McDowell's World number four thirty seven for 12/08/2025.
Well, thank you very much, and we're thrilled
to be joined by
one of the most successful
business leaders and people anywhere in the country,
whether it's technology,
no matter what business you're talking about, there's
really nobody quite like him. Michael Dell, very
much of a legend who's here with his
really exciting announcement. It's
so amazing.
And I am the aforementioned
Michael Dell,
but,
really, it's just Mike.
Yeah. Works either way.
Hey. I hope, everybody's had a good
month of December so far. And, yeah, back
so soon after NAPOD promo.
And what I what I got today is
an interview I did with Dan Jonkoff
of the
Legacy Aviation
Learning Center,
and I did put this out over on
Cup and Traverse City. So if you've, heard
the interview over there, well, this is the
same interview.
I figured, put it far and wide. So,
that's what I'm gonna get into.
Of course, if you guys are listening to
Cup of Traverse City, you already know what
the weather is and, all that. But, yeah,
I've been having a lot of fun with
that. You can find that over cupoftraversecity.com
and or on any
platform
that you
listen to podcasts on. So, anyway, without further
ado, I'm gonna send this, over to
myself and Dan from, this Saturday.
So today, I'm at Legacy Aviation in Traverse
City. It's a, A and P school, but
I'll let, the
founder and,
chairman of the board,
Dan Junkoff,
that will
will tell you all about it. How are
you doing, Dan? Great, Mike. How are you?
So far, so good. It just all coffeed
up and, you know, we already had one
incident today. So
Well, you called me chief cooking bottle washer,
and I cleaned it up. So Yeah. There
you go. You're absolutely right. Yeah. I had
a little coffee incident here in the office,
but, that's alright.
So, tell us a little bit about, you
know, how this all got started and what's
the goals. You know, just hey. Give me
your give me your spiel. Well, sure. Glad
to do it. It's been a fun journey
so far. And it all started when, I
retired from my, first career,
and only career other than,
what I'm doing here at Legacy Aviation Learning
Center is I,
was a funeral director and owned,
funeral homes, and I was a fifth generation.
And finally, my daughters took over. They're both
funeral directors. And,
so it was important that I,
let them be on their own. Be
take a few in a home where, you
know, every young person should do, and that's
make it even better than I left it.
Yeah. And,
so I was,
talking with my wife and telling her how,
retirement was really boring. You know? I was
used to working seven days a week, twenty
four hours a day, like
often funeral directors do. And,
because nobody makes an appointment
when they're gonna die. Right? Correct. Yep.
Anyway,
so,
she said, well, gosh. You've been flying for,
like,
forty five years.
You should,
you know, do something at the airport.
And I looked at her and said, boy,
I've always wanted to be on the airport
authority.
And she said, well, you should apply. So
I,
called the airport authority, and they said, well,
believe it or not, the deadline to apply
is tomorrow
at 05:00.
And so I quick called the, person that's
supposed to get the,
application, and she said, I'll send it to
you. You gotta have it to me by
05:00 tomorrow.
And I, did everything she said. And,
next thing you know, I was, called to
do an interview, and there were five or
six people interviewing. And I did the interview
with a,
a whole bunch of people in the room,
county commissioners and
and
administrative
type people. And,
next thing you know, I got appointed to
the airport commission Yeah. Which was kinda exciting.
Yeah. Sure is. I've been to a couple
of those meetings since Yeah.
Well, our airport has turned into an authority
from a commission,
because we finally you know, we're gonna have
a million people,
come in and out of our airport on
the airlines,
this year. Over a million, actually. And so,
now we have our own police force, our
own fire department, our own,
in house attorney, our own in house engineer.
It's quite the little airport. We're now the
third biggest airport in the state of Michigan.
Yeah. And I think you I think, last
I looked, you're the second busiest.
Oh, really? Yeah. I think that was what
I had read somewhere. I don't know how
that could be true. I gotta believe Grand
Rapids and Detroit beat us out. But Yeah.
Maybe maybe it was the third. I don't
remember. Third is probably the right answer. I
hate to say it. But, anyway, so I
got on the, the authority, and
the
orientation
consists
of showing everybody
who is new to the authority every square
inch of the airport. Mhmm. Did I say
every square inch? Oh, yeah. Truly the truth.
