Fifteen individuals have been selected as winners of the 2016 AOPA Flight Training Scholarships, a program designed to help aviation trainees of all ages earn a pilot certificate. The scholarships are funded by donations to the AOPA Foundation.
The AOPA Flight Training Scholarship program launched in 2011, focused on facilitating a positive flight training experience that would encourage student pilots to achieve their goals. By helping to produce new pilots, the scholarship program also strives to ensure general aviation’s future, with scholarship recipients serving as ambassadors for GA and flight training on a grass-roots level. Working a full time job, a part-time job, and securing scholarship funding will “put me that much closer to the bigger dream of becoming a mission pilot,” he said.
Rebecca Cheek, 36, of Scottsbluff, Nebraska, has been awarded the Fred and Diane Fitts Memorial Flight Training Scholarship sponsored by an endowment from the Corporate Aircraft Association that will help her resume flight training after an absence of several years. “After 13.2 hours and 10 lessons later, I am on my way to accomplishing my dream,” he said, looking at a future in which he envisions taking people for airplane rides in the short term and later becoming a flight instructor and airline pilot.
Gustin soloed at 20 hours, and he has an aviation wish list that includes being able to fly cross-country to visit family and friends, and to use his technical knowledge to make simulator training more available in his area including giving high school students a chance to experience aviation.
Another motivation for resuming his training is to be able to take his brother, who was injured in an aircraft accident but never lost his passion for flight despite being unable to pursue a dream of becoming a pilot, flying “as often as possible.” (In his many years of living in the United States, he had only managed to take two instructional flights before signing up for flight training last April, he said.) Earning a private pilot certificate and an instrument rating is his goal as he divides his busy time between work, family, school events, and aviation.
Becoming a professional pilot is now her goal but before that, she looks forward to flying her family around the beautiful San Juan Islands as a private pilot.
“I can truly say that when you find your purpose, you know, and I know my purpose is to become the next certified aerobatic helicopter pilot inside the United States,” she said.
Each scholarship recipient also will receive a gift certificate for MyGoFlight products, made possible by the company’s Pilot ONE scholarship assist program to help create more pilots.
