College Students Take To The Air

I ran across an neat article about a young woman named Samantha E. Hannifan who is attending college at Westfield State College, MA in the Westfield, MA Republican. In the article the author describes the aviation program this young woman is in and that when the Sophomore graduates she will be Commercial Instrument rated pilot.

Her goal is to become an air cargo pilot for a company like DHL or UPS someday. In the article she states “It’s overwhelming at first, but it’s exhilarating. It’s awesome. I definitely never though I would be flying.”

A local flying school has built a partnership with the college to provide the training, and the co-owner of that operation stated “Students come into the program with zero flying time and by the end of the first year they’ve completed 45 hours of flying and have their pilot certificates.”

Here in Michigan we have a couple of great college aviation programs, the largest being Western Michigan University where students come from all over the world. Many folks don’t realize it, but there are many, many colleges offering this kind of training today.

Jet Training Flight Simulator

For example, the NIFA (National Intercollegiate Flying Association) has some 77 member colleges and there are still more colleges who do not participate in this organization. It seems that aviation is not going to go away anytime soon.

Until next time keep your wings straight and level Hersch!

JetAviator7

If a woman wants to fly, first of all she must, of course, abandon skirts and don a knickerbocker uniform.

— Harriet Quimby, first lady in the U.S. to receive a pilots license, 1911.

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