Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University has upgraded its pilot training capabilities significantly with a 20,000-square-foot, $40 million complex just off a taxiway on the north side of Prescott Regional Airport, at 2455 Ruger Rd.
It’s business as usual for most of its goal-oriented students, said Prescott Campus Chancellor Dr. Kenneth Witcher.
“These students, especially pilot students, they’ve all wanted to be professional pilots since they were 2 years old, in many cases, so they’re just about the business and how well we can do the training, and when they see this beautiful aircraft they’re about that,” he said. “They’re really, really focused on the business, so they don’t really look around and say ‘Woah, this is beautiful.’ They have an expectation that from Embry-Riddle, this is the kind of facility that will support them.”
Known as the Strategic Academic Flight Education (SAFE) Complex, the building opened in January and was dedicated at a ribbon-cutting ceremony in March. It overlooks a 268,000-square-foot airport apron where about half of the school’s 100 planes are parked underneath aluminum shade structures when not in use — the rest are housed at West Ops, ERAU’s other airport hub near the air traffic control tower.
Inside there’s a dispatch counter directing airplane traffic, classrooms, briefing space, a maintenance center and several flight simulators allowing students to practice maneuvers in any kind of weather conditions, including one full-motion Cessna simulator that pitches up to 6% in any direction. Food is available from state-of-the-art vending machines and the university’s air science students can spend much of their day there, with the main campus just 3 miles down Willow Creek Road.
About a third of ERAU Prescott’s 3,300 students are enrolled in the flight program, and the building’s proximity to the runway means they can squeeze more practice flights into a limited amount of time.
“What they’re interested in, being on this part of the airfield you can get onto the one runway a lot faster,” Witcher said. “So if they’re going to do a pattern of just touch-and-gos, they might have been able to, in an hour flight block, do four touch-and-gos previously, but because we can get them airborne faster they can do five touch-and-gos in the same hour.”
ERAU is in the midst of a $200-million building spree in Prescott, including a new residence hall, student union, propulsion lab and wind tunnel on the main campus. Witcher said the commitment the university makes to provide cutting-edge environments for all students extends to its flight training hubs.
“I think, or I know, what separates us from other schools out there and other pathways into the aviation industry is the idea of these investments that Riddle makes in producing the best pilots on the planet,” Witcher said. “And a facility like this makes it completely obvious that this is professional aviation.”
The project was funded by a state of Arizona grant, with matching funds from ERAU and the City of Prescott, which owns the airport.
