Students flying high — and for free — in Albuquerque — General Aviation News - General Aviation News

Robert “Birdie” Garcia-Kaliel started grooming for his backstage aviator cheque thrust erstwhile helium was successful sixth grade.

That’s erstwhile the present 17-year-old aviator archetypal enrolled successful the Southwest Aeronautics, Mathematics and Science Academy, known arsenic the SAMS Academy, astatine Double Eagle II Airport (KAEG) successful Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The escaped accredited nationalist charter schoolhouse helium attends features a Pilot Progression Path that allowed him to gain his backstage aviator certificate earlier graduating precocious schoolhouse — astatine nary outgo to him oregon his family. Not for the aircraft, not for the instructor, not for fuel, not for books.

The Southwest Aeronautics, Mathematics and Science Academy, known arsenic the SAMS Academy, is astatine KAEG successful Albuquerque, New Mexico.

In fact, Birdie — each of the Pilot Progression Path students person telephone signs — passed his cheque thrust this summertime betwixt his inferior and elder years. That’s somewhat unusual, arsenic astir SAMS Pilot Path students get their backstage aviator tickets during their elder year.

Two of the students successful the academy’s Pilot Progression Path.

Ethan “Flash” Gordon was 1 of those seniors, and though a attraction hold connected the school’s trainer pushed his cheque thrust respective months, it didn’t dilatory Flash down. He was accepted into Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University wherever helium hopes to yet prosecute a Masters Degree successful Aerospace Engineering. After that, possibly NASA. One of his hobbies is creating mind-blowingly beauteous photos of the planets utilizing his 10-inch Newtonian telescope.

Photos by Ethan Gordon

Meanwhile, Birdie is considering a antithetic path. He isn’t definite that assemblage really makes consciousness successful the existent aviation employment environment. He hasn’t made up his caput yet, but he’s leaning toward skipping assemblage and going straight into 1 of the hose grooming academies.

And portion he’s inactive considering his options, his teacher isn’t: She has acceptable plans for Birdie. This year, helium is serving arsenic an Aviation Assistant, a adjacent teacher who helps younger students with their aviation studies and gives them acquisition connected the school’s sims, which see a Redbird Jay and a dual-control afloat question Redbird MCX.

One of the sims astatine the academy.

Speaking of the aviation instructor…

Meet “Doc” Chavez

The Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief enactment of a puerility nursery rhyme describes Lauren Hollingsworth Chavez, the Aeronautics Director of SAMS Academy. She’s a aesculapian doc and an AME. She’s besides a CFI/CFII formation instructor, and, successful summation to being Aeronautics Director, serves arsenic the Chief Flight Instructor for the Academy.

But she was a latecomer to aviation, saying, “I had nary involvement successful flying, ever.”

Chavez attended aesculapian schoolhouse astatine the University of New Mexico, and past aboriginal successful her vocation commuted backmost and distant 400 miles betwixt Albuquerque and Roswell, N.M., for enactment successful the Eastern New Mexico Medical Center’s exigency department. The thrust was grueling, and yet a subordinate of her husband’s parish (he’s a pastor) who was a CFI said he’d thatch them some to alert if they bought a plane.

That’s however Sundowner N9758L — and aviation — came into Chavez’s life.

After earning her backstage ticket, an instrumentality standing made consciousness for the benignant of commuter flying she was doing. She said that portion studying for her instrumentality standing she realized however small she truly knew astir aviation. That led to a commercialized certificate, and past yet her CFI, not due to the fact that she wanted to teach, but due to the fact that she believes that to thatch a subject, you indispensable truly cognize it. Basically, she became a CFI to reassure herself that she had mastered her ain cognition of aviation.

But past on came SAMS, and everything became secondary to the interaction she realized she could marque connected the student’s lives.

Lauren Hollingsworth Chavez is the unit down SAMS Academy.

“I conscionable fell successful emotion with these kids,” she says.

So overmuch so, successful fact, that teaching and formation grooming present predominate her weekdays, and she’s scaled backmost her aesculapian signifier to portion time, mostly focusing connected conducting aesculapian exams for aerial postulation controllers.

Flight line

SAMS Academy Pilot Progression Path students aren’t farmed retired to third-party formation schools.

The school’s trainer is simply a 1978 Cessna 172.

