Teaching Kids About Aviation

On your next Southwest Airlines flight, you won't be asked to take a test, but you might be asked to help grade a few papers.

Celebrating its seventh year, Southwest's Adopt- A-Pilot program has successfully enhanced both educational activities for thousands of students and community relations for the airline.
 
The award-winning Adopt-A-Pilot program includes creative teaching tools and fun classroom activities, enabling Southwest Airlines Pilots to personally connect with more than 18,000 fifth-grade students across the country. This year, the free educational program is also offered in Spanish, providing translated curriculum and bilingual Pilots to mentor classes with students who speak Spanish as their primary language.

The Adopt-A-Pilot program incorporates educational activities and curriculum for science, math, geography, writing, and other subjects to help students discover more than just how an airplane flies. The community relations program also demonstrates how education is critical in reaching one's personal goals. Adopt-A-Pilot has more than 450 Southwest Airlines Pilots who volunteer for "adoption," all going above and beyond to provide fun classroom activities that also make learning fun.

Pilots might ask their plane full of passengers to write notes of motivation and encouragement to their students. Some e-mail digital snapshots of a toy as it travels with the Pilot to various U.S. cities, including related geography questions as clues.

During the four-week mentorship program, Pilots volunteer their time in adoptive classrooms and correspond from the "road" via e-mail and postcards. Classrooms chart the Pilot's course through an official U.S. route map, and the students record daily flying statistics sent by their pilot in the provided Adopt-A-Pilot curriculum.

"We couldn't be more impressed by the personal commitment of these Southwest Airlines Pilots who want to make a difference. We hear from teachers that many students have gained increased self-esteem and determination for future careers as a result of the Adopt-A-Pilot program," says Greg Crum, vice president of flight operations for Southwest Airlines. "At a time when all airlines are cost-conscious, Southwest has continued to advocate and increase support for this worthwhile program."

Also new this year, Adopt-A-Pilot students can log onto www.southwest.com/adoptapilot and take a virtual tour of a Boeing 737 cockpit, "visit" Southwest's headquarters in