The Mainland Air senior flying instructor has been teaching people to fly since 1980, with Grant Halliday coming under his tuition soon after.
Fast forward to this year where one of Mr Kean’s most recent pupils completed her training.
The pupil was Emma Halliday, Grant’s daughter.
Not only that, Mr Kean had flown with Emma’s grandfather, Merv Halliday, to New Caledonia in the 1970s, and had met her great-grandfather Ernest Halliday as a senior member of the Southland Aero Club when he himself was learning.
Flying seemed to run in their family, he said.
"It’s in their blood."
The original plane he and Merv had flown to New Caledonia, a Cessna 180, had been passed down for generations, with Grant having flown it from the Chatham Islands direct to Invercargill.
But believe it or not, the family connections stretched even further.
When Emma received her pilot’s licence, the person who awarded the qualification was Mr Kean’s own son, Jordan, who is the chief flying instructor at Mainland Air .
Despite the odds, teaching generations of flyers is something Mr Kean was accustomed to.
He said he had taught three or four second generations of flyers in his career, even teaching the sons and daughters of pilots who had trained alongside him, as with the Halliday Family.
Mr Kean said the aviation community was quite closeknit, and it was nice to be one aspect that tied families’ flying legacies together.
The appeal to get involved in flying was not hard to fathom.
"I think it’s probably teatime chatter at the table ... comparing aviation stories."
Mr Halliday was a captain of an Air New Zealand Dreamliner.
"It’s quite good to come on the plane and they say the captain is so and so — oh, that’s one of my students."
Ms Halliday said Mr Kean was "a bit cheeky" but otherwise a fountain of knowledge.
"Even knowing my dad flies, my grandfather flew and my great-grandfather flew, not only that but the person who taught my dad is also teaching me and passing on the same valuable knowledge ... it’s an incredible feeling," Ms Halliday said.
