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JROTC students learn basics of flying
Jennifer Holton reports
TAMPA, Fla. - With a check of the controls and a safety briefing, students from Jefferson High School were ready Thursday to take to the skies with instructor pilots from the Civil Air Patrol.
"Today we are doing orientation flights for JROTC cadets – Air Force JROTC cadets," said retired Air Force officer Larry Fernald. "And this is just kind of like that first little taste to see how they like it."
A dozen students from Jefferson High are part of the school’s dual enrollment program with Embry Riddle University. Many, like Kylee Gray, have expressed an interest in a career in flying.
"Growing up I always wanted to be in the military, just because I had family in the military," said Gray, a senior at Jefferson High. "And now being in ROTC, the Air Force is definitely an option for me. Commercial flying would be fun as well."
A shortage of pilots has been looming over the airline industry. With a forced retirement age of 65, the top five airlines will lose a quarter of their pilots over the next five years.
"We need to keep the supply chain going," Fernald said. "We need to train the younger folks, get them interested in aviation and work their way up."
Fernald, who flew combat missions in Vietnam and has more than 18,000 flying hours under his belt, says part of the issue with these shortages is it’s very expensive to get into aviation.
"It takes roughly $30,000-$36,000 to get your private pilot’s license. And not a lot of folks can afford that," he said. "Sometimes people don’t have the funding our resources."
There are resources that have become available in the last several years, however. Fernald says the U.S. Air Force gave Civil Air Patrol millions of dollars to train cadets and get them to their private pilot license.
"There’s also the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, Air Force Association, just to name a few," he said. "The Air Force has a program."
Once the fog burned off, the students took off from Tampa Executive Airport and flew up and down the coast for about 50 minutes, taking the controls at 1,000 feet.
"I fell in love with the class, it just keeps getting better and better every year," said Cidmagely Rosario, a junior at Jefferson High School.
"It’s fun watching that sparkle in their eye getting bigger and bigger as we fly, and we really hope a lot of them continue on in aviation," Fernald added.
And with the thousands of job openings on the horizon, their careers could easily take flight.
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