From the runway to a pathway: Yancey County Aviation Expo gives students a first look

The seventh graders from Cane River Middle School hear the helicopter before it clears the tree line, a deep thump that rolls across the field at the Avery County Airport. Then it lands, the grass pressed flat around its skids and everybody’s hair blown every which way. Once the blades slow, the kids wander over to its green-and-white side eagerly trying to see through the open door into the cockpit.

Getting kids that close is the whole idea behind the Yancey County Schools Aviation Expo. Now in its third year, the expo brings 140 seventh graders to spend a day with planes, drones, helicopters, and the people who fly them.

“This is where we’re starting the interest for the kids,” said Cynthia Deyton, the district’s career and technical education director.

Most of what’s on the field belongs to the Mountain Air Pilots Association, based in Mountain Air, a Burnsville community with its own airstrip. Members open their Avery County hangars for the day and fly their planes in on their own fuel.  

For Steve Holz, who manages the airstrip at Mountain Air, it’s about who comes next. 

“You don’t stay in aviation long term unless you love it,” he said. “We’re all getting a little older, and we know we have to get the youth involved.”

The expo answers a question he put plainly: “How can we inspire as many kids as possible in a short amount of time?”

At least six stations spread across a portion of the airport taxiway. A state agricultural drone pilot demonstrates a drone that can carry 65 pounds of fertilizer or lime. The Yancey County Sheriff’s Office drone team shows the drones deputies use for surveillance. There’s a 70-year-old high-wing plane in excellent condition, an autogyro Holz calls “half helicopter, half airplane,” and a business plane that can reach Miami in about two and half hours. EMTs are due to arrive on the Mountain Area Medical Airlift (MAMA) helicopter from Mission Hospital.

Inside one of the larger planes, students crowd among leather seats and polish wood while a volunteer pilot explains that for its size, “you only need a tiny little bit of runway to take off and land.” One of the students sums it up: “It’s actually pretty small. Outside it looks big.”

Out by the hangars, Travis White leans on the wing of his own plane after answering questions from a student group. He moved to Mountain Air about three years ago but has been flying since he was 9, including 24 years in the military and 28 years with United Airlines. 

“We think it’s important to get young people interested in aviation,” he said, “and anything I can do to help in that effort, I’m happy to do so.”

The expo grew out of a partnership and a middle school class that took a few years to come together.

Deyton traces it to talks with Holz three or four years ago. The two sides “talked together for about a year” before the district brought Flight and Space, a nine-week unit from the national STEM nonprofit Project Lead the Way, into both middle schools.

“Kids build and test models to figure out how flight works, and they study space travel, too,” Deyton said. “All the seventh graders get it, and then that sort of evolved into this aviation expo.”

This fall, the path reached Mountain Heritage High School as a new career and technical education pathway in aviation. Freshmen and sophomores study engineering, aircraft design, and the science of flight. As juniors and seniors, they’ll be the first students in western North Carolina to work with Tango Flight.

Tango Flight started in 2016 with one class in Georgetown, Texas and now supports more than 20 programs nationwide. Students build a two-seat Van’s RV-12 from a kit over about two years, learning sheet metal and wiring alongside adult mentors. After FAA inspection, students are invited to ride in the plane they built. 

Deyton learned about the program from Dare County Schools, where First Flight High School students became the first in North Carolina to build one, and their plane actually took flight this spring.

“We’re so excited to bring this to western North Carolina,” Deyton said.

Both she and Holz keep coming back to the topic of jobs. Holz said the industry is short on pilots, mechanics, flight crews, air traffic controllers, and drone operators, and some of the need is right here. 

Sooner or later, Holz said, the sheriff’s office will want a helicopter. 

“Somebody’s got to fly it. It could be one of these kids in five years,” he said.

Beyond the county, Holz said, “several large employers within 100 miles want people with aviation or mechanical training, some want heating and air conditioning.”

Deyton hadn’t realized until she started researching that Asheville Regional, 45 minutes to an hour from Burnsville, is the state’s third busiest airport after Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham.

Plenty of those careers do not require a four-year degree, Holz tells the kids. He points to the man who brought the helicopter in, who started out as a young guy trying to make a buck, built a small business into a bigger one, sold it, and now gives back.

“These things are not beyond anybody’s reach if you want it,” Holz said.

Before long, the helicopter will lift off and climb back over the tree line. Yancey County Schools is cleared for takeoff, too, with a flight path that runs from a seventh grade classroom to an airplane students can build themselves.  

To learn more about the aviation pathway at Mountain Heritage High School, contact Cynthia Deyton, CTE director for Yancey County Schools, at cbdeyton@yanceync.net.

To learn more about the Mountain Air Pilots Association, visit their website.