Letter from US Aviation Academy's CEO
I want to say thank you. It is only July and we have already had a very busy year: re-designing our flight software, re-deploying our management teams, re-thinking and re-orienting our approach to training. As an organization, we are on the move towards a brighter future, delivering higher quality training for our students, better experiences for our employees, and continued strategic growth in our mainstay and developing business markets – none of this would be possible without your hard work and commitment to achieving our goals.
With our full effort behind these programs for self-improvement and our eyes fixed firmly on our tomorrow, however, I wanted to give you a chance to reflect on the road which got us here: where we have come from, and how far the journey has taken us. We are a perpetually youthful organization, and we are constantly inviting fresh faces into our family. It has been exciting to have each of you accept our invitation and allow us to see how you each bring your ideas, your talent, and your muster to bear on the challenges we collectively face – and I want to give you each a chance to get acquainted with who we are, too, and how we have overcome challenges in the past.
US Aviation began as a small flight training school in 2006 at Denton Municipal Airport, with just 8 employees and six aircraft. We didn’t have any Chinese students, and only had a handful of international students. It was a small flight school like any other.
But we had the ambition to grow, and aggressively sought out opportunities to serve new clients.
In late 2008, we received our first class of students from China. The program was small but quickly grew to comprise our core customers. A little more than seven years later, we are only a few weeks away from the arrival of China 80, and we train students from China’s most prestigious airlines.
In 2011, we bid and won the opportunity to serve another highly-esteemed customer: the U.S. Armed Forces. Like the Chinese program, our Air Force flight training program started small but can now boast 53 successfully completed groups (or task orders).
And in 2013, we achieved our long-term goal of establishing a collegiate flight training program. In partnership with Tarrant County Community College (TCC), we began offering accredited flight-training courses in Fall 2013 to approximately 20 students. Currently, this program has nearly 100 students enrolled and continues to grow.
Looking forward, we want to grow to serve even more students in each of these client bases. We have exciting opportunities ahead: a bid to train all of the US Air Forces’ incoming cadets, a partnership with Boeing to meet the exploding worldwide demand, a chance to partner with new colleges and help them establish first-class accredited flight training programs, and many more.
I am grateful to all of those who have labored to achieve this incredible success; to those who have moved on to new challenges and those who continue to work alongside us. I am proud of our past and the team which has made it possible and am excited for what happens next. And I hope you are too.
Sincerely,
Mike Sykes
CEO – US Aviation