Aspen Flight Academy aims to infect every kid with the flying bug
Anna Meyer/The Aspen Times
Once you lift off from the pilot’s seat to 12,000 feet above the ground, with expansive peaks stretching in all directions as you soar over Independence Pass, it can be hard not to crave that aerial euphoria again.
Aspen Flight Academy flight instructor Nolan Walters described that as the flying bug — and that’s what the academy is trying to give to students by offering the Every Student Flies Program. The program gives all students at Aspen High School the opportunity to take a free, one-hour introductory flight course.
Students who choose to participate get a pre-flight briefing, then go through a pre-flight checklist to ensure the plane is ready to fly. After communicating with air traffic controllers on the radio headsets, they learn how to take off, ascending into the alpine sky, where they can steer the plane without risk, as the instructor also has a steering column.
While the exact route for the lesson may vary, 14ers tower over the plane in every direction regardless of flight path — from the plane, you can see the dense trees give way to bare sediment fields with spring snow lining the peak’s crevices.
The program takes about 50 students every year — a little over half of the incoming freshmen class — according to Walters. Of the students he has taken for their introductory flight course, around half of them have continued taking flight lessons.
“Our objective is to see how many graduating seniors we can have every year walk away from Aspen public school with their private pilot’s license,” Flight Academy Board Chairman Michael Pearce said.
The idea was born during a Flight Academy brainstorming session in 2019, when board members were trying to think of ways to get students excited about taking flight lessons.
“As we went around the board table, everyone said that their introductory flight lesson is what inspired everybody to learn to fly, and that was pretty much unanimous across all our board members,” he said.
Though students generally pay for flight lessons after the introductory course, the academy partnered with Atlantic Aviation to create a scholarship for students. This year, 11 students received $9,000 each toward flight lessons, including instruction on the ground using a simulator.
The Federal Aviation Administration requires a minimum of 40 hours of flight training to apply for a private pilot’s license, although the national average is 60 hours, according to Pearce.
The academy recently received two, new Diamond Aircraft DA-40 airplanes for the program as part of their 10-year contract with the aircraft company.
“The whole idea is that we keep the airplanes that the students are using as A) they’re brand new, and B) they’re the latest, greatest, state-of-the-art aircraft you could potentially get anywhere in the marketplace,” he said.
The planes are turbo diesel, jet fuel-burning aircrafts, meaning there is no lead in the fuel they burn. They are also more fuel efficient than other planes and produce full thrust up to 18,000 feet above sea level, he said.
“(That) makes them the ideal training aircraft for us here in Aspen at the high altitude,” he said.
Given the smooth glide of the plane and its immediate receptiveness to the slightest change in steering, one would hardly even notice that they are so high above the ground, based on flight performance. That is, until the occupants glance around and notice they are cruising at nearly the same height as Mount Elbert.
In recent years, an increasing number of students have shown interest in learning to fly. As a result, the academy will sell only one of their planes from last year, keeping the other to maintain a three-aircraft fleet. Originally, they planned to sell both of the previous year’s models every year, but with increased demand for flight courses, the academy decided to increase the size of the fleet.
“That’s just been a direct relationship to the program growing more than we expected,” Pearce said. “I don’t see the demand going past three aircraft.”
Having a larger fleet also provides greater scheduling flexibility. Since the planes require routine maintenance, they can coordinate the maintenance schedule to ensure they always have two airplanes operating at any given time, according to him.
The increase in demand for the flight school comes at a time when the commercial flying industry is facing a pilot shortage.
“The pilot shortage is epic,” Pearce said. “We’ve never seen anything like this in the history of commercial aviation. The shortage is just sort of almost borderline out of control at this point.”
He said American Airlines has parked 150 aircraft and United Airlines has parked 200 due to a lack of pilots to fly them.
“Every major airline is struggling filling their cockpits with qualified crew members, and the regional airlines, like SkyWest services Aspen, is feeling a lot of that pain because that’s the entry point for people that enter into the industry,” he said.
Getting a private pilot certificate is the first step toward becoming an airline pilot, but there are still many intermediate steps, and the training time to gain qualifications to fly a plane for an airline can take several years, he said.
He emphasized that the timing of the creation of the student flying program with the pilot shortage is optimal for students hoping to pursue careers in aviation.
“It’s a career that gives people a lot of flexibility in their life and their lifestyle, and it also pays a really great salary,” he said.
In response to the pilot shortage, aircraft that can be used for training purposes are in high demand by flight schools, according to Pearce. The “stratospheric” used aircraft market allows the academy to sell the year-old planes, which they purchased at a discount, for a profit.
“We’re able to sell the airplanes and generally make a small profit to break even, and that keeps the costs for our high-school students the lowest possible cost we could offer,” he said.
