Doss Aviation To Screen Potential Pilots

By September of this year, the Pueblo (CO) Memorial Airport will be cranking out 1,300 new pilots a year, the best destined for the US Air Force.

Doss Aviation is building the massive pilot screening school at which aspiring pilots will see if they've got the right stuff to fly for the USAF. Frank Hunter, Doss Aviation's president and chief executive, is a 29-year Air Force veteran and has run similar schools in Texas.

Hunter's company currently operates a flight-screening program at the Air Force Academy, but the AFA and Pueblo operations will remain separate.

"We spend $500 an hour to fly these kids and, if they get through the flight training, we'll have spent about $1.5 million," Hunter told The Pueblo Chieftain, adding that the school tries to determine early in the process if a student will make the cut.

Doss has already hired 20 of the 180 pilots, maintenance and lodging workers for the Pueblo school, which will ultimately have 195 hotel-like rooms and feed more people in a day than any restaurant in Pueblo. The company is renovating the former Boeing building at the airport's industrial park to house the school, and is erecting three new hangars to accommodate the training fleet.

The first 15-member potential pilot class will arrive in Pueblo in October 2006

FMI: www.dossaviation.com