GREENEVILLE, Tenn. (WJHL) — The Greene Technology Center has started a new semester and students in the Aviation Flight Program are working on building an aircraft.
“It’s not a model, it’s not a toy by any stretch of the imagination, it’s a real airplane,” said Head Instructor of the Aviation Program Skip Borders. “A lot of the things that they will learn from this, they can apply it into aviation and or if they wanted to go into another field.”
Borders said he has 50 years of flying experience and has now retired to teach the program at the Technology Center.
“What we’re trying to do is bring students that still might be at a point that they don’t really know what they want to take and do, but they might have an inclination towards aviation,” said Borders. “We’re trying to give them an overall view of whether they want to possibly be a pilot, to be a maintenance technician or some of the other jobs in aviation.”
Bryant Hoffman, a senior at Greeneville High School, said he started the beginner course for the Aviation Flight Program during his sophomore year but decided to come back and take the advanced courses.
“I was here when we first started building this airplane,” said Hoffman.
Hoffman told News Channel 11 that his dream is to follow in his brother’s footsteps by joining the Air Force. He adds that building the plane requires a lot of attention to detail.
The next step in getting the aircraft operational is putting on the wings. Borders said they will start that step in the next week.
Borders said the plan is to have the aircraft fully operational by the end of the school year, May 2024.
