DOUGLAS — The Cochise College aviation department is gearing up for big improvements this summer, and beyond.
In July, the college accepted a grant from the Arizona Department of Transportation to conduct a full master plan of the airport, and the project is well underway. Two months later, at its September meeting, the college’s governing board approved a $1.71 million grant from ADOT for the reconstruction of the Douglas Campus airport runway, a project slated to begin this summer.
An airplane on the Douglas Campus airport runway.
“We are a single-use runway airport, so we have no choice but to suspend flight operations during the period of construction,” said aviation director and chief flight instructor Belinda Burnett. “That does not mean closed.”
Rumors that the Douglas Campus’ airport is closing and the flight training program is on its way out couldn’t be further from the truth, Burnett said. In fact, the college is about to bring more aviation resources to the Douglas Campus flight training program after terminating its satellite operation out of Tucson International Airport, which had been in place for the last 12 years through an agreement with Pima Community College.
That termination will go into effect Dec. 31, which means after that, all of those resources, which have been split for so many years, will come back to the Douglas Campus to foster growth and expansion of the program.
“The Tucson program didn’t represent the quality or standard of training we want to promote and what we want to provide,” Burnett said. “So we’re bringing everything home and circling the wagons, so to speak, to build here.”
In the early days of the college’s flight program, students were bussed to to the Bisbee-Douglas airport for training. In the late 1960s, the college started the initial phases of building the airport, beginning with a dirt runway that was eventually paved. Today, the public-use airport receives ADOT funds to help maintain the facility, as long as it remains in compliance for grant funding.
Burnett said the average lifespan of an airport runway is about 15 to 20 years. The last time the college’s runway received a repaving treatment was in 1995. This summer, the airport will undergo runway rehabilitation, which means the existing pavement of the runway will be torn out, workers will compact the underlying surface and resurface it to make a new runway. The grant also includes new runway lighting.
During the scheduled 100-day construction period, the airport will have to temporarily cease operations, so the flight program will adjust its schedule to conform with the main academic calendar, meaning instead of a 21-week program, it will do 16-week sessions in both the spring and fall.
The two ADOT airport improvement grants — the full master plan and the runway — required a 10 percent match by the college. Burnett said next year, if all goes according to plan and the college receives another in a series of grants, the airport taxiway will likely be repaved as well.
But growth and improvements to the aviation department don’t stop there.
Also at its September meeting, the Cochise College governing board approved a proposal to add Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) degree programs. Due to the college’s relationship with Fort Huachuca, there have been programs similar to these in the catalog for two years, as part of the military occupational specialty (MOS) offerings. But with unmanned aircrafts in high demand to support military efforts and the expansion of other uses for UAS, the college has been asked, by Northrop Grumman and others, to consider preparing operators and technicians to help meet those needs.
Burnett and other administrators believe this UAS program, which is scheduled to begin this August, will help strengthen the aviation department by adding visibility and broadening its offerings, which were recently diminished by the closure of the aviation maintenance technology program.
Also under the umbrella of the aviation department is avionics, which moved to the Sierra Vista Campus not long ago for practical and logistical reasons that have helped grow the program. That move sent rumors flying as well.
“The large population (for avionics) was coming from Sierra Vista, the employers are in Sierra Vista, and it’s taught in conjunction with the fort,” Burnett said. “Aviation has always had lots of rumors associated with it because it’s a high-dollar program.”
Meanwhile, the flight program at the Douglas Campus is thriving and is projected to have between 50 and 60 students come January. With equipment coming back to Cochise County, Burnett said now she just needs to worry about staffing and the possibility of putting a cap in place, which isn’t necessarily a bad problem to have.
“You’d get to select your cream of the crop, the product that should be most successful in the long run,” said Burnett, who is a longtime instructor with the program and in her first year as the aviation director. “Our numbers are jumping because our recruiters have done a fabulous job, plus the economy, people going back to school, and aviation is a small community. There was a change within the department, and people have recognized that this is a good opportunity.”
Cochise College’s aviation department is well respected and widely recognized throughout the industry. In more than 35 years of aviation training, the program has helped place graduates with all the major commercial airlines, the Federal Aviation Administration, the U.S. Border Patrol and U.S. Customs, airfreight services, and corporate aviation companies. Cochise aviation programs are certified by the FAA and the Federal Communications Commission.