In The News.
Justin Denman hasn’t been licensed to drive for very long. He’s 18. But about three days a week, the teenager is in full control of an airplane.
Denman is one of about 80 students in Southwest Learning Centers’ aviation program, which allows students to gain flight experience and eventually become licensed pilots. Denman is certified for limited solo flights and will graduate with a pilot’s license.
Southwest Learning Centers, a three-school charter complex in Northeast Albuquerque, has been offering a version of the program since 2005. Interest expanded in the past few years, prompting the school to lease a second plane in the spring.
That plane, a Cessna 172, is the one in which Denman feels most at ease. He has flown the school’s other plane, a Diamond DA40, and knows the differences in how they feel. “This one is more bottom heavy,” Denman said recently as he gestured toward the Cessna. “It affects climb rates, speed, everything.”
The two planes are part of the Bode Aviation fleet but are leased by Southwest Learning Centers for student use.
The school spent $70,000 last year for the planes, fuel, maintenance and instructors. Students pay an additional $50 per hour for flight time, which covers most of the cost of instructors.
Greg Roark, director of the schools’ aviation program, said the steep cost to families encourages students to take the program seriously and to work hard.
“There’s value in them paying, because there’s a lesson to be learned that this costs money,” Roark said.
Part of Roark’s task as program director is to show students the connections between flying and the academics they learn in classrooms.
He recently worked through a math problem with students, calculating how to choose a magnetic heading, accounting for the difference between true and magnetic north, wind speed, wind direction and other factors.
The students also go through a semester long classroom course that is taught in partnership with Central New Mexico Community College. CNM faculty come to the school to teach the course, and students receive dual credit.
“You learn weather, and you learn about the aerodynamics of the plane,” said Samantha Garcia, 17. Garcia is a senior at Southwest Secondary and is in the pre-solo stage of her flight certification. She said she doesn’t plan to pursue flight as a career, but loves the way it feels to be up in a plane.
Garcia and Denman are acutely aware that their hobby is unique.
“At other schools, they have football and track as an extracurricular,” Denman said. “I fly planes.”
Denman has his career plotted out, starting next year at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz. He plans to go on from there to become a pilot or air traffic controller. He said he is drawn to the perspective that comes from being in the air.
“Everything looks different,” he said. “You see these mountains and they look really big, but when you’re in the air, it just looks like kind of a scar.”
By Hailey Heinz / Journal Staff Writer
Posted December 20, 2010