But we need partnerships with people who care.” How the local community is stepping up to make it happenĬommunity support is one of the reasons why Florida Memorial University students will have a fighting chance in aviation. We want to be a pipeline for Black pilots just like we did with teachers and principals. “We have to fix that so our students from an HBCU can join the program with ease, too.
“A lot of kids who don’t look like me can come to the program because they can afford to pay for flight time,” McCormick said. McCormick noted that even for an experienced student awarded a $10,000 scholarship to the Red Tail Flight Academy, a school named after the Tuskegee Airmen who fought in World War II, that’s still a hefty price to pay. With no previous experience, the cost can be as high as $91,995, according to ATP Flight School. A flight school program for an experienced student costs $71,000. Florida Memorial owns a small plane, but purchasing flight time can be prohibitive. “But the biggest problem is that flight school is expensive,” McCormick said. McCormick is confident there are other Irvings on campus. Barrington Irving, once held the record as the youngest person, at 23, to fly the 24,600-mile trip around the world. William McCormick, chairman of Florida Memorial University’s board of trustees and a FMU graduate, proudly shared that a Florida Memorial alum, Capt. Florida Memorial is one of a few HBCUs with an aviation program. Suddenly, the small plane at Florida Memorial University he’d walked by for years as a student took on new meaning.
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