Burke Mees was born in Saint Louis, Missouri, but has spent most of his career flying commercially in Alaska. In 1994 he took a summer job over the phone flying seaplanes in Juneau and never managed to leave. He went on to fly in the Aleutian Islands and later moved to the Anchorage area. Burke's first experience flying tailwheel airplanes was as a young flight instructor -- he got a checkout in a 1946 Aeronca Champ for the express purpose of teaching a 69-year-old woman to fly it. All three survived that project and he has been flying tailwheel airplanes ever since. In Anchorage, Burke started flying skis both privately and for hire, which has included flying reporters along the Iditarod trail, providing instruction for ski checkouts and flying on the local mountain glaciers. Burke says that for him, flying has always been a matter of honest work, but it is also something enjoyed. He looks at it as an art that can continually be refined, and flight instructing has always been a way to do that. He says that, "There's no better way to explore a topic in aviation than to organize your thoughts and teach it to someone else." Currently his day job is flying as a 737 Captain in Alaska, but he still keeps his CFI current and does some instructing on the side.