Instead they bid successful N739HK, the school’s 1978 Cessna 172, which sports a sexy metallic metallic and Dark Blue Mist overgarment job, caller leather seats, and a modern solid cockpit featuring dual Dynon Skyviews — a 10-inch exemplary for the pupil and a seven-inch exemplary for the instructor, with an Avidyne 540 successful the center.

Chavez admits it mightiness beryllium overkill, and makes definite that her students get steam-gauge clip successful the sims truthful they are prepared for thing they mightiness find successful the workforce fleet.

The cockpit of the school’s trainer.

Chavez says she flies afloat location — 3 students astatine a clip — erstwhile value and equilibrium let it, maximizing “butts successful seats” truthful that her students tin larn by observing their peers and teaching each other.

She brings med schoolhouse traditions to her teaching astatine SAMS, saying successful medicine the mode to maestro worldly is “See one, bash one, thatch one.”

STEM Lab

SAMS academics aren’t constricted to the classroom, sim, and formation line. The schoolhouse features an precocious hand-ons STEM laboratory that looks much Silicon Valley than precocious school, with a mind-blowing array of gear. There are 30 machine workstations with a robust scope of software, graphics tablets, 3 3-D printers, virtual world systems, pneumatic equipment, and a upwind tunnel.

The STEM Lab.

Flash says you tin plan a helping successful CAD, people it connected a 3-D printer, past trial it successful the upwind tunnel.

Admissions and the aviator “funnel”

Currently, 100% of students who use to the schoolhouse are admitted. Students tin articulation astatine immoderate people level and the schoolhouse is actively recruiting.

Flash and Birdie picture the pupil civilization arsenic “comfortably nerdy” and some commented connected what a harmless situation the schoolhouse has created. Both pilots person been with the Academy since sixth people and could lone retrieve seeing 1 combat successful each of that time.

Currently, determination are astir 250 students successful grades six done 12, with 87 students successful the Pilot Progression Path, which starts successful the ninth grade.

The Academy’s non-STEM world halfway is taught remotely done the Edgenuity platform, which some young pilots said “sucks,” but is offset by the prime of the STEM acquisition they’ve received implicit the years by the onsite staff.

To participate the SAMS Academy Pilot Path, students indispensable archetypal get a Young Eagles flight, typically done 100-member beardown EAA Chapter 179, which is besides located astatine KAEG, and hosts a half-dozen Young Eagles events each year. The section has participated successful Young Eagles each twelvemonth since the commencement of the programme 30 years ago, giving much than 4,200 archetypal rides.

Any Young Eagles flight, successful turn, qualifies students for escaped pupil memberships successful the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA), which past gives them entree — again astatine nary outgo — to Sporty’s Learn to Fly Course. Three chapters of that people nether their belts and EAA pays for a formation lesson.

At that point, having shown the due thrust and dedication — and having had a accidental to marque definite that flying is close for them — the students are admitted to the SAMS Pilot Progression Path, with afloat formation grooming done backstage aviator paid for by the school.

Which is not to accidental that it’s not inactive hard work. Chavez says that portion the schoolhouse has eliminated the fiscal obstruction to the archetypal aviator certificate, she doesn’t clasp her student’s hands. She expects a batch retired of them, and overmuch of their survey is self-directed.

Building pilots

Chavez says that, historically, to go a aviator radical either person had to person wealth oregon articulation the military.

“I emotion truthful overmuch that we tin unfastened the doorway for our students to person an astonishing vocation successful aviation without fitting either of those profiles,” she said. “I deliberation that’s my favourite portion of moving astatine SAMS. You tin beryllium the poorest kid from a rotten background, but if you person a bully cognition and beardown enactment ethic — oregon you’re consenting to make them — you tin beryllium a aviator earlier you graduate. And, erstwhile you graduate, you tin further your acquisition successful assemblage oregon articulation the workforce. The information that our state has specified a shortage of pilots close present is conscionable icing connected the barroom for these kids’ vocation possibilities.”

And Chavez has bigger plans for the future. She’s conscionable added a drone programme and is moving connected creating paths for aviation attraction technicians and aerial postulation controllers.

She’s besides hoping to determination SAMS students into the aviation paths astatine an earlier age.

“There are immoderate mediate schoolers who locomotion by and longingly peek into the sim room,” she says, “hungry for the time they’ll beryllium successful precocious schoolhouse and get to commencement aviation. I’m hoping to assistance them… soon.”