Guest Editorial: Getting Washington on board

Pilot advocacy associations, like AOPA, dedicate time, energy, and effort to encourage young people to explore aviation. Just a few years ago, AOPA launched You Can Fly, a successful program to support science and technical education (STEM) in high schools, understanding that it would increase the qualified workforce for aviation careers. Sparking an early interest in flying is a key to encouraging more people to enter the aviation workforce.

Yet, to ensure the viability of general aviation for future generations, we must look beyond expanding general STEM education. We need to commit to fresh approaches and modernizing FAA curriculum to make it relevant for the twenty-first century.

To start, I’ve introduced legislation that would make a career in flying more accessible for young Americans by enabling high school students to take ground school classes. Ground school is the first step for most careers in aviation, and teaches key, widely-applicable skills about flight, aeronautics, and physics. Working with aviation professionals to create model curriculum for aviation education, we can prepare students for a career as a commercial pilot or as pilot of an unmanned aircraft. My bill would enable schools across the country to benefit from grants that would bring ground school education into classrooms.

This bill will make it possible to close the skills gap by incentivizing businesses, labor groups, educational institutions, and local governments to develop innovative ways to recruit and educate the next generation of America’s aviation workforce. We also know that our aviation industry needs skilled workers and the aviation maintenance industry provides high-paying, high-skilled jobs across the country. Without action, in the next 20 years, we’ll be faced with a shortage of more than 100,000 aviation maintenance technicians to support America’s growing aviation industry. We can’t afford to let these skilled jobs go unfilled, so earlier this year I introduced the Aviation Maintenance Workforce Development Act.

This bill will make it possible to close the skills gap by incentivizing businesses, labor groups, educational institutions, and local governments to develop innovative ways to recruit and educate the next generation of America’s aviation workforce. It also specifically supports veterans who are leaving the military as they pursue careers in aviation maintenance. This bill is an investment in the future workforce needed by the general aviation community, plain and simple.

Finally, we need to modernize FAA regulations. Today’s general aviation fleet is a mix of new and established airframes with engines, avionics, and components to be installed, upgraded, repaired, or otherwise maintained, but the FAA still mandates technical schools teach antiquated and inconsequential subject areas or maintenance protocols—forcing aspiring aviation mechanics and technicians to go through retraining immediately upon graduation before they are able to maintain modern, sophisticated aircraft. I have cosponsored legislation to modernize the FAA’s antiquated curriculum regulations to ensure our next generation of trained technicians can hit the ground running in their new careers.

Aviation legend Bob Hoover used to share his stories and encourage men and women to pursue their dreams of becoming pilots. He’d say, “Don’t let anybody tell you can’t do it. You learn how to do it. You figure out how to do it. And you are the only one who can make it happen.” While becoming a pilot requires a great deal of individual determination, we can enable more young people to pursue their aviation dreams by modernizing and making the beginning stages of flight training accessible to them.

EAA AirVenture at Oshkosh brings together individuals who are passionate about flying and understand the importance of expanding access to aviation to the next generation. I look forward to attending again, as I do each year, to hear firsthand how Washington can support the future of aviation.