And, so went through the building, went through
the parking lots, went through everything, and we
even decide then get in a car,
and we drive up and down
and all around the airport. And,
we go by all the buildings, explain what's
in them, who's in them, what they do.
And we, stopped in front of the building
we're in right now doing this interview.
And,
Kevin Klein, our, the director of our airport,
executive c CEO,
he says,
you know, isn't it a shame,
That airport that building right there is gonna
be sold tomorrow or the next day,
and it's gonna be sold for a non
aviation use.
And he says I heard rumors about that.
Yeah. Everybody heard rumors. Well, the rumors were
that it was gonna be sold to people
who are gonna grow marijuana in it.
Well, as soon as it becomes a non
aviation use,
this particular building is on city property, not
airport property, and it has what they call
a hole in the fence. Yeah. But as
soon as, it's non aviation use, the hole
in the fence gets closed Yeah. Forever.
Never to open again. So I went home,
told my wife that, look, we can't let
this cool building,
you know,
become a non aviation use,
and have the hole in the fence go
away. And she said, well, how much is
it? And I told her, she said, well,
you need a partner.
For sure. So I got I called a
couple of friends and, one of them said,
absolutely. I'm in. I'll be your half partner
in this building. So we called up the
owner and said, look. We've got,
we're gonna do something with that building. We
don't know what it's gonna be, but, we're
gonna help kids and we don't know how.
Yeah. But we're gonna do something a lot
better than
possible other uses that are being looked at.
Right. Right. And,
and he said, well, I'll have to think
about that. And he stopped the other sale
to think about it.
I presume. I'm not actually
sure about that, but I know it was
supposed to happen quick. And, he came back
to us and said,
it's yours.
Nice. It's a nice building. It's been used
for a couple other things, you know, in
the front half of the building. It was
a TV station at one point.
I forget what else was in here, but,
you know, and then,
somebody had rented the the hangar part and,
you know, but it's it is unique that
you you have that hole in the fence
where the building's not owned or not on
on, land that's,
so you own the land with the building
where if you build something on the airport,
you get a lease. Right? Is that how
that works? That's exactly how it works. And
all of a sudden, you know, your world
is governed by the FAA,
TSA,
and and everybody else that has to live
on the airport, and we're not governed by
any of those people. We just pay taxes
to the city, and that's pretty priceless. Yeah.
For sure. You know, we have a lease
that's not a fifty year lease or a
hundred year lease. It's a forever lease till
I sell it. Yeah. And I don't have
to get anybody's permission on who I sell
it to.
Yeah. Yeah. It's a it's a beautiful building,
and you guys really have it fitted out
pretty well for its intended use now. Yeah.
Yeah. A friend of mine actually built it
a long time ago when I was probably
in my
late
late twenties, believe it or not. And,
he used to have a King Air, and
he would drive it into the hangar.
And then he went It's a big hangar.
Back it out of the hangar.
And he had a garage door opener that
opened the door when he arrived, and
it was pretty slick. Yeah. The guy I
knew that, rented it for a while had
a King Air 90 Yeah. In here. That's
right. It's probably the same guy. Bob Andrews?
No. I'm thinking Bob Goff. Bob Goff, actually.
I think he did After that. Yeah. So
Isn't that something? I'd forgot Bob was here.
You're right. Yeah. I flew with him several
times. Yeah.
Well, anyway, after we,
we got the building, we, didn't quite know
what to do with it that was gonna
help kids, but, you know, we threw a
lot of stuff at the wall. Right?
Ideas, we had people come and giving us
ideas. We had
all kinds of ideas, but nothing stuck great.
But,
then one day, the idea of well, gosh.
It would make a great, you know, mechanic
school, a and p school. Yeah. And,
so,
it kinda slid down the wall pretty slow.
It didn't flat drop off the wall after
we we threw the idea there, so we
checked into it. And just as we were
getting ready this was happening,
the FAA changed the rules
on how A and P schools work. Mhmm.
They changed the rules because That never happens.
Yeah. Hardly ever happens. Right? Well, they changed
the rules because there's a huge shortage of
A and Ps coming up. Over 600,000,
A and Ps shortage in the next ten
years or so,
worldwide. And, they realized
that somebody's gotta speed the process up a
little bit. So they changed it from a
time based school,
in other words, taken at least two years
of AMP school to become an AMP, to
a knowledge based. And and for those not
aviation
savvy, AMP is airframe and power print plant.
