By Ammon Teare and Lynnette Harris
USU AVIATION
Back In The Air
COVID-19 Response
Students in USU’s aviation program were stuck in a “holding pattern” when the university’s response to COVID-19 included temporarily suspending training flights and instruction until appropriate safety measures could be developed and implemented. Every degree program develops its own culture, and being an aviation student typically means spending time each week outside classroom hours at the airport studying and socializing with faculty, staff, and fellow students, and logging flight hours in helicopters and small planes. It’s one thing to distance students in a large classroom or lecture hall, and quite another to figure out how to safely teach when the confines of a cockpit make social distancing impossible. The Federal Aviation Administration’s requirements for flight hours and training are built on regular and consistent training. To avoid falling out of practice or forgetting critical skills, students must maintain their instruction and flight time to be eligible for FAA testing. In order to get students back in the air and progressing with their required flight hours, administrators and instructors worked with USU Risk Management and the President’s Office to set up
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a system that minimizes contact, and still allows operations to proceed. By early June, USU planes and students were back in the air. “With the approval of the college we are using touchless thermometers, verifying health, and sanitizing the aircraft after every flight,” said Aaron Dyches, director of airport operations and chief flight instructor. The new measures allowed the program’s 350 students to pick up where they left off spring semester after a month-long stand down, and meant students could enroll in new courses with only a few limitations. Students who returned to the airfield in June found a pair of factory-new aircraft had joined USU’s fleet. The new planes arrived at USU’s hangar at the Logan-Cache airport via semitruck in May, where they were reassembled and tested. The new planes’ arrival was one more example of faculty working around challenges presented by the pandemic. New aircraft don’t typically arrive on the back of a truck, but travel restrictions aimed at curtailing the spread of COVID-19 meant aviation faculty members could not pick up the aircraft at the factory and fly them back to Logan. �
