At 17, Parker Allen was training for his pilot’s license, juggling flying with band and swim-team practice. By 21, he was a flight instructor, teaching a new crop of budding aviators.
Emma Mitchell, a 21-year-old pilot who got her start at 18, said she didn’t know at first what she wanted to do after high school—except avoid an office cubicle. she says—Mitchell balanced working 25 hours a week with one day of flying While she studied for an associate degree for business administration—a fallback plan. She then committed to a full-time, accelerated flight-school program and graduated at 20 with a commercial pilot’s license. Getting that certification requires being at least 23 years old and having 1,500 hours of flying experience. (Military pilots and those who graduate from an aviation college or university program can obtain a restricted license at 21 with fewer flying hours.) At each level of the certification process, the expectations increase and every person—no matter the age—meets the same standards.
After an introductory flight lesson, she was all-in. She now works as a flight instructor to accrue enough hours to apply to an airline.
She googled “jobs that aren’t 9-to-5s,” and aviation popped up.
More than 34,000 students are enrolled in the courses this school year across more than 1,700 high schools. Rancho High School in Las Vegas admits 60 students to its flight program each year. The teenagers spend the first two years preparing to take the FAA’s written exam, and, by 11th grade, or age 16, log hours in an aircraft.
Like Filgueiras, many are getting in the cockpit before finishing high school. Investigators are currently looking into the specifics of the crash—which killed Filgueiras and eight others on board—and it isn’t clear who was piloting the aircraft at the time. Typically, though, the person on the radio wouldn’t be in control of the plane, aviation experts say. Audio shows Filgueiras stayed on the radio and relayed what was happening during the rapid descent.
Almost always, there is a wait list when high schools adopt AOPA’s nearly decade-old aviation curriculum, she says. Rancho already has two juniors who have flown solo, says Ryan Ruttan, who coordinates the school’s magnet programs.
