End of 3rd class, prep for 4th

We finished our third round of flight training last Friday here at STC. It was a class made up of two pilot/mechanics from JAARS and two from New Tribes Aviation (NTMA). The two JAARS pilots flew in direct from Papua New Guinea; the NTMA pilots came one from their training base in Arizona and one on furlough from Indonesia.

We are humbled and sobered by the investment that mission aviation is making in attending our training. To know that organizations are going to great expense to bring their people from half way around the world sets the bar even higher for us. We dare not squander or even take lightly this opportunity to serve them through excellent training.

At the end of the training we spent a few hours with these customers asking them for honest feedback on the training experience. We were delighted to not only hear the ways the training met their needs and expectations but also to hear where we can adjust and enhance the training to better meet the needs of future classes.

Each customer also filled out an anonymous evaluation form which further allowed us to capture open feedback as well as metrics to track specific and overall satisfaction with the training courses.

It was also good to connect (and in some cases reconnect) with these field experienced mission pilots. They are our eyes, ears and hands on the Kodiak in the field. Every class that comes through STC is another source of real world data. Data that will not only make our training better but will be passed on to all of our partnering mission aviation agencies.

We value the relationships we continue to build in mission aviation, not only for the sense of community but also providing those critical communication paths that will make all of us more capable as professional aviators and turbine aircraft operators.

Now on to maintenance training. We have this week to set the stage for our first three missionary maintenance specialists arriving next Monday from NTMA. Pray for us and pray for our NTMA customers as they prepare for the two weeks of training.