Young Eagles

They are programs that exist today.

The EAA Young Eagles program has put more than two million young people in the left seat of a small airplane for their first flight.

Two million.

That is the front end of the front end.

He combined his love of aviation education with his secret cocoa mission.

Launchpad would always give his Young Eagles crewmates German chocolates after flying with him in his Focke-Wulf.

These young first-time flyers would be covertly rewarded with a kind of chocolate they never experienced before.

Launchpad knew if kids craved good chocolates and would no longer settle for less, their parents would not be far behind.

There's an EAA event coming up.

Young Eagles, planes for kids, plane rides, not planes, plane rides for kids coming up this Saturday.

Calling

all aviation enthusiasts.

This Saturday, October 17th, free airplane flights, that's right, free flights for youth ages 8 to 17.

This is a Young Eagles event.

Young Eagles is a nationwide program introducing youth to careers in aviation with free discovery flights.

Flights will be provided in a variety of privately owned aircraft by qualified pilots.

AOPA, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, has aviation education programs in schools across the country.

The Experimental Aircraft Association, or EAA, runs Young Eagles and AeroEducate, which have connected millions of young people with aviation.

Community colleges with aviation maintenance technician programs have been working to update curricula and grow enrollment.

The FAA has been modernizing its standards for what approved schools must cover to reflect modern aircraft realities.

She works really hard.

She wants to be a mechanic or a pilot, so she'd love to get exposure to both, and she wants to be hands-on, and she's in the EAA Young Eagles chapter, and she's doing everything she can.

I'm like, "Send her over here." Like, can't say no.

No.

Sorry.

Young Eagles Program.

Yep.

And they go around to the local communities and fly the kids.

We need more technicians, those mechanics to replace those people who are retiring.

And through our Young Eagles program, which has flown 2.5 million kids since 1992, those kids become youth members when they come in.

And a lot of them take that membership and transfer it as they hit their college career and so forth.

So it builds that up.

And we'd love, as I like to tell people, show them the house here at EAA throughout the year.

Okay.

So, When you look at things like the Young Eagles program and other events and activities, how successful do you feel you've been in getting younger people interested in the field of aviation?

Yeah, well, you mentioned Young Eagles, and that's been such a key element.

They are making the argument that this history is alive and that it is worth caring about.

Your local airport open house, your EAA chapter's Young Eagles program, your regional air show, your flight school's Discovery flight offer.

These things serve exactly the same function at a different scale.

Every person who looks up at a heritage flight and decides to find out more is a person who might eventually sit in a cockpit.

And superficial interests are not all that interesting.

The level above that is a student who might be involved in Civil Air Patrol or Young Eagles.

Maybe they started an aviation club at school.

Maybe they've already started aviation ground school.