STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
Marlowe Bradley taxied down the runway at Friedman Memorial Airport, then waited through eight traffic light changes at the stoplight at Fox Acres Road and Highway 75 until the air traffic controller gave her clearance.
Then, under the watchful eye of FAA-certified flight instructor John Strauss, the Wood River High School student pulled back the plane’s handle as the small plane climbed 3,000 feet into the sky. Over the next half-hour she took her passengers towards Magic Reservoir before turning over Silver Creek and following the foothills back to the airport.
She even intentionally stalled the plane, easily getting out of the stall before setting the plane down smoothly on the runway back at Friedman.
Bradley was one of 12 students who took part in a two-day Airline Industry Career Camp this past week organized by I Have a Dream Foundation in partnership with Friedman Memorial Airport and the Blaine County School District.
I Have a Dream Foundation also organized a Culinary Boot Camp, Entrepreneurial Career Camp and Trade and Industry Career Camp to give high school students hands-on opportunities to learn about career paths that might not track with the traditional high school-to-college trajectory. And I Have a Dream hopes to offer more such camps next year, said the organization’s executive director Laura Lewis.
“I’d like to be a commercial airline pilot. It’s very special and not many people get to do it,” said Bradley.
“I want to be a pilot, too” added Wood River High School student Judas Johnson. “Everything about it is cool.”
The nine boys and three girls involved in the aviation camp were introduced to a variety of career options from that of air traffic controller to that of pilot, even meeting a WRHS alum who now flies for United Airlines.
“If you really want to make money in aviation, go into avionics,” Strauss told them as he showed a video taking them inside a plane manufacturer’s factory.
Tim Burke, the operations manager for Friedman, told the students he knew he wanted to go into aviation at age 2.
“Once you’re addicted to aviation, there’s not much you can do to stop it. Once you get addicted to aviation, you will never have money for drugs,” he quipped.
Burke recounted how his parents had to drive him to the airport on his 16th birthday, as he soloed before he got his driver’s license. He got his pilot’s license a week before high school graduation and studied aviation at college. But when he graduated, there were more pilots than there were positions.
“Sky West was paying $23,000 a year. But I had student loans, rent and food to pay for so I went to Aspen as an airport firefighter and I fell in love with ground operations. When you work in small airports you get to do everything.”
The students visited the airport control tower where they climbed 30 stairs so steep that their knees were banging against the stairs. There they watched one air traffic controller teach another, the two using binoculars to mitigate the chances of a collision in the air and on ground.
Burke drove the youth down the runway looking for foreign objects like coffee cups and gravel—anything that can be sucked into an engine. They do it three times a day, he said.
“We sometimes use snow removal equipment to remove sand,” he said. “Airports are some of the cleanest environments there are because we’re always picking up everything. But San Francisco has a problem with seagulls dropping clams and mussels on runaways to crack the shells so they can eat them.”
Friedman occasionally brings in a wildlife biologist to advise about rodents that hide in long grass and bugs in short grass. In winter the airport’s six-foot fence turns into a three-foot fence as the snow piles up so airport staff has to watch for deer on the runway.
“With 163 inches of snow this winter, animals could almost walk over the fence,” he said. “When that happens, we shut down the airport and shoo them away. The sheriff had to take care of a mountain lion a few years ago because it was considered more dangerous.”
Grooves every 1.5 inches allow water to leave so planes don’t hydroplane, he pointed out. The runways also slope slightly to prevent water buildup.
Burke showed the students a video of a jet blast blowing a pickup truck in the bay in San Francisco.
“I was taking a picture of a plane heading off into the sunrise and it blew my hat off into McKercher Park,” he added.
Jesse Gillett, the airport’s fleet manager, gave the youngsters a ride in the airport fire truck, which can hold 1,500 gallons of water and foam.
“You have three minutes to begin hosing down a commercial plane,” he said. “Our job is to make it so anyone who’s on the plane can get out. There has never not been a plane fire at the airport that anybody now here can remember, although a snowplow caught fire a few years ago.
The airport terminal burnt down when it was made of lodgepole pine, he added, but that was four terminals ago.
“Every once in a while we’ll get a car or brush fire on the highway and I can put it out from our side of the fence,” said Gillett.
Strauss told the students that he developed his love for flying from his father who flew a corporate jet for the Detroit Pistons basketball team: “One of my coolest memories is sitting behind the team at games.”
Strauss had each of the youngsters fly a plane on a simulator and put them through ground school where he even took them through a schematic of a fuel system for a Cessna 1825, stopping periodically to ask them what steps they would take in the event of electrical or engine fire or icing.
“If you look out the window and see another airplane, don’t say, ‘Look out!’ Say, ‘Traffic on the right’ or ‘Traffic on the left,’ ” he said. “As for wind, “It’s the crosswinds we worry about more than headwinds.”
Strauss also told the students that the decisions they make, like exercising to stay healthy and taking life seriously, are the hardest to teach. But health setbacks don’t necessarily spell the end of a flying career, he added.
“I had a minor heart attack a year ago and got two stents. I’m back flying, but I have to get checked out every year instead of every two years. You guys are young and healthy—you’d only need to get a checkup every five years.”
The students toured Atlantic Aviation where private jets can park outside for $400 a night and where it can cost thousands to park in the hanger.
Burke pointed out a Cirrus G2+ Vision Jet that can cost $3.5 million. The plane has a V-tail design which makes it faster and a built-in parachute that will shoot out and lower the plane in the event of trouble. Other planes have taken a different tack, providing autopilot landing, he added.
The only way to become a commercial pilot was through the military in the 1960s and ‘70s, Burke said. Now several colleges, including the University of North Dakota, offer aviation degrees.
“I know a pilot flying for Frontier Airlines who got a degree in psychology and did flight training on the side.”
There’s a huge pilot shortage right now, which bodes well for any student wishing to become a commercial pilot, he said.
“Flying freight pays better than passengers,” he added. “And freight doesn’t complain.”