Ep 106 | Pilots in training: Landing the job

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Really, the the benefit for the students, I mean, it is college credit for absolutely free. There's nothing that you have to pay. A student that takes even one course in this program, if they ultimately do go to Embry Riddle, they qualify just by taking this one of these courses, qualify for an $8,000 scholarship.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Welcome to the Voices United in Education podcast. Each week we showcase the teachers, administrators, and community members who go the extra mile to contribute to the success of every student in Escambia County. You'll meet the real people behind the titles and learn about the amazing resources to support every student's success. According to Boeing, the pilot shortage means that over the next 20 years, we'll need over 200,000 new pilots in the U.S. Escambia High School has a unique solution facilitated by a unique leader. My next guest is a Flight Academy instructor. After 20 years in the Air Force, six of which spent as a navigator flying an FB-111 fighter jet, he combined his love of aviation with his passion for teaching at Escambia High, where they have a partnership with Embry Riddle for a special dual enrollment program. Today he's going to share how the program could be a leg up for students with a technologically engaging career and minimal student loans. Setting students up for the future and focused on flight, retired Lieutenant Colonel Greg Pyle. I'm so glad you're here. Thank you, Meredith.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Glad to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

So what I didn't say in the intro is that you were also panhandled teacher of the year in aviation instruction out of 200 instructors, which is a pretty big deal. What did your students think of that?

SPEAKER_00 1:51

They thought it was pretty cool. Most of them. Some of them kind of, you know, rolled their eyes.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

But I mean, you can't please everyone. No. Right?

SPEAKER_00 1:59

No.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

So why is there a shortage on pilots?

SPEAKER_00 2:02

It's just a simple fact of economics, really. The the demand for air travel is outpacing economic growth. And that same Boeing study that you that you cited says or predicts over the next 20 years a over 6% increase in traffic demand, while globally there's only about a 2% or 2.6% projected gross domestic product increase. So demand for air travel outpaces economic growth around the world. And that creates job opportunities for pilots. Another factor in the United States is simply that there's an FAA rule with a mandatory retirement age of 65 for airline pilots. And so when you have that, you have a situation where the workforce always has to be regenerated. You have uh, I forget this exact statistics, but it's pretty close to uh 40% or so of the uh commercial pilot, the airline pilot population is within five to 10 years of that age, 65 retirement mandatory retirement age. So that fuels this ongoing demand for pilots. And it's not just pilots, but technicians, cabin crew as well, pretty much any anybody that works in the airline industry, there's an ongoing demand for them. Uh worldwide, there's a demand. Boeing projects a demand for 690,000 technicians, uh, about 125,000 of those read mechanics in that. About 125,000 of those in the United States, and 938,000 cabin crew in the worldwide.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

938,000.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Yeah. So that is cabin crew is what we think of as flight attendance, right? Which is far more than what we see on the surface level in what they do. They are part of the crew, they are there for safety and very highly trained, very professional individuals in the overall aviation business. And then then when it comes to job opportunities in aviation, it's not just limited. Those all those things we talked about right there are just the commercial airlines and what we think of as commercial air travel. But the job opportunities are not limited to that. We have defense jobs, we have space jobs. Space is a realm where the job market is just on the verge of exploding.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

You wanted to say the final frontier. I know you did. I can see it.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Air cargo and then even aviation services, everything pretty much everything you can think of as a career field. There is an aviation specialty version of that career field. So there are lawyers that specialize in aviation. There are business people that specialize in aviation, aviation finance. The the the the scope of job opportunity in the aviation world is virtually limitless. I've had a number of students of mine, past students, that have gone into defense. And by that, a lot of people, you know, say, well, what do you mean? Well, for example, uh last year, two of my students, Brian and Jason, they both wanted to fly. They both decided their career goal was to be an airline pilot. But the path that they wanted, they explored various paths. They looked at doing something like an airline training academy, which would have cost them a lot of money. It's going even to an airline training academy is about as expensive as a four-year college education. They felt like we don't want to start out a career in debt. And so they made, they both made the choice to enlist in the Air Force. And because of what they learned at our flight academy, their aptitudes were high enough that they qualified for flight training. So they are both now loadmasters, which are the people that work in the back of the cargo planes, but they're part of a flight crew. They're flying. They're able to take advantage of the military's 100% tuition assistance. So they'll they'll be able to do school, get a bachelor's degree for no cost to them. And uh once they do that, then they want to go to officer training school. They both said we want to go to pilot training, be Air Force fighter pilot. That's what they want to do.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

And of course, you're biased. So you're like, yeah, let's do that.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

And they're well on their way.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

That's amazing. Um so who is eligible for Flight Academy?

