More than 700 hundred people gathered at Torrance Airport on Saturday, March 11, to experience what it’s like to be a pilot.
“A lot of people just don’t realize what a good job being a pilot is,” said Wayne Toddun, co-CEO of Sling Pilot Academy, located at 3401 Airport Drive in Torrance.
To cope with the worldwide pilot shortage, Toddun said the school is giving away 200 free flights to high school juniors and seniors and college students to encourage them to pursue pilot as a career. However, due to the weather on Saturday, the school will reschedule the flights at a future time. No date has been set yet.
The organizer had planned to give away only 100 flights, but tickets for the flights were snapped up so quickly that the organizer added 100 new ones.
Despite the pouring rain, participants began to show up as early as 8 am. They were given an introductory lesson to flying and received hands-on simulator flight training. Staff from SkyWest Airlines were present to answer questions from future young pilots, so were representatives from Women in Aviation, The Ninety-Nines, Professional Asian Pilot Association and Latino Pilot Association and other multicultural associations.
The organizer awarded two scholarships, each worth $18,000, to Cameron Criss from Cal State LA and Heaven Valenzulea from Marietta High School. Matt Liknaitzky, co-CEO of the flight school, said the students were chosen for the scholarships because of their interest and attitude in aviation, high GPAs, as well as their abilities and desire to go down the path to becoming a pilot.
The scholarships were taken from the $500,000 aviation workforce development grant that Sling received from the Federal Aviation Administration, which aims to inspire a more diverse pool of pilots and aviation maintenance technicians to join the next generation of aviation professionals. The school will use the grant to recruit and train local high school students as pilots and to teach teachers about…
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