It’s been a busy fall

Spokane Turbine Center has officially had its doors open for 14 weeks, since September 14th. Somehow it seems a lot longer than that and much shorter all at the same time. Like many life changing events it’s sometimes tough to track elapsed time in an accurate manner.

Over these last 3 ½ months we have trained 16 flight customers and three maintenance customers. Of those, five came from Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), five came from New Tribes Mission Aviation (NTMA), two came from JAARS, Inc. (part of Wycliffe Bible Translators), five came from Moody Aviation and one came from Brigade Air. One NTMA pilot/mechanic even attended both the flight and maintenance training. He had the distinct privilege of spending a total of a whole month here with us.

We continue to be humbled and sobered by the investment that mission aviation organizations are making in STC. Our goal is to provide cost effective, high quality advanced turbine training to organizations that are using these aircraft in the furtherance of the gospel of Jesus Christ worldwide.

We have a long way to go before we have a turn-key training program and, due to the nature of the industry and the technology, will never completely arrive at that point. However, we have an un-yielding passion to create and maintain the premier training program not only by mission aviation standards but by industry standards.

The only way we can accomplish that goal is as a team; a team of mission aviation organizations and the professionals that staff those organizations. By partnering with these organizations we can obtain the requisite experience, data, feedback and critique that are essential to excellence. Primary in that feedback needs to be our weak spots, a.k.a. the bad breath zone. Only by honestly seeking and obtaining that ‘bad news’ can we hope to succeed as a training institution.

If you are in position to provide that information from firsthand experience, pass it along or seek individuals that can share their experience we encourage you to send it along to us. Do it anonymously if needed but please pass it anyway.

We praise the Lord for the provision of resources in the form of vision, finances, staff and equipment to get STC going on the right foot. We look forward in faith and hope to see what the Lord will continue to do in mission aviation through us here at STC.

In case we don’t see you again before the 25th, Merry Christmas to you and yours.