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Any student really in the entire county through school choice can apply for coming to Escambia High School for the purpose of attending Flight Academy. And that's true of any of our career academies across the whole county. We just happen to be the only high school flight academy that's focused on operations. There is another aviation academy at Booker T, Washington that is focused on aviation maintenance. So I want to give them a shout-out too, because really my goal is to excite students about aviation as a career field, regardless of what that is, whether they want to go be a mechanic, whether they want to be a pilot, air traffic controller, anything it related to aviation, that's what I try to get to get them excited about. Another former student decided he was going to go the military route too, but he went into the new US Space Command. So space enlisted in in the Space Force, yes.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

That's amazing. Um so the earliest that a student can enroll in the flight academy. Is it like you have to enroll early? Or what's the earliest and the latest, I should say?

SPEAKER_00 8:13

It is an academy structure. So the first year class, the freshman year class, is a high school credit-only class. So it is it it's it's not dual enrollment, it's not through MB Riddle, but everything past that first class is dual enrollment. There are some limitations with the dual enrollment. So a ninth grade student cannot enroll in the dual enrollment class. They have to be 10th grade and up. The second limitation is a 2.5 unweighted GPA. That is required for admission into the university. There are some limited cases where I may be able to request a waiver from Embry Riddle for things that are a little bit lower than 2.5. There is an absolute cutoff down below there, but in most cases, we're looking for the 2.5 and up because then I we don't have to ask for waivers or anything like that. If a student transfers into the district or transfers over from another school, as long as they're 10th grade or higher, they can enter dual enrollment classes. And with those people, I try to work with them on a case-by-case basis, one-on-one, and find out what their goals are, what their what their desires are. Because there are some, there is an order that the classes need to be taken. Some classes are prerequisites for other classes. And there is in one case, if you take a certain class that doesn't have a prerequisite, you can't go back and take this other previous class. So we try to try to craft that for each individual student to maximize what they're looking to get out of the program.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Do students come in usually with a goal, knowing you mentioned the couple of students that are like, we want to be fighter pilots, or is there room for students that are not sure who aren't committed to the idea of working in aviation, but maybe want to check it out because, you know, public school is free.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Yeah. Most students, just my experience, don't have any idea yet. They they don't really know. I guess, I guess what I was thinking of mostly with the ones that I've worked with in the past to craft something custom. One of those Air Force loadmasters that I just mentioned, he he didn't start our program until his junior year. And uh the guidance program put him directly into the freshman class, even though he had a GPA that could have allowed him to take dual enrollment. And he did really well in that. And he said, Hey, look, I really want to get the private pilot course done. So as a senior, I let him take private pilot, even though normally there's two classes that they take prior to that. And he did very well.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

So there's some wiggle room for some customization of their path, but regardless, it's on that.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:11

So can you tell me about the CAPE?

SPEAKER_00 11:15

Career and professional education. CAPE is an acronym that we use in the state of Florida. It is a Florida program for certifications related to job qualifications, I guess is maybe a broad way of explaining it. It's also a program where the Florida legislature has established a mechanism to keep these career academies funded. So, for example, if a student earns a certification in the flight academy at Escambia, there is a dollar amount that comes from the state to the school district that has to be by law, has to be used in that program in which it was earned. And so that is really what funds our ongoing needs. We use computers a lot in the in the classroom uh beyond the Chromebook. Uh, we use desktop computers with some pretty sophisticated flight planning and other software. Of course, those have to be replaced uh periodically. We also have some flight simulators in the room, and we're looking to get more. These are at least one of them is what the FAA calls a basic aircrew training device. So with a BATD, a student can actually log the sum of the time that they use that in their pilot logbook, and it can count towards some of their requirements for an FAA license. We are trying to give them the tools to be successful in that chosen profession later on down the road. Unfortunately, the Flight Academy is not something where the certifications that they graduate with in the in manned aviation is going to let them walk out of high school and directly into being an airline pilot. But if you think about it, you know, it's kind of like the old example. Do you want, do you, do you want a high recent high school graduate doing major surgery on you, or do you want somebody who's gone to medical school, right? And done well at medical school. The current requirement for an airline transport pilot is 1,500 hours of flight time experience. And along the way, they get various licenses and and other qualifications. And so by the time they are airline pilots, they're very, very highly qualified. And that's what we want for safety reasons.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Aaron Powell, so you feel like this program allows them to graduate high school much more well positioned to complete the post-high school certifications that they need? Okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

