ASHTABULA COUNTY, Ohio — Students are taking flight for the third year in a row thanks to The GRIT Project’s summer aviation class.
For the past three years, the GRIT Project, along with the Cleveland Soaring Society, has taught a class giving kids in Ashtabula County a hands-on experience in the aviation field.
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This year, the class expanded to include classes in Ashtabula and Geauga counties.
The three-week program has students spending hours in the classroom studying to pass the glider test for private pilots. In between their studies, students hear from guests in the aviation field. They also tour local control towers and aviation schools.
Students are also given the opportunity to man their first planes. News 5’s Caitlin Hunt was at the Northeast Ohio Regional Airport as students hopped aboard two gliders, a motorized one and one without a motor. The students took to the air with an instructor as their co-pilot.
The instructor guided the students through the flight as they took control of the aircraft.
The program has nearly 30 students between the two counties. One of those students comes with a family legacy in aviation. Student Kylie Addair said several of her family members are pilots, and that’s what drew her to the class. But, even with that background, she said she was nervous to take the controls.
“I was a little nervous at first because it was something I had never done before,” she said. “But, it’s really cool. Once we got up there, [the instructor] let me steer a little bit. He passed the controls to me, and I just did a few turns around the air.”
Addair said she is now interested in being either a commercial plane pilot or a mechanic.
Instructor Bryce Kujat said the goal of this class is to help kids explore all the careers the aviation field offers.
After teaching the summer course for three years, he said he’s now seeing students from the first year of the class enter the aviation field or start their college education.
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“We’re seeing our first-year students start to attend and maybe even graduate from these one or two-year courses,” he said. “Several of them have soloed in aircraft. Some of them are at Kent State, Pittsburgh Institute of Aeronautics and John Carroll. Exactly what we set out to do three years ago, we’re starting to see the fruits of that labor.”
Kujat said the goal for next year is to expand the class into Trumbull County.
