Flex Air is hosting an Aviation Career Day on Saturday, April 29th at Manhattan Regional Airport.
Charles Copeland, Chief Pilot for Flex Air said the event is open to high school sophomores, juniors and seniors.
“Between 10:00 am and 2:30 pm we’re putting on a full career day; for the first 100 students [that sign up] we’re going to be giving free flights,” said Copeland.
There are still approximately 15 open slots for those free flights. Copeland said that the day is really about promoting the aviation industry for the students that have a genuine interest.
“K-State’s professional pilot program will be showing off one of their aircraft, and we’ll also have the unmanned aircraft systems coming out,” said Copeland. “I’m pretty excited about [the unmanned aircraft systems] because I don’t think a lot of people know that it even exists, it’s not just a military thing; especially in our area, agriculture is going to be heavily dependent on drones for checking crops and doing things that we don’t need to be doing with manual labor.”
There will also be control tower tours, fire station tours and several airplanes on display.
Copeland said that with the looming retirement of the baby boomer generation, now is the time for young people to dive into aviation.
“Delta [Airlines] is hiring 1600 pilots a year, and that’s just an astronomical number – the entire pilot industry is only half a million pilots across the United States and that includes general aviation, that’s not just airlines” said Copeland. “[Pilots] can not fly for an airline after age 65, so if you look at the large number of baby boomers that are pilots they are forced aged retiring.”
Copeland noted that three years ago the age limit for pilots was 60 and it was extended to 65 due to the number of pilots that would be forced to retire far outweighing the number of entry level pilots available in the industry.
Aviation Career Day is Saturday from 10:00 until 2:00 pm at the Manhattan Regional Airport.
To register for the event visit https://goflexair.com/signup.
For more information, call 785-320-1218.
*feature photo courtesy Fly MHK