Airframe and power plant. See, English is optional
today. Yeah. Well, and that means that they
can work on anything that's flies, and they're
licensed by
the FAA, the United States government's
agency that takes care and governs all
all things that fly. Right? Thick book that
everybody has to have. Right. Yep. All the
FARS.
Well, anyway, so,
we found out that it was now knowledge
based.
And so
I looked at, my partner and he and
said, you know, I'll bet you that there's
a lot of fluff in those two year
schools.
And I'll bet we can do it in
one year.
And so,
it just so happened that I was at
a conference,
and I sat next to a gentleman who
was clearly the smartest man in the room.
And it turns out that he was the
one who helped the FAA
see that there was a different way that
it could be done that could speed up
how many mechanics get into the workforce so
they can start training and learning and fill
the gap that's gonna happen.
And,
I talked to him and he said, yeah.
Absolutely. You could do it in a year,
and and I'll help you.
And,
he had his PhD,
doctor Sean Galligan,
and,
he said that,
you can make it happen.
And so we called the FAA and said,
hey, we wanna start a school here
and we wanna make it so it's a
12 program.
And they said, yeah, well, that'll take a
lot of paperwork. Let's see how that goes.
Yeah. And,
Weren't you guys the first
school? We were one of the first. Yeah.
That's right. And doctor Galligan helped us to
do it. And the,
he had everything, all the syllabuses, all the
he just had it all set up. He
just knew what it would take and how
long each class should take and, you know,
it was amazing how smart he was
is. And,
but about doing it. Next thing you know,
the FAA said, we can't find any flaw
in this. No kidding. You're
you're being tutored,
by doctor Galligan. He's super smart, and he
helped the law to get passed.
And,
next thing you know, we had our license,
and we started. And we started with only
three kids because the FAA didn't approve us
till November. But three months later in January
or three months
six weeks later, we started with three kids.
That's as many as we could recruit. And,
we learned from them, and they learned from
us. And they graduated in a year, and
it was pretty darn exciting. We've gone from
there. And so far, we've had, 25
about
26
kids graduate,
in two years, and we got 27 kids
in the class right now. And our next
class, which starts
August,
of 26,
will have about 45 to 50 kids in
it, and that's where we're gonna stop at
50 kids. And you're gonna be doing two
shifts on that one, probably.
No. But we're gonna be able to do
two sides of the building. Mhmm. And we're
gonna hire two more instructors, so we'll have
four instructors for 50 kids. Nice. And that's
a great ratio of teaching. That's a unique
ratio because we're teaching a lot. This is
Yeah. Yeah. You know, you come to our
school, and if you miss a day, you
gotta make it up at night. Or you
gotta you know, we have
adjunct instructors here on Saturdays, and the kids
have to make up time. Yeah.
And it's intense.
Yeah. Imagine. You know, I went through Air
Force
maintenance school and, you know, that was pretty
intense, but we only did, like, four hours
a day or six hours a day or
something. And, this sounds a little more intense.
Our kids get here at 07:00 in the
morning,
because we wanna teach them what it's like
to work a real shift. Mhmm. Shifts start
at 07:00 in the morning at the major
airlines and in and in a lot of
maintenance shops, even, general aviation, and we wanna
teach them how to get up that early.
A lot of them didn't do that when
they went to high school. Right?
And,
so they start and they go from a
seven to three,
five days a week. And,
and it's all learning. You know? There's incredible
amount of book work. They gotta take their
FRA exams. We allow them to take it
as they go. Mhmm.
They gotta take,
three written exams that they have to pass,
and they gotta take two oral and practical
with FAA examiners.
Yeah. And,
they all they can do that all in
a year. Yeah. It's it's amazing. And, you
know, this hangar out here, you you know,
they get a little, on,
you know, they get practical experience working on
stuff.
We can do
so many different,
projects out there. They learn riveting. They learn,
safety wiring. They learn fiberglass.
They learn electronics.
Safety wiring was always fun to me.
Yeah. Well, believe it or not, funny you
bring that up. We've had
many, many, many,
companies come in from, you know,
Envoy to
SkyWest
to
Coletta.
