Students, faculty and staff interested in aviation are now able to learn how to control an aircraft without driving to Indianapolis.
Indy Flight Training, a flight school based out of Indianapolis, started offering lessons at the Delaware County Regional Airport in Muncie July 1. Flight school manager Bobby Kokinos said he is happy to be back in Muncie.
"I'm an alumnus of Ball State," Kokinos said. "This airport is actually where I took my first flight."
Kokinos said the training opportunities in and around Muncie have been lacking in previous years. IFT will help fix that problem, he said.
"There's not a whole lot, as far as flight training goes," he said. "There are some flight schools around here. But we do training if they want to do it just as a hobby, and we can also train people all the way up to commercial [airplanes]."
So far, IFT only a handful of students have signed up for training programs in Muncie. The program covers the 40 hours of flight time required by the Federal Aviation Administration in order to get a license.
IFT offers packages starting at $6,999. The package, called the Fun Flyer package, covers the basics of private flight. According to IFT's website, the components of the package are valued at $8,919.
The next package, Instrument training, costs $7,399. The $400 price hike covers additional training time and instructional tools. The perk of receiving an Instrument rating, Kokinos said, is well worth the higher price.
"An instrument rating enables you to fly into the clouds," he said.
For either training package, IFT students spend about the same amount of time training on the ground as they do in the air. Kokinos said IFT has an updated training program, compared to most other schools.
"The way we do our training here, that's different than a lot of flight schools, is almost all of our ground training is done by multimedia CDs," he said.
He said multimedia lessons are a less expensive option than holding master classes. Another benefit of the CDs is the ability to rewind the videos if a student were to miss something.
For first time flyers, Kokinos recommends starting off with a Discovery Flight.
Discovery Flights cost $79 and enable anyone interested to take a plane out with the assistance of an instructor.
Rising costs are often a concern in business. One cost, which has risen quicker than most, is the price of fuel. Kokinos said the extra costs don't worry him.
"It doesn't concern me too much," he said. "The way the aviation industry is, we're coming up to a huge commercial pilot shortage, which means here in a couple years, airlines are going to be hiring a ton of pilots."
Those pilots will need instruction, Kokinos said, and by offering newer planes and multimedia ground training, he has confidence his company will succeed.
Down the road, though, Kokinos said he hopes to connect IFT to a class at Ball State.
"I'd love to be able to have some kind of partnership with them," he said.
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