue-collar Calif...