And the one thing they say is, make
sure the kid can safety wire. Because Now
do you make them do it manually, or
do you get the safety wire pliers? They
get both. They get to learn both. But,
you know, but every kid that leaves here,
because what we were told by the,
by the companies that are gonna hire them,
they know how to safety wire. Yeah. And
that's one of their classes that they get
graded on, and, it's important. That and soldering
were my two, bugaboos.
Yeah.
I'm not
I'm not sure how much work they get
on all that, but they get they learn
a little bit about everything. Sure. Because all
we're doing in reality, Mike, is we're giving
them a license to learn. Yep. And that's
the way it is in all aviation. You
know, you get your pilot's license. That's a
license to learn because you don't know everything.
And I'm sure with the mechanics, it's the
same thing. And, you know, and with the
mechanic,
you know, you got
hundreds of airframes out there that are different.
And engine, you know, even a Cessna one
seventy two could have, you know, any number
of engines in the thing. So that's a
different skill. And avionics,
all the avionics, and you probably don't teach
a lot of avionics.
We don't. No? Yeah. Because that's kind of
a subspecialty.
Working on it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I can
tell you one of the best stories that
I have about starting a school is,
when we were
getting our,
all the,
materials and all the
parts so the kids could have laboratories and
work on things, one of the things the
FAA said was, you know, you need a
jet engine. Mhmm. Well, you just don't go
out and get a jet engine
with a budget. Right? They even the ones
that are run out cost
maybe
thousands and thousands and tens of twenties and
thirties and forties and maybe a $100,000
just to get one of those. Right?
So I I call over to,
Coletta Airlines,
over in Oscoda, Michigan, and I said,
you know,
I need a favor. I mean, we're we're
gonna be in A and P school. They're
I'm sure our kids will wanna stay in
Michigan, and you're in Michigan. But the FAA
said, you know, you've gotta have,
a jet engine.
And they said, well, let us think about
that a little bit.
And I think it was the next day
they called up and said,
we got a seven twenty seven here Mhmm.
That we're gonna donate to you. It has
four jet engines. Mhmm. Three on the airplane
and the APU.
Yeah. And, So you got the whole airplane?
We got the whole airplane, and we'll let
you even keep it here for free. Oh,
nice. And you can bring the students over
here and do whatever you want to it,
whenever you want. Nice. And, the next thing
you know, they,
we said, well, they said we gotta have
a a jet engine in our building here.
They said, well, we'll take the number one
engine off, and you get a trailer and
come over here. We'll put it on the
trailer for you, and you can bring it
home.
Yeah. Yeah. I've seen it sitting out there.
Sitting out there. And now it's got all
the numbers on it. Every single part that
we teach the kids what every single part
of that seven twenty seven's engines are. And,
it's a great experience. Then we take them
to Oscoda once or twice a year, and
we go through the airplane. It's great fun.
And Oscoda, that's an old Air Force Base.
Wertz Smith Air Force Base was what it
was. It was a B 52 base. That's
right. At least when they shut it down.
And now over there, there's lots of maintenance
activity going on.
Coletta is there. What's the other? Evergreen is
at the other one. Yeah. That's there. Plus,
there's a seven forty seven engine shop over
there. Right. It's a boneyard.
Yeah. And it's a boneyard. Lots of seven
forty sevens out there. Seven forty sevens. We
actually had a kid,
a student.
I call them kids because they're all way
younger than me.
But,
one of our students wanted to be a
de assembler.
Mhmm.
And I That's a good place to do.
And work and take airplanes apart. Yep. And,
we all thought that was pretty pretty funny
and pretty unique. Well, in the beginning, he
thought, well, he really didn't have to learn
how to fix
them. Mhmm. And he doesn't know what was
studying too hard. And so we call I
yeah. One of our instructors called Colette and
said, you know, what's it gonna take? They
said, well, first, he's gotta get his A
and P license. He's also gotta learn how
to fix them because you gotta know how
to fix them in order to know how
to take them apart. Right. Because, yeah, if
you take a part off of an airplane
that's gonna be reused, you gotta know how
it works because
if you take it off in the wrong
way, it might not be any good. Exactly.
You know? So the next thing you know,
the kid really really engaged in class and
really became,
a learning,
smart, young person. Yeah. And,
he graduated,
and,
yeah, I haven't heard yet if he got
the job. Right. But,
he could have changed. You know? A year
can Yeah. You just never know. You know?
