By Keely Noel and Katya Tulak, The Seattle Medium
When the world shut down in 2020 due to COVID-19, the Red-Tailed Hawks Flying Club was left scrambling to keep their young students soaring toward their pilot’s license.
Operating as a chapter under the Black Pilots of America, Inc., the Red-Tailed Hawks Flying Club is a Seattle-based non-profit that provides free flight training and aviation-based education to underrepresented youth in grades six through 12.
“Our vision is to have an aviation industry that looks like the nation we live in,” says club president and founder Jesse Hayes. “And it’s not going to happen by accident, we have to be intentional about it.”
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 3.4% of aircraft pilots and flight engineers in the United States are Black, 5% Latinx and 2.2% Asian. Also, 94.4% are male and only 5.6% are female.
“Everyone knows aviation is an expensive industry to get into,” Hayes said. “What we want to do is provide opportunity and empower with not only knowledge but with finances.”
The club’s main sources of funding are donations and grants. The annual membership dues for students is $20. Any student in sixth through 12th grade is eligible for the program and their families are likewise encouraged to join with a small membership fee. Hayes says their main demographic is underrepresented youth and that approximately 85% of their members are Black.
According to club treasurer Scott Callahan, when students join they have access to three levels of learning: general aerospace knowledge, pilot knowledge and learning to fly. Students get to choose their level of interest and commitment when they first apply.
So, how do you provide flight training, a task that relies heavily on in-person instruction and experience, in a predominantly virtual environment?
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Red-Tailed Hawks met once a month at various locations to help introduce youth to different opportunities in the aviation and aerospace industry. These meetings serve the first two levels of membership: general aerospace and pilot knowledge. Pilot knowledge includes aviation history, lessons from the Pilot Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge and discovery flights in which students fly as passengers. They learn about aerospace through their lessons and visit different aerospace companies.
According to their website, Red-Tailed Hawks have visited Blue Origin, Boeing, Alaska Airlines, Boeing Future of Flight, Microsoft, Museum of Flight, Naval Air Station Whidbey Island and McChord Air Force Base.
Due to the pandemic, Hayes says that in April 2020 they had to cancel their monthly meeting for the first time since the club’s creation in 2013. Meetings became virtual, providing a more classroom style of learning.
It was, of course, an unexpected transition, but Hayes says the online meetings have allowed them to reach a broader geographical demographic than before.
“We have been able to reach people beyond the state of Washington a little better online, so we have members from Maryland, Florida and California that are pretty committed and so I’m motivated to stay online in some fashion,” Hayes said.
Student pilot and member since 2018, Jordan Vieira says the online meetings provide many of the same learning opportunities. “Over COVID they let those representatives come in and speak to us about their company, their goals and their opportunities they offered,” he said.
Recently, the club has been trying to incorporate hybrid events, allowing a Zoom-based learning option in addition to an in-person flying element. “We did a lot of work in 2020 in improving our ability to communicate with members and market our events without having physical meetings,” Callahan said.
He also said it gave them more time to focus on increasing fundraising efforts. They started their One Thousand-One Hundred campaign, with a goal to find 1000 individuals and 100 companies to fund their mission.
Through this campaign, they secured funding from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust. That allowed them to buy two of their own airplanes last year. These planes can now be used for discovery flights at monthly meetings as well as flight training programs over the summer.
Their summer flight training program–Red-Tailed Hawks FLY (Flight Lessons for Youth)–helps fulfill their third level of commitment: learning to fly.
In this two-week program, students aged 16 to 21 get access to 40 hours of ground school and 10 hours of flight training with certified flight instructors. Underrepresented youth who have a B average in high school are most eligible for this program. The club also sponsors three to five students every year to attend the BPA Summer Flight Academy in Houston, which provides the same training.
About eight students participate in the FLY program, so it has been held in person the last two years, with masks and social distancing. The application to the program is on their website.
Because you need 40 hours of flight training to get your private pilot’s license, the Red-Tailed Hawks have been able to continue to help students achieve this by providing financial assistance for additional flight training outside of their programs.
Vieira says that after participating in the FLY program in July 2020, the Red-Tailed Hawks selected him as the top student of his member class and gave him a $10,000 scholarship to continue his flight training outside of the club. With this money, he was able to get his license in October 2021.
While Vieira joined the club with the hopes of becoming a pilot, he recommends membership to anyone who is interested in aviation in any capacity.
“Even if you don’t want to become a pilot, you just want to be introduced to the field of aviation in general and learn more about it, they will teach you everything about aviation that you would want to know. They will also help connect you with different industry professionals to help you achieve different goals that you want.”
Trey Cooper, 21, who’s been a member since 2017 and a FLY participant, received his private pilot’s license in September 2021.
Cooper says the Red-Tailed Hawks were instrumental in getting his license because they not only provided him with their own flight training, but because their funding helped him continue his training outside the organization.
He says getting his license during the pandemic was a challenging experience but not impossible. This was because many of the FAA examiners were more at risk for contracting COVID-19 because of their age which slowed things down.
“It ended up creating a backlog of demand because all of the student pilots who were in the pipeline at the time had to essentially stop their training because it was uncertain of when they would test again,” he said. “It was a little bit of a journey but it all worked out in the end.”
Trey Cooper, a Red-Tailed Hawks member from Kent, presents his private pilot’s license in September 2021. Cooper has been working towards getting his license since 2017. (Instagram post used with permission by Red-Tailed Hawks)
Cooper was also recently one of six members who received the 2021 Jasper Harris Jr. Aviation Scholarship. Callahan says this scholarship is for members who are also college students pursuing aviation-related careers. It can be used for flight training and college tuition.
Cooper is attending Northern Arizona University and majoring in mechanical engineering. He hopes to use this degree to go into aviation design and help the industry become more sustainable.
After getting his license, Cooper is now returning to the Red-Tailed Hawks to mentor younger members during his breaks from school.
In 2020, the Red-Tailed Hawks saw three students get their pilot’s license, a decline from five the year before. “COVID-19 did slow us down. We had four student pilots drop out of flight training completely due to health concerns,” says Hayes.
But in 2021, they have managed to get their numbers back up with seven pilot certificates being handed out.
“We’re gonna continue with the mission,” says Hayes.
You can learn about the Red-Tailed Hawks and their events by visiting their website, Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn.
