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Thursday, September 2, 2010
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Flying high
Published June 6, 2009
Gov. Bob Riley said the opening of the Aviation Training Facility at the Albertville Regional Airport could bring unimaginable opportunities to north Alabama’s students.
Speaking before a crowd assembled at the facility Thursday afternoon for an open house, Riley joined state Reps. Frank McDaniel and Jeff McLaughlin and U.S. Representative Robert Aderholt, along with former Chancellor and gubernatorial candidate Bradley Byrne, Enterprise-Ozark Community College President Nancy W. Chandler, EOCC’s Tom Kirk and Albertville Mayor Lindsey Lyons for an open house to show off the facility.
“Aerospace and aviation businesses are the fastest growing segment of the economy today,” Riley said. “We built this aviation center to specialize in training people to help expand the aviation and aerospace sector in our state.”
Alabama is the site for the Wilbur and Orville Wright’s first flight training school, the home of the Tuskegee Airmen and a myriad of aerospace and aviation businesses in Huntsville.
The Base Realignment and Closure Act could bring as many as 7,000 workers to northeast Alabama, Riley said. Many of them will work in military, aviation and aerospace businesses.
Companies will need highly skilled and specially trained workers, like the ones to be trained through the Aviation Facility.
“Once BRAC is fully implemented, anything within a two-hour drive will be a fertile area for all types of companies that produce things for the military,” Riley said. “Companies that are now located in northern Virginia, and have been for the past 30 to 40 years, will start to make their way here. You will be able to find anything, from socks to tanks, made for the military start to be made right here. And those companies will be looking for skilled workers. This facility will start training those types of highly skilled, highly trained workers.
“I want to thank Frank McDaniel. There are people who will not take ‘no’ for an answer. He is tenacious. He fought for and tried over the past four years to tell us all how vital a training facility like this one is.”
Chandler agreed, saying she was proud to be part of the first aviation training facility in the area.
“We are proud to be the first aviation training facility in north Alabama and to be able to meet the needs of a growing industry,” Chandler said. “We are proud that our facility will be part of a joint effort with the Albertville airport, the city and Snead State Community College.”
But efforts to make Albertville the Aviation Training Facility a part of the two-year college system, allowing students to pursue a degree in aviation and aerospace repair and technology, will have to wait for now, Riley said. Currently, students are able to take a five-part training course to obtain a certificate. Any additional training to earn a two- or four-year degree must be done at a college or university.
“It’s going to take money,” he said before taking a tour of the facility. “I think it will happen sometime in the future. It will be a challenge for the next few years. When the economy rebounds, we stand a really good chance of that happening.”
Penny Glasscox, the only female in the training program now, said she is looking forward to new, challenging training set to begin later this summer.
“We will be doing some riveting and welding this summer. We will be able to take what we have learned about and do some real hands-on work,” she said.
Glasscox said she is looking forward to the Aviation Facility becoming a part of EOCC and offering degrees at some point in the future.
“I’m really wanting to get my airframe license,” she said. “I would like to be able to stay around the Albertville area to work.”
McDaniel envisions Albertville as a hub of training and aircraft-related commerce when BRAC comes to north Alabama.
“I’m envisioning the next wave of economic development being aircraft related,” McDaniel said. “We can assure the people of Marshall County that there will be jobs here where they are and where they want to be.
“This facility will be a regional facility … it will be part of the two-year college system. The Alabama Aviation College is set up to be one school and will have facilities in Ozark, Andalusia and Mobile. Hopefully soon they will also have a facility here.”
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