Now, if we shift gears when we talk about unmanned aviation, the drone world, we can very, very easily, a student who applies themselves in this flight academy can graduate with a couple of industry certifications, CAPE industry certifications, plus their FAA small UAS pilot license. And those three things together will enable them, they have all the qualifications then to walk into an entry-level drone job with a major drone company right out of high school. No, no college education required. The drone industry is growing very, very rapidly. And because of that, there are more and more and more people involved in it. And that means that some of those opportunities are not as readily available for the high school, brand new high school graduate as they were maybe five, 10 years ago. Because what we're seeing now more and more is the entry-level jobs want 250 hours of flight time experience. When you're flying a little small drone, you're not typically flying it for hours and hours at a time.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

The battery won't let you. Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

You fly for 15 minutes or 30 minutes. And so it it's in the high school context, it's it's difficult. There's no way we're going to get a kid 250 hours of flight time, but we can get them again on the on the path as long as they're applying themselves and and and studying the aviation world is not not sure exactly how I want to say it, it's not overly complicated, but it's not all just common sense either. There's a lot of study that needs to take place. There's a lot of rules involved. And the rules in aviation, I try to get my kids to understand this, and and sometimes I I don't know that I'm I'm really getting through. They're not like traffic laws out on the streets. You know, we it it's maybe that that may be a bad analogy, but many people out on the streets, they know what traffic law says, like the speed limit says this, but we can go faster because nobody does anything about it. Well, in aviation, if the rule says something, you need to follow the rule exactly, because they exist to keep people alive. They exist for safety reasons, and the consequences are much more dire if you make a mistake.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

So there's a lot to learn. And so that's what's so interesting about the Flight Academy is that you not only give students a chance to get ahead in what they need to know, but also what they want. You know, I love that you're helping them kind of lay out the buffet of options. And I also like that, you know, they are connecting themselves with the community and their own future. Whereas, I mean, you know, as a teenager, there is this temptation to just live in the moment. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but it is nice to know that the future adults in our community are kind of thinking that direction anyway. And I love how they, you said they call you professor because you you bring that air of, okay, we're this is real life. This is not just for a passing grade. This is investing in yourself.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

Yeah. And in the college courses, we're we're trying to create as much as we can. We we are on the Escambia High School campus, so we're at high school, but we're I try to instill in them when you walk through that doorway for this class. If you're in a dual enrollment class, you're now at Embry Riddle. You're not at Escambia High School, you're at Embry Riddle. So uh we're gonna try to do everything the Embry Riddle way. Um in fact, I usually even wear uh Embry Riddle shirt and Embry Riddle name tag and look uh exactly like if I was a professor on the Daytona Beach or the Prescott campus. So we tr we try to make as much as possible the college experience in a high school all the good things, not the bad things.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Right. Yeah, for parents listening. It's all only the good things.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

Oh, this is uh such good information for parents to know. As we wrap up, is there any final thoughts that you want to share that you feel like you don't want parents to miss out on?

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Yeah, really the the benefit for the students. I mean, it is college credit for absolutely free. There's nothing that you have to pay. A student that takes even one course in this program, if they ultimately do go to Embry Riddle, they qualify just by taking this one of these courses, qualify for an $8,000 scholarship. I had two, I have one student this year who graduated. He's going to Embry Riddle, and so he will benefit from that. My first year teaching here, I had a student who went to Embry Riddle, and she's now out in Los Angeles, a successful engineer. She ended up majoring in electrical engineering, and I think she works for Boeing, but I'm not 100% sure. She works for a defense contractor in in Los Angeles and absolutely loves what she's doing. So the there's the scholarship there, there's free college credit, they can they get these industry recognized certifications. So a lot of benefit to both the student and the family.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

Yeah. When we're talking about free college, parents are going to lean in and go, I need to know about this. Well, thank you so much for sharing this. This is such a cool resource. And I had no idea that there was such a need for pilots. And so because you explained so well the scope of jobs that exist under that, it's not just do you want to fly a plane, that it's also all these other applications within aeronautics. Yeah. So thank you very much. This was great.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

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