~ The class is gaining attention among the region's teen population.

Some area vocational school students can't keep their feet on the ground. For them, the real learning takes place up in the sky as they pilot a Cessna.

The Cape Girardeau Career and Technology Center started the aviation course last fall with the approval of the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. School officials claim it's the first vocational school program in the nation to allow high school students to fly an airplane.

The thought of teaching 17- and 18-year-olds to fly might scare some people. But not aviation instructor Don Grossheider, who says his students have taken easily to flight.

"They really handle it well," he said. "The students quickly learn to accept the responsibilities of flight."

Schools across the country and even locally have offered ground-school classes before where students practice pilot skills in classroom simulators.

This course includes simulator-training too. But it also lets each student get five hours of piloting a Cessna from takeoffs to landings, said Grossheider.

Each student also gets five to 10 hours riding as a passenger in the small airplane.

With little promotion, 13 students enrolled in the inaugural class this school year.

By late last week, most of the students had received sufficient pilot training and passed a written Federal Aviation Administration test to earn their student pilot certificates.

The beginner pilots would be required to have 40 hours of in-air flight training to obtain a regular pilot's license, Grossheider said.

But for these high school students, the basic flight training offered in the new course is a bargain.

Students don't pay an extra fee for the course. The cost is borne by the students' participating school districts as is the case with more conventional vocational classes.

The course, Grossheider said, provides students with flight training that would cost them thousands of dolalrs in fees if obtained from private instructors.

The class gives those with the interest, but not necessarily the money, the chance to learn to fly, he said.

By comparison, Grossheider sold his dirt bike to pay for private flying lessons in the 1970s.

All of the course's current students have steered the Cessna four-seater with Grossheider by their sides, calmly instructing them to watch their air speed and keep the plane flying level.

Grossheider said other students are now looking at taking the class.

"The potential for this course is really big," said Grossheider, chief flight instructor for Cape Air Charter and a former industrial arts teacher at Jackson High School.

The course, he said, is designed to give students the opportunity to study aviation as a career choice not just in the classroom but from the cockpit of a plane in flight.

Several of the students plan to pursue aviation careers as commercial pilots or in the military.

Retired from the Jackson school system, Grossheider said he couldn't turn down the opportunity to teach the new aviation course at the career and technology center.

"This is the greatest situation I've ever come across in teaching," said Grossheider, who taught a ground-school aviation class at Jackson High School for more than a decade. "We have the time and technology to do it right."

The technology at the career center includes a computer software program that allows students to study the controls and practice piloting a plane in the classroom before stepping into the Cessna at the Cape Girardeau Regional Airport.

It's easy to spot the classroom situated at the end of a hallway in the career center. A yellow sign with black letters, which proclaims "Aviation is spoken here" is posted beside the door.

The simulations allow students to practice pilot skills in different types of planes. The software allows students to get a view of how it would look to take off and land at the Cape Girardeau airport and depicts the local terrain.

"It is such realism," said Grossheider. "It's unbelievable."

The military uses the same type of flight simulations to train its pilots, he said.

Students said the computer simulations made it easier from the start to fly the real Cessna.

"Flying is not as hard probably as driving a car," said Garrett Glastetter, a 17-year-old high school student from Jackson after calmly piloting the Cessna on a recent training flight.

During part of the flight he wore special goggles which allowed him to only view the plane's instrument panel. Such training teaches student pilots how to fly solely by instruments.

The class has drawn the attention of some of Glastetter's friends. "They want to do the class now," he said breaking into a grin.

Cape Girardeau Central High School student Cole Crist, 17, and Jackson High School student Kevin Moore, 17, love the class.

"It's pretty cool," said Moore, who wants to be a Navy pilot.

Crist plans to earn an aviation degree at Central Missouri State Univesity in Warrensburg, Mo. His vocational class already has earned him four hours of college credit.

The students in this inaugural course spent half of each school day in aviation class at the career center or in training at the airport.

Crist said the actual flight time in the vocational course seemed like a field trip compared to classroom studies.

As for Grossheider, he's just as thrilled as the students with the success of the course.

"As an educator and aviator, I always wanted to put something together like this," he said.

Now that he's gotten the program up and running, he's already looking ahead to the next school year and the opportunity to teach the thrill of flying to another class of eager students.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123