Tuskegee Airmen foster dream of flying
Teen hopes to be one of few black pilots
WASHINGTON - Colin Banks can talk to you about World War I and World War II planes until you are not interested anymore. He likes to
As a young black man with a passion for flying, Colin is an anomaly. The senior at South County Secondary School in Fairfax County, Va., has his sights on the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and dreams of becoming a fighter pilot.
Though blacks have reached dazzling heights - US president, chief executives of giant companies, even the nation’s top astronaut is a black man - you will not find many in the cockpit of a fighter jet. The cost of aviation lessons, the required educational training, the lack of role models all contribute to the scarcity.
Of the 14,130 Air Force pilots, 270, or 1.9 percent, identified themselves as black, the Air Force Personnel Center reported this year. The percentage is similar for commercial pilots, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Colin has 43 hours of flying time and is weeks away from obtaining a private pilot’s license. The journey has taken more than a year. It has involved many trips back and forth to the airfield for lessons. It has meant sacrificing weekends of lounging and video games and varsity basketball.
“Young black men aren’t limited to basketball or being a rapper,’’ Colin said. “Basketball is a game. Flying is a career choice. It’s something I wanted to do for the rest of my life.’’
On a sunny Sunday afternoon in October, Colin folds his lanky 6-foot-2 frame into a bucket seat in the family minivan. He teases his little sister and pinches at the flecks of hair below his bottom lip. Linda, his mother, lowers the volume of an R&B song, and they all settle in for the 45-minute ride from their Springfield, Va., home to Prince George’s County, Md., for the day’s flying lesson.
At the field, Colin and Linda go over the day’s lessons with his instructor: understanding the performance characteristics of the airplane, managing power, controlling airspeed with pitch. The session will involve steep turns and stalls in a practice area in Waldorf, near the Potomac River.
First, Colin has to check out the airplane: a 27-year-old Cessna 172 Skyhawk. He runs his finger along the propeller blades, checks the oil level, and looks for dings or nicks on the wings. He looks over the flaps and the airbrakes. Once inside with the instructor, he fiddles for the right key and starts up the plane. Minutes later, he is heading for the runway, talking to air traffic controllers: “Potomac Tower, this is 511236 rolling to runway 2-4.’’
Linda Banks tells the story of how Colin was so pumped before an orientation flight that he could not sleep the night before. After another early flight, he threw up. He says it was out of excitement, not fear. He no longer eats before he flies.
As an eighth-grader and avid video game player, Colin began to wonder if being a fighter pilot could be a real job. He called up the Air Force website to check the requirements. “That’s when I knew I wanted to do this,’’ he said. “I just grabbed more and more information.’’
Linda Banks, a project manager at
One of the activities she found was Air Force Day at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, near Dulles International Airport. One of the panels featured the Tuskegee Airmen, the pioneering black World War II pilots who battled segregation. The program started when the US government bowed to pressure from civil rights groups and decided to train black pilots for the military. Today, the airmen are in their late 80s and 90s. Sensing promise in Colin, a volunteer encouraged him to try out Tuskegee’s Youth in Aviation program.
Hundreds of black children in the United States are exposed to aviation careers every year. There are school visits, field trips to air traffic control towers, and summer flight camps in cities across the country. The programs are sponsored by Tuskegee chapters across the country and a number of black professional groups, including the Organization of Black Airline Pilots and the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees. Still, each year only a handful of students show sustained interest in becoming pilots, organizers say.
Students appear to be discouraged by the financial dynamics of the profession, they say. Training for a private pilot’s license, the first step for many aspiring aviators, costs thousands of dollars. A private college education that focuses on aviation can leave a graduate with $100,000 in debt.
Colin joined the Tuskegee program, maintaining an interest as peers grew bored of aviation museums and stories of Kitty Hawk. He attended a 10-week Tuskegee ground school and passed a rigorous written exam.
Others’ lack of interest has proved a boon to Colin’s dreams. The Youth in Aviation program has spent more than $6,000 teaching Colin how to fly. Still, he faces long odds. His next hurdle is winning an appointment to the US Air Force Academy by his US representative, Democrat Gerald E. Connolly, from one of Virginia’s two US senators, or the vice president’s office.
Between 9,000 and 10,000 people apply each year, but only 1,300 are offered admission, said David Cannon, the academy’s director of communications. Currently, 244 of the academy’s 4,544 students are black, and 923 are women, according to academy statistics.
Even if Colin makes it into the academy, there is no guarantee that he will become a pilot. To win an Air Force training slot, he will have to pass more physical exams and academically outperform fellow cadets gunning for the same opportunity. Between 1987 and 2009, the academy graduated 7,451 cadets who went on to attend the Air Force’s pilot training; 333, or 4.4 percent, were black, according to the academy’s statistics.
Colin’s flight experience will help if he makes it into a military flight training program, according to Nelson Evans.
“To be a Navy or Air Force pilot and be black is not easy,’’ said Evans, a bank manager who holds a private pilot’s license. “It’s probably easier to be in the NFL.’’