Forever and I know. Wanna go work on
Cessnas or something. You know? Exactly. Yep.
Yeah. Because, yeah,
as an air force, you know, we'd have
to go pull parts off of either racks
or, you know, even go to the boneyard
in Tucson
and pull something, you know. And and, yeah,
I don't know what you were doing.
Just, plain and simple. Yeah. And, so so
you've had, you said 27,
now that have graduated.
Yeah. And pretty good, job placement, I'm sure.
Yeah. They all get jobs. Yeah. Yeah. It's
it's a 100% job placement.
They're gonna get two, three, four offers. We've
got kids in,
Marquette, Michigan working for Envoy. We've got kids,
down at,
boy, we're in Chicago at SkyWest.
We've got kids,
working down in Battle Creek at one of
the MROs.
We've got kids in Salt Lake City.
They're all over. We've got one student that,
you know, was, bound determined to work for,
Delta, which has an extremely difficult, you know,
application process. They're top notch. They're very good.
And, and she
wants to work in Tokyo.
And so, you know, we've got, job
jobs available for kids where they can work
six months in Alaska
and six months in Honolulu.
Yeah. You know? I mean,
we got jobs where they can fly on
airplanes. It's hard to find a mechanic. You
know, if you own an airplane yourself and
you, you know, need something done, there's not
a ton of places you can take your
airplane. You know? Exactly. You know, there's a
few around, but, and, you know, and a
lot of those guys are getting older,
so
they're gonna need new blood. Yeah. All the,
AMPs
from, World War two are, you know, they're
not working anymore. And so now you got
the next generation AMPs from the military. And
and,
you know, now we're having to produce our
own. And there's about, I don't know, a
150
schools around the country
is all,
that are
doing this and, training kids. Some of the
programs
most of the programs are still two year
programs.
So that's what makes our program unique. We're
a one year program and,
you know all done at one, you know,
in one fell swoop. One fell swoop. You
know, Traverse City is a nice place to
be most of the year.
I think it's a good place to be
even in the winter. Oh, yeah. For sure.
We, the kids that come here that don't
already
live here, we have an apartment complex that,
that we put,
we turn into a dorm room. And, you
know, they've got a pool.
They've got an exercise room. I mean, it's
pretty challenging around here to find housing. Right.
Well, there's a lot of them going up
right now, so it's a little easier than
it used to be a couple years ago.
For sure. Yeah.
Apartments everywhere.
Yeah. Going up. We're very blessed. But, But
we'll put four kids in a, you know,
two bedroom apartment, do a bunk bed, and
it's unbelievably reasonable for the students. And,
and they're loving it. Yeah. Yeah. We even
provide maid service. We know that putting four
boys in a room
without a little maid service on occasion is
probably not gonna be a good experience after
Christmas. The girls aren't much better.
Probably right.
Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, so
so, yeah, you guys are you start classes,
what, twice a year? We used to,
but now we're down to once a year.
We're looking at other options.
But
most kids think that school starts,
you know, in August or September. Right. Makes
sense. Spend their whole year. And to start
a a new class in January
Mhmm. Takes a lot
of mental strength
to to get your brain around that. Sure.
Yeah. So the Air Force was funny. They
just started it whenever they needed to. Well,
yeah, well, that's because they can control you
a lot better. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah.
Yeah. Nothing nothing like being in a cornfield
in Illinois marching
to class.
Exactly. Yeah. We don't do that. Right?
So a lot of other things you got
going on here in this building.
I know, you allow,
the EAA,
local group to use the building somewhat and,
also
civil air patrol.
Right. When I bought the building, I wanted
this to be the center of aviation for
our airport. Because once, you know, nine eleven
happened, you know, you just can't go out
and
walk up to an airplane and say hi
to the pilot and
and sit in
the side of the runway and watch airplanes
take off. You know, they put up fences.
They gave you badges.
You know, it made it very difficult for
people to congregate. Can't hang out at the
airport here. No. Now, you know, some other
airports you can, but Yep. You know, like
Antrim, I I, you know, I've been up
there a few times. You can go hang
out in the in the building there, and
there's always people around, and it's kind of
fun. But, yeah, this is kind of what
this is becoming
here. You know, I've I've joked with people
that I I've gotta go to coffee klatch,
you know? Yes. And we come over here
Saturday mornings and drink coffee, eat donuts, and,
you know, just shoot the bull. Just like
you used to thirty years ago when you
had the old building,
for general aviation. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So
that's one of the things that, my partner
understood in the air when we bought this
building is that we were
gonna give,
the EAA and the CAP,
free office,
and,
and rooms to,
the same rooms.
