GRAND TRAVERSE COUNTY — A two year waitlist was just cut down Monday as Northwestern Michigan College unveiled a 33,530 square foot aviation hanger.
The Director of Aviation at NMC, Alex Bloye, tells us it all started during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
“I had the opportunity to share with him this crazy idea that, that we and my leadership and my advisory committee came to was to expand the building, expand the hangar, not because, not just the building.” He adds We’ve heard that a number of times today, but it’s really the the missing part of the equation. So every, every square foot that we added here allows us more airplanes, which allows us to serve more students. ”
NMC is the only two-year college to offer an aviation program in the state and, until now, could only have 30 students enrolled each fall.
Now, the program has welcomed 50 new students.
Bloye says “So that impact alone has, has taken a quarter of the students off the waitlist. So at any given time, there’s about 100, 150 students waiting to get in. And so we’ve we’ve already taken a big chunk out of that.”
Given the program is only two years, it leaves some feeling a bit bitter sweet, like student and NMC Aviation Society Meigan Lanning.
She tells us “Obviously, being at the end of that two year program means that I’ll be moving on to bigger and greater things after NMC, which is kind of sad because NMC has been a huge part of my flight training career. But it means that, new students that are coming in are going to see this new, completely refurbished NMC program.”
The hanger was expanded by 16,500 square feet, meaning the program was able to add eight new planes to the building, bringing the total to 19.
While the hanger looks great, there were a few bumps in the road.
Bloye tells us that classes were still going on during the construction, and adds “We had to slow down. We had to, just remember that we were. There was an end to this. But it was pretty remarkable to see our mechanics and particular be able to work through all of that and still, safely put our airplanes back on the line. ”
It was all worth it though, as Captain Todd Zrimec with American Airlines says programs like this help the aviation industry.
Captain Zrimec says “We still need to hire, a tremendous amount of pilots. The retirements, in the aviation industry and particularly the airlines are at the highest they’ve been in decades. So replacing those pilots with strong, strong foundational pilots who have strong skills, is critical to the aviation safety. ”