Vaiden Field welcomed a big crowd at the Perry County airfield on Saturday for their annual Fly In.
About a dozen planes were on display and flew in and out to enjoy the Fly In event hosted by Marion Military Institute, Main Street Marion and the Perry County Airport and Industrial Authority.
It included food trucks, face painting and bounce houses for children. MMI cadets and flight instructors were on hand to show off planes used by the school for aviation courses.
Col. David Mollahan, MMI President, said the event is a celebration of civil aviation as well as an opportunity to show what the airfield located at Vaiden Field in Perry County offers.
“We’ve been doing this for several years, but this is the largest turnout we’ve had,” Mollahan told the Black Belt News Network. “We are developing our flight program into something more and we wanted to get young people to come through and get flight lessons and work for airlines.”
Starting this spring, MMI is using an outsourced aviation educator to teach flight to their community college students. MMI signed a contract with Aeropro Aviation, which recently set up shop at Craig Field in Selma to bring an aviation academy and maintenance education program there. Aeropro Aviation, a subsidiary of Resicum International, is investing $1.3 million to bring an aviation academy to Selma and will also teach MMI cadets.
2015 MMI graduate Tre Long returned to his alma mater on Saturday for the Fly In and said the new aviation academy will be huge for the school.
“Vaiden Field has a great future,” said the Greenville, S.C., native. “It has a new program that will come and expand what they have here. I hope we see more people come to MMI.”
Long got his two-year degree and his private pilot’s license at MMI and eventually landed a job at PSA airlines and is interviewing soon for a pilot gig with American Airlines.
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