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VALLEY — The owner and operator of the Blue Skies Above Flight School at the Lanett Regional Airport was the guest speaker at the Monday meeting of the Valley Lions Club. Matthew Bourguignon talked about the rapid growth being experienced by the flight school, how much fun it was to have had a fly over with Santa Claus just before the Valley Wide Christmas Parade and an upcoming Young Eagles Rally that will be taking place at Lanett Regional on Saturday, January 25th.

Bourguignon started a one-man, one-plane flight school in 2023. It has since grown to 15 people and six planes. The flight school is full, and there’s a waiting list of young people who are eager to learn to fly an airplane.

Late this month, the local airport will play host to a Young Eagles Rally. This will give youth in the seven-to-17 age group the opportunity to have a free ride on a plane. It must come with the approval of a parent or legal guardian. For more information, call (706) 615-6964 or e-mail at LAAChapter677@gmail.com.

Weather permitting, the rally will be taking place between 7:30 and 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, January 25th.

The flight school gets its name from the very common good luck expression pilots say to each other. When a pilot meets another aviator about to take off, he or she often says “Blue skies” to wish them a safe flight. Bourguignon wanted to call his school Blue Skies but that name had already been taken by another flight school. He changed it a bit to Blue Skies Above to get the same sentiment across.

Bourguignon is originally from upstate New York. His parents disliked the cold winters they were going through in that part of the country and decided to move south when Matthew was a child. They first moved to Goldsboro, North Carolina and later to Daytona Beach, Florida. At that final stop Matthew met his future wife, who was then an undergraduate student at Stetson University.

“She went on to do graduate study at Auburn University, and that’s what got us here,” Bourguignon said.

The couple and their two young daughters live in Opelika.

Bourguignon’s dad is a teacher by profession. “He always discouraged me from getting into that, but there are two things I love – flying and teaching,” Matthew said.  “I am into both at the flight school.”

He’s been flying since 2020 and was certified as a flight instructor two years later.

“When we teach students to fly, one of the first things we get across to them is how to get out of a stall,” Bourguignon said.

It’s a very dangerous situation when a plane stalls in flight, but it’s something an experienced pilot can manage. “We do spin certification at Lanett Regional,” Bourguignon explains. “We have an expert in this teaching it.”

The flight school is located in an office in the Lanett Regional terminal. “We are right next door to the airport manager, Craig Stapleton,” Bourguignon said. “Our classes don’t need a lot of space. On good weather days, we do most of our flight instruction outside with the planes. It can sometimes get hectic, but it works.”

Large airports like Atlanta have control towers that direct all incoming and outgoing traffic. Moderate-sized airports like Columbus have tower control during the day and are uncontrolled at night. The smaller airports like Lanett Regional are uncontrolled all the time. This is no problem for licensed pilots who are well schooled in landing and taking off.

A pilot can safely land a plane in Lanett by turning on the runway lights from his or her plane. The lights will go off once the plane has safely landed. “We have pilot-operated lighting,” Bourguignon explained. “The pilot can control the brightness of the lights.”

Bourguignon said that much of today’s aviation law was adapted from maritime law. “Planes are often called ships,” he said. “Right of way in the air is very similar to what it is on water. Planes and ships have shared radio frequencies. We practice a lot of our maneuvers around West Point Lake. There are lots of nearby fields where we could make emergency landings if we had to.”

Bourguignon said he considered getting into pilot training at the airport in Auburn but is glad he came to Lanett. “The airport in Auburn is a hornet’s nest,” he said. “It’s very, very busy. Lanett has a beautiful airport with an excellent runway. It’s a perfect spot to teach students how to fly a plane. We can get our students in and out of the air much faster than we could in Auburn. At the Auburn airport you may have to wait in line behind eight other planes to take off.”

Lanett Regional has a longer runway than Auburn. It’s over a mile long at 5,400 feet. Auburn is slightly less than a mile at 5,264 feet, but it does have an advantage with overrun space. Lanett has some potential obstacles in the form of boulders and trees at both ends.

Blue Skies Above is a good customer for the City of Lanett. They pay $550 a month to rent an office in the terminal and to have tie down space and access to a hangar. They also paid close to $80,000 in fuel this past year.

The students pay for their education and the fuel they use in their training flights. It can cost between $12,000 and $18,000 to be certified as a pilot, but it’s a valuable skill someone will have over their working years.

“Our students are from as far away as California,” Bourguignon said. “Some are from metro Atlanta. We have to have two-and-a-half hours of fuel every time we go up. We can land in Auburn, LaGrange, Pine Mountain and Lanett.”

Aviation fuel runs about $5 a gallon. The 100-octane fuel is slightly lower in LaGrange and Pine Mountain. “Our planes hold between 40 and 50 gallons of fuel,” Bourguignon said. “We have to have at least 30 gallons to fly.”

The flight school has five Cessna 172s and a Cherokee 140. “I love talking about anything that’s aviation related,” Bourguignon said. “The Young Eagles are separate from the flight school. It’s a program where pilots can volunteer their time to work with youth in the eight to 17-year-old age group. In this program I have taken up 99 kids in the sky. Many of them had never flown before. Young Eagles has a way of lighting a fire in young people to enter some kind of aviation field. It’s a way experienced pilots like me can give back. I’m really looking forward to the Young Eagles Rally on January 25th. If we have good weather that day, I am sure the airport will be chock full of moms, dads and kids.”

Being a pilot isn’t the only career available in aviation. There are well-paying jobs in commercial aviation for aircraft mechanics, line service technicians, avionics technicians, and air traffic controllers. Every commercial flight with passengers has a pilot, co-pilot and a well-trained flight crew.

Bourguignon said that aviation is a great career today’s youth should consider entering.