Province Approves South Alberta Flight Academy for Collegiate Status and Funding

Prairie Rose Public Schools’ Flight Academy program soon to include commercial flight training, aircraft maintenance engineering, and air traffic control and drone certification.

The sky's the limit for Prairie Rose students pursuing a career in the aviation industry. 

The South Alberta Flight Academy is expanding to include commercial pilot flight training and establish new aircraft maintenance engineering and air traffic control programs in the 2024-2025 school year. The program expansion is possible thanks to recently announced collegiate funding and the granting of conditional collegiate school status to Prairie Rose Public Schools' South Alberta Flight Academy.

"Collegiate status allows Prairie Rose an opportunity to establish a unique pathway that allows students to enter the aviation industry sector with work class training a year after graduation," says Superintendent Reagan Weeks. “The demand in the aviation industry continues to grow, and now we can bring students even closer to being ready to work directly out of high school.”

With the $560,750 of funding provided with the collegiate status approval, the South Alberta Flight Academy plans to expand to include a fourth year of high school training. As part of the collegiate qualification process, submissions had to demonstrate a need for specialized programming, the strength of post-secondary pathways, experiential learning opportunities and cost-effectiveness. The school division's already established strong partnership with Super T Aviation was another key application component.

"We have already seen several students move on from the South Alberta Flight Academy program to pursue careers in the aviation sector, with some even working with us at Super T after graduation," says Super T Aviation CEO Terri Super. “The ability to expand our commercial pilot training program and add both the aircraft maintenance engineering and air traffic control training is the logical next step in establishing a complete pathway to an aviation career for southeast Alberta students.”

Under the new collegiate model, students entering the South Alberta Flight Academy in grade 10 will train together for a year before choosing their own aviation path in grade 11. The three available streams will include pilot training, aircraft maintenance engineering, and air traffic control and drone certification. 

"We are excited about being able to expand the South Alberta Flight Academy program to meet the needs of more students," says Weeks. “The aviation industry is booming, and it is exciting to see that what Super T and Prairie Rose are doing to get students into aviation careers is getting noticed.”

The South Alberta Flight Academy collegiate proposal was one of 12 approved projects in the province.