On Mondays and Thursday nights and other days
of the week, Saturdays when we're not in
school. Yeah. And, it works great. And we
got quite the sim room here now too.
What is there? Four or five, six of
them in that room? Six sims and even
one moving sim. Yeah. And that's one of
the things we do at our school too
is we teach all the prospective
AMP
students, you know, how to fly an airplane
on a Sim. Yeah. So they have a
general idea. Yeah. It's always a good thing,
you know. A lot of the AMPs I
know,
also are pilots. So that's that's a good
thing, but not all of them. Oh. You
know? And some of them, you know, I
don't like flying, but I like airplanes.
Yeah. Yeah. Being on,
you know, around airplanes is pretty sexy. Right?
Yeah. It can be. I mean, airplanes are
really cool. Yeah. And, to know how to
fix them or fly them is,
you know, not not for everybody. And, it's
pretty cool if you're one of those people
that are. Yeah. It's,
it's definitely,
it's a muscle memory thing because, you know,
it's
that was my trouble in training is, you
know, just gaining the muscle memory. Once once
you do that, though, you can jump into
a different airplane, and it's
everything's similar.
Yeah. You know? I'm a pilot also. I'm
I have no tools.
Why I picked,
the mechanic school, the AMP school, I have
no clue. All I know is they made
it my life so much better
keeping my airplanes
flyable and safe with my family
that I always appreciated and admired them. Right.
And,
that's why I thought, wow. This would be
great because I don't know a thing about
it, but wouldn't it be cool to have
more around? Yeah. For sure. And I've seen
your airplane in the hangar here getting this
done on it, and that's kind of a
handy bonus. Yeah. So yeah. So the students
can't work on an airplane that's flyable
Mhmm. But they can observe work. Sure. So
I'll make it so that the A and
P who has a inspector's license, IA,
he can do my annual
in the hangar, and the students can watch
it. Yep. And,
invaluable. Right? And, you know, they can watch
all the plates get taken off and do
a lot of things and,
stick their head in. They do have a
apprentice program of some sort, don't they? They
do. It's like a three year program Yeah.
Where you can work at a
at an eight at
In a shop. In a shop somewhere. And,
but holy mackerel. It's not great wages. And,
three years is a long time in our
life when you can come to a school
and in one year You're gonna get it
knocked out. Get it knocked out and be
making really good wages. Our kids are making,
you know, upper twenties
and into the thirties
really rapidly.
And,
most of them will be making in five
years into the forties. Mhmm. $40 an hour.
It's it's a, you know, life changing event
and making enough money to to have a
good middle class living. The only reason I
never went for the AMP was the the
length of the time you had to go
to to school, you know, and what we
did in the Air Force didn't count. Right.
You know, so that was, you know, if
if I could have just got out and
I'd probably be doing that right now. Sure.
But one of the things we're starting here
soon,
not exactly sure when,
is we're gonna do a special program for
the veterans Mhmm. That get out of the
service. And
for some reason, the FAA doesn't
acknowledge that they probably are AMPs in the
service.
But there's a two week program that we
could do for them Mhmm. That would teach
them how to pass the FAA test.
And,
and we're gonna do that,
as soon as we can. That's changed since
I got I got out thirty years ago.
So Yeah. I have no idea how that
works now. I have no idea how it
works either, but all I know is that,
two of our three instructors right now are
retired military, and they wanna help their, you
know, their fellow
military friends get their license.
And, so we're gonna start one of those
programs soon. That that'd be great. Yeah. You
know, especially, you know, we've got the coast
guard base here, and there's a lot of
guys over there that wanna come back here
when they retire. Yep. Maybe that'd be perfect
for them. Yeah. We have one coast guard
retiree. We have one air force retiree. We
have,
one instructor that,
she worked for
two major airlines in her life and then
a major airline
manufacturer.
And,
so we've got lots of different experiences here.
