![]() ![]() ![]() “Coming to Aviation Day gave me a bit of direction,” said Luke. Chandler Luke, who attended Aviation Day in 2009, credits the event with starting him on the path toward a career as an Air Force pilot. “Then I thought, ‘I’ve always loved planes, I wonder what it takes to work on them.’ When I attended Aviation Day, I got to talk to a few Alaska mechanics, and from there I was hooked.”Īviation Day has had an impact beyond Alaska as well. “I wanted to be a car mechanic, but I realized how competitive the car maintenance industry was,” said Cray. In 2014, Alaska Airlines hired its first Aviation Day alumni, Brendan Cray, who now works as an Aircraft Maintenance Technician. Many previous Aviation Day attendees point back to the event as the moment that aviation evolved from a far-off dream into a tangible career opportunity. CONNECTING THE DOTS Chandler Luke attended Aviation Day in 2009, and credits the event with starting him on the path toward a career as an Air Force pilot. Portland Aviation Day, now in its sixth year, will be held and expects record-breaking attendance as well. As Aviation Day celebrates its 10 th anniversary at SeaTac on May 5, 2018, Alaska anticipates more than 2,000 local teens and 300 employee volunteers. Since its inaugural year, Aviation Day has opened its doors to groups beyond Boy Scouts and expanded to include events in Portland, giving thousands of students their first taste of aviation. The event started small – Rogers piloted the event in 2008, inviting fellow Boy Scout leaders to gather participants for a total of 123 attendees. “We wanted to ignite the spark so that kids could go through school understanding what it takes to get into an aviation career and introduce them to all the aviation career paths open to them.” Alaska Airlines Captain Tom Rogers does an interview with KING 5 TV at Aviation Day in 2013. “Aviation Day was a chance to introduce youth to aviation careers and show them it can be done,” said Rogers. Students tried their hand at aircraft maintenance with Alaska Airlines mechanics, practiced pre-flight checks with pilots, built gliders with Boeing engineers, crashed a LOT of virtual Boeing 737s in a flight simulator … and even spent time with Alaska lawyers, accountants and executives to see the breadth of opportunities aviation has to offer. He coordinated the event at Alaska’s Sea-Tac Hangar, calling in favors from colleagues with the Air Force, Boeing and Alaska employees to assemble a day’s worth of activities. He created Aviation Day – an event giving students a behind-the-scenes look at careers in aviation. ![]() Ten years ago, Rogers decided to do something about it. “And although aviation was a cool, leading edge career in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, now there are a lot of competing high-tech opportunities that scoop kids away.” “Aviation careers are so specialized that a lot of people don’t even know they are out there,” said Rogers. And, as the industry faced a looming shortage of aviation professionals, he realized those similarities were part of the problem. Having spent decades flying in the Air Force and then for Alaska Airlines, he found the stories of the pilots he shared the flight deck with to be awfully similar. Rogers’ father was a private pilot – he grew up around a tight-knit culture of aviators where some of his first jobs were around the airport, washing windows and gassing private planes. Since starting his career in the 1970s, he’s flown more than 100 types of aircraft on four continents (including the F-15), racking up more than 21,000 hours as a pilot.īut as remarkable as his career has been, his path into aviation was pretty typical. Captain Tom Rogers has had a remarkable career in aviation. ![]()
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