Aviation Students Learn the Basics

Aviation students in both Stuart Bain and Jonathan Greco’s classes at Bixhorn Tech spend numerous hours practicing important skills. In a recent class, more experienced students assisted newer ones in the flight simulator to learn basic maneuvers. This included climbing and descending, as well as pitching, rolling, and yawing, which are rotations around the lateral, vertical, and longitudinal axes, respectively.

Other students prepared flight list plans, and took practice Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) exams. Flight list plans are checklists of important information that must be filed with air traffic prior to flights and contain planned routes, departure and arrival points, estimated time of flight, etc.

Bain said, “Aviation is a technical program and our students are extremely dedicated. It’s not out of the ordinary for some of our students to earn their private pilot’s license before they even get a driver’s license.”

The Eastern Long Island Academy of Applied Technology, referred to as the Academy, is the Career and Technical Education Program of Eastern Suffolk BOCES and has locations in Bellport, Oakdale, and Riverhead. Bixhorn Tech is located on the Bellport campus.