New Aviation Club Takes Off for the Skies

Caroline Cating ’16.5 and Jason Feinman ’15 love to fly. Procuring their pilot licenses at ages 19 and 17, respectively, Cating and Feinman have become familiar with the Vermont aviation community. Last month, they implemented their passion for all things aviation when their pitch for the Aviation Club, a new interest club at the College, was recognized.

“The club is purely interest and education: we can’t finance your flying habits, but we can help you become a safer pilot, help you on your way to become a pilot, or any other type of aviation interest you might have,” Feinman said. “It’s a community for people interested in aviation to come together and celebrate that.”

“Having an interest club is sort of like a spring board for people to get involved with flying individually,” Cating said.

The club stemmed from Cating and Feinman’s shared interest in supporting new potential pilots and fostering growth in the larger aviation community.

“Some people find aviation on their own, some in families. My father is a pilot,” Feinman said. “So if you wanted to make it spread, you would have to get exponential growth, so the demand is already there.”

As part of their aim to make aviation more accessible to the College community, the club has purchased pilot license studying material, connected members with available discounts and cheaper materials, directed students to nearby flight instructors and rental planes. Apart from creating an educational space at the College, they also plan on going to air shows, building model planes, and flying remote control planes and helicopters.

“It’s really great to have a group of students as a learning resource. Getting [a pilot license] by themselves would be difficult,” Cating said. “We really focus on providing an educational community, but we also are trying to find creative ways for people to do it.”

Elana Feldman ’17.5, one of the new members of the club, attained her pilot license in Jan. 2014 and has enjoyed being part of a new aviation community away from home.

“The Aviation community is a great group of people and I missed it while being at school,” Feldman said. “I’m excited because aviation is one of those things you constantly have to be doing or else you’re going to forget it … To have a group that’s promoting it is pretty exciting.”

They have six members, four of whom already have their pilot licenses. In the future, the club plans to increase membership, develop a J-term instructional workshop, and connect with other projects on campus, such as aerial mapping projects in geography or working with physics project on pilot implementation. In these areas and other fields of science, aviation skills can be incredibly useful.

“As a conservation biology major, I assume at one point in the future I will be doing research, so hopefully I can use my pilot’s license for surveillance,” Feldman said.

Although the club itself cannot pay for plane rentals due to liability reasons, the cost of plane rentals is relatively cheap: from $100 upwards depending on the quality of the plane. Both Cating and Feinman have rented planes from Shelburne, Vermont, and have flown around the area, taking friends or other club members with them and even going as far as Maine. In this way, flying offers a whole new host of activities and travel opportunities for students.

“[As pilots], we can take our friends. By having this community, it’s more visible – a thing that can be part of people’s consciousness,” Cating said.

Aviation adds an entirely different way to view the world: the sky is a series of virtual highways, off-ramps and on-ramps that must be navigated carefully through a system of instrument approaches.

“A lot of people like being a doctor because they are providing help where others might not be control of situation,” Feinman said. “Being a pilot is the same thing: you’re using complex knowledge and skills to get people from one point to the other safely.”

Furthermore, there is simply the perspective of looking down from thousands of feet in the air.

“The way you perceive a place completely changes once you’ve seen it from the air,” Feinman said. “When I walk around campus, I know exactly where everything is because I’ve seen it from the air.”