Students learn to pilot planes in high school program, some even before they’ve learned to drive

Katie Dewitt has been flying planes longer than she’s known how to drive a car.

The Shadle Park High School junior piloted her first flight as a freshman. At the age of 14, she soared thousands of miles above the Spokane sunset, white-knuckling the controls of the small plane copiloted with an adult instructor.

“It was really scary. I was kind of freaking out,” Dewitt recalled of her first flight. “But once we got off the air, I kind of just zoned-in and I saw everything and I was like, ‘Wow this is really me.’ ”

Now with more than 12 hours of flight time under her belt, Dewitt has completed the first step in earning her private pilot’s license, passing the written exam required by the FAA. She’s one of two cadets to pass the test this year through a partnership between Spokane Public Schools and Northwest Flight Service.

Dewitt, call sign “Lugnut,” and Gonzaga Prep senior Evie Nesselrode, call sign “Newton,” both spend their mornings at Rogers High School through the school’s Air Force Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program. Once a week, the two come to Felts Field to serve as mentors in the ground school enrolling other students, where they’ll have a leg up going into the military or any sort of aviation career.

“This is about them, they’re young people,” said advanced flight instructor Gene Gussenhoven. “They’re the next generation, and they’re going to move on to do these things professionally. This is our future.”

At the ground school, students learn a variety of subjects surrounding flying a plane: FAA regulations, physics and gravity, mechanics of their aircraft, math calculations to balance the weight of the plane. Learning these topics helps students to understand and apply other concepts from their classroom.

“I’m in precalculus right now, and I’m thinking, ‘OK, we do pre-calculus and algebra in flying, so let’s connect these two together,” Nesselrode said. “I think of how the nuance in my mind connects and makes my brain stronger.’ ”

Eventually, all cadets take to the sky, but always with an adult copilot until they’ve racked up around 30 hours of flight time.

On Friday afternoon, Dewitt and Nesselrode each boarded a Cirrus SR20 with an instructor. After around an hour of comprehensive preflight checks on the weather, plane mechanics, fuel levels and pretty much every other detail of their vessels, they’re ready for takeoff.

Through the gentle, encouraging guidance of flight instructor Mike Boyington, Dewitt smoothly takes off . It’s her first time doing so without an instructor taking over controls to help in one of the most difficult parts of flying.

“It’s a lot to take in, but it definitely gets you used to a lot of information, and with stress,” Dewitt said.

In a moment, she’s airborne. Level with the tops of distant ridges, Dewitt gets a new perspective as cars move below. Still learning, she’s mostly thinking of flying the plane itself, but still ogles the landscape . Namely, she thinks of when she may have to use her skills to make a quick getaway from the Earth below.

“If there was like a zombie apocalypse, I would be OK,” Dewitt joked.

In about 40 minutes, she’s flown mostly by herself from Felts Field to the Coeur d’Alene airport, and back to Spokane, but not before veering over Lake Coeur d’Alene, whose expanse is undeniable from the clouds.

Once she touches back down at the Flight School, Dewitt and Nesselrode run to each other on the tarmac and embrace. They’ve grown close in the program, enjoying their preflight tradition of taking “creamer shots” of single-serve Coffee Mate cups at the flight school.

It’s not long before Nesselrode, a senior, will graduate from G-Prep and leave the program behind. She’s come a long way from her first flight at 16, initially wracked with dizziness that doesn’t bother her anymore.

“To begin with, I was really in awe. It was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m in the air like a bird, I have the bird’s point of view,’ ” Nesselrode recalled. “And then after the awe of it, I got more like, ‘Oh, now I’m a little sick.’ ”

Through the slight nausea, she could still enjoy the sunrise consuming her horizon, the glittering waters of lakes below and snow-capped peak of Mt. Spokane. The perspective honed her appreciation for her world while on land, too.

“Every flight is just different; there’s new scenes to see,” Nesselrode said. “I think we always take our views for granted, so I always look at every flight with a new set of lenses, enjoy soaking in the views.”

Nesselrode set her sights on a new horizon: – the New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell. She’s looking forward to participating in a special program for cadets to hone their leadership and general knowledge skills. While there, she plans to continue her training at a nearby airport and eventually hopes to be an Air Force pilot, like her brother and many others in her family.

“Overall, this flight training and doing AFJROTC has changed a lot,” Nesselrode said. “It’s mostly reinforced my values: integrity and service, others before self and excellence in all we do.”

A dream of hers is to one day fly tanker aircrafts used for refueling while planes are in the air. She pictures herself piloting as her brother, a boom operator, maneuvers fuel lines into other planes while airborne.

Dewitt also has ambitions for a military career, the ground school opening her eyes to a future in the Air Force. In learning to fly the last three years, she has a clear vision to work towards, motivating her to excel in school and physical fitness.

“I have really big goals and really big motivation,” Dewitt said. “And also it’s just something I really enjoy doing, so I want to take all the steps I can to have it, because not a lot of people get the opportunity.”