By Cheryl Jahn

Flight School

Vanderhoof flight school takes off

Mar 6, 2020 | 1:21 PM

VANDERHOOF – “You’re going to pitch the nose up. Put it just on the horizon. There you go, you’re flying.”

hose are not the typical words you’d hear in a schoolroom. But this schoolroom in Nechako Valley Secondary School is not your typical schoolroom.

“This was a storage area,” recalls Ken Young, Principal of Nechako Valley Secondary School, referring to the room now used to house the two professional flight simulators. “I removed everything as quickly as possible. We found an opportunity to get these simulators into the space.”

“The College of New Caledonia managed to get some funding, grant money, to buy the simulators,” explains Ady Sundahl, who is not only a teacher but also a pilot and is now the instructor for the course at Nechako Valley Secondary. “For whatever reason, that program didn’t quite get off the ground. And then and they lost some expertise there.”

District 91 snapped them up and the manufacturer helped to install them in the classroom.

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One is dedicated to teaching students how to flying, while the second remains idle, to be used by professional pilots for things like re-certification.

Young says the community of Vanderhoof has been trying to promote itself as a great place to learn to fly for years.

“This is a perfect place to learn to fly an airplane. We’ve got a nice, well-equipped airport. There are very safe conditions around this area. There’s not much for extreme weather, et cetera So a great landing approach.”