Yeah. And, yeah, all here in Little Traverse
City. Yeah. Little Traverse City. Yeah. And that's
what makes our school special too, is that
we're a smaller school. There are lots of
really big schools out there, but, you know,
our main goal is
everyone becomes an A and P. It's not
just getting through the school. You're gonna get
out and,
you know, get your licenses. That's really important
to us. We don't give up on you
if you don't get it done exactly by
the last day of school. Sure. You can
come back as often as you need to
practice, to study,
to go over what maybe isn't perfectly clear
to you. We've always got instructors available for
you on,
certain nights of the week and on weekends.
And,
that's really important to us. Alright.
Our goal is to have one hundred percent
of the kids
graduate from our school and become AMPs. Yeah.
Yeah. Because a lot of, you know, like
nursing school, for instance, they don't care whether
you ever, get the license. They just want
you to get through the school. Yeah. Yeah.
That's not us. Yeah. We are
doing everything humanly possible to we even make
it so that we pay included in your
tuition
is
the, fee to take the test. Oh, nice.
And that's thousands of dollars that a lot
of these kids don't have. But that's included.
We even pay for tools. That's similar to
a check ride with a DPE. You know,
you have to pay them to Yeah. What's
a check ride with a DPE cost nowadays?
I paid 800.
Thank you. Yeah.
So
a lot of these students don't have $800.
So we include it in their tuition
and,
so that when they're ready to do it,
they come to us, tell them they're ready.
We
write them a
check. It's simple as that. Nice. And, they
can go take the test. Yeah. And then
you get that all done. They got the
the nice piece of plastic or paper. I
think it's the same as a pilot's license,
isn't it? Yeah. It's a plastic.
Yeah. It's it's pretty darn special. Yeah. And,
and, yeah, it's really important
that,
we're a little unique that way and that
we really, really,
really, really push hard to make sure everyone,
you know, if you're gonna just their goal.
Spend all that time doing it. And even
though it's only a year,
you wanna make sure
it finishes,
you know, and that's the thing, you know.
And it I mean, you you probably don't
have a lot of people dropping out of
it, do you? We don't. Yeah. I was
gonna say
Dropout rate is virtually zero. Yeah.
We had one young man who dropped out.
We found out that, you know, he had
some prior
challenges with the law. And
we knew that because of that, most employers
wouldn't hire him. Right. And so we helped
him to realize that maybe it wasn't in
his best interest. Yeah. And so, you know,
we're not doing this just to, you know,
get their money to, you know, for tuition.
If we don't think they're gonna become AMPs,
we're gonna help them to find something else
that they'll be better at. Mhmm. Right? Sure.
And, you know, that's that's the thing. It's
more of a,
you you know, obviously, it's a for profit
thing. Oh, we're actually a nonprofit.
Oh, you are a nonprofit. Okay. Then that's
even better. Yeah. That's why we were able
to get that $7.27
donated to us. Oh, very good. Took a
tax write off. Oh, I'm sure they did.
What what is the 7 they did? I
wonder what a $7.27
would go for these days.
I don't think any of them are flying
anymore, are they? I don't think so. Yeah.
Anyway, so, yeah, it's a great thing you
guys are doing here. And, like I said
and myself, I appreciate the, EAA,
connection
and just the chance to hang out with
people. You know, I've retired military, retired air
for or airline pilots that come in here
for coffee and We got students and
astronauts that come here. Yeah. Exactly. We've got
every single type of aviation you can imagine.
Today, there are,
five or six kids,
from the,
Legacy Aviation
AMP school that are doing virtual reality things
around here. And, you know, I mean, there's
just so fun. Something going on all the
time. All all day Saturday. And if you
come on at most nights, there's something happening.
Nice. You know, between the civil air patrol,
the EAA,
the
students getting extra help.
It's crazy busy building.
Yeah. Very good. I guess we'll call this
an interview, and, thanks for being on. We've
been talking about this, what, for a year?
Yeah.
Finally just set a date, said we're gonna
do this. Damn it. Yep. And we got
her done. Thank you. Thank you for letting
me share what a cool program we have.
If you're, looking to,
find us on the Internet, we are under
legacyaviation.org.
Okay. And I will also have links and
whatnot in the show notes. So, just go
to
whichever podcast you're listening to because I'm gonna
put this out on two,
and, there'll be links to everything in the
show notes.