Eric Coburn is changing his students’ lives by teaching them how to soar in his aviation class at the Warsaw Area Career Center.
The students are also changing his life.
“It changes their life. It changes their perspective. I see a major change from when they first come into the classroom until after they’ve completed that flight,” he said. “And on two occasions I’ve had parents call me and ask me, ‘What did you do to my child?’ I don’t think I did anything. They changed. And that’s very, very rewarding. This program is changing a lot of lives, a lot of their lives, and I think they understand responsibility more. And the confidence they have developed, to know that they can fly, if they want to, they can fly.”
Originally called private pilot ground school, the course began in 2013 at the WACC.
Coburn had retired from the Warsaw Police Department in 2009. Ronna Kawsky, who was the principal of the WACC in 2013, found out Coburn was a pilot and he and his wife owned their own plane. Kawsky asked Coburn if he was interested in interviewing for the teaching position of the aviation class. Though he wasn’t a teacher, he thought it sounded interesting so he interviewed. That night, Kawsky called him and told him he was chosen to teach the class.
“In (2013), we started with two classes, a total of 35 students, and from that time it has continued to grow,” Coburn said. “Excluding this year, we had 121 students go through the program. This year we have 36. But out of the 121, that I know of, 18 have gone on to receive their private pilot certificate.”
Nine are in college now for aviation.
Students from Warsaw, Tippecanoe Valley and Whitko take Coburn’s year-long class. This year there are two periods for the class.
Aviation is divided into three educational sections, Coburn explained. The first is the ground school, which is what he teaches - the written test part. The second is the actual flight training where a person has to have a minimum of 40 hours, 20 of which have to be with an instructor. The third section is the actual Federal Aviation Administration check ride, where the flight examiner will - for several hours - go over paperwork and ask verbal questions about aviation.
“Then you have to take that person up in the air and demonstrate that you can do the maneuvers, you can troubleshoot and come to a successful resolution on anything that may happen and that you can fly safely,” Coburn said.
He said his students can take his class in tandem with the flight school. The nearest flight-training school is New Horizons at the Goshen Airport. Out of his 18 students who went on to receive their private pilot certificate, 16 got it at Goshen.
While Coburn’s class is all classroom instruction, he said they have two “very nice” Redbird Flight Simulators that they use. “But the student is sitting in a chair and only visually sees the four forces that act on an airplane. They’re not feeling it. So, my wife and I sat down and we said, ‘We’ve got an airplane. Why don’t we get them in our plane?’” he said.
They schedule all the students to go up in the plane so they can feel all the forces.
“They will actually fly the airplane. So far, we’ve been able to do that. That’s totally outside of school. This is just on our own,” Coburn said.
“The difference I’ve seen before we take off to after we land, and we get out - usually Mom and Dad are sitting right behind us as the student takes the airplane off and climbs out, levels off, we do some turns. We’ll just do some flight maneuvers and then we’ll do some sight-seeing and then we’ll come back to Warsaw,” he said.
The students get to do everything but land.
“It’s really neat when I put my hands in the air, turn and say, ‘Hey, Mom, Dad, your son or daughter is taking this airplane off.’ And they kind of look (surprised). That’s the picture I really, really want to take,” Coburn said. “But the transformation of these students from the time we depart to after we land and we get out and I look at them and say, ‘What did you think?’ And they’ll look at Mom and Dad and go, ‘That’s what I want to do.’”
He said the school has given the opportunity to the students to expose them to a career that they probably never even thought was possible.
“And they’re taking it and they’re running with it,” Coburn said. “The success rate in aviation to obtain your private pilot certificate nationwide - from start to finish - the percentage is 2.4% completed. At Warsaw, through the first eight years, we’re hovering around 14%. The students have done their job and they really enjoy it.”
Noah Knepp, 18 and a Warsaw senior, took the class in 2020. Now he and Carson Small, 17, also a Warsaw senior, have their private pilot certificates.
“At first, I knew nothing about aviation. I knew nothing about airplanes,” Knepp said. “But as the class went on, I started absorbing more. I realized that this is something that’s really cool. And I’ll tell you, the thing that hooked me and I think hooks anybody that takes this class, is the airplane ride he gives you. When you lift off the ground and you realize this is something I can do - I can sit here and I can fly an airplane, and there’s a way for me to do this as, at the time a 16-year-old kid, that makes all the difference in the world.”
In June 2021, he started taking flight lessons at New Horizons. This past March, he earned his certificate. He said having his pilot license is a “lot better feeling” than having a driver’s license.
“That’s something that sets you apart,” Knepp said, noting that flying a plane is 10 times harder than driving a car.
All together, Knepp estimates he’s flown 140 hours, and 90 of those hours are since the spring.
Knepp said his future career could be anything from charter to cargo to an airline. He hasn’t decided on which way he wants to go yet, and there’s appeal to all three.
After getting licensed to teach flying, he said he plans to teach for New Horizons as a flight instructor until he turns 21. After that, and after getting all his hours and licenses that are required, he said he’ll decide his direction.
Small always knew he wanted to be in aviation. He took the class in 2020-21.
“I took it. I got to fly and I just liked it even more after that, so I just continued with it,” he said.
After he graduates high school, Small plans to either go to ATP Flight School or go a similar route as Knepp. He got his license July 14.
Haley Rodewald, 16, a Warsaw junior, took the class in 2021, but didn’t have room in her schedule to take it this year because she was in two pathways - medical and aviation. She dropped aviation for this year, but thinks she might pick it back up in her senior year.
“I have always been into medicine. My mom, she’s a nurse, and I watched ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ growing up so that was one of the things,” she said. A friend’s stepdad was a pilot and he would always talk to her about flying, which hooked her into it. After hearing about the aviation class at Warsaw, she decided to take it.
The first week of class, she went flying with her mom and she was terrified, but the fear didn’t last long.
“I just remember the first time that we flew, it was amazing. There are no words to describe it,” Rodewald said. “But, I do really love medicine, so it’s kind of hard. I’m kind of torn between the two.”
While they learned a lot about planes, she said they also learned a lot about life experiences. “I really enjoyed that in class because even if I don’t go into aviation, I still took away a lot of stuff about life in that class,” she said.
Coburn, who got his private pilot license in 1972 at the age of 16 - 30 days before he received his driver’s license - as a Wawasee student, said, “Things happen for a reason. I am where I am for some reason. And I’m beginning to realize it’s for these (students). I have had a love of aviation since I was a small child, according to my dad. ... It is rewarding. What’s neat is I get to see these students’ lives being changed. I can see it first-hand. And not only their lives, but my life, too. It’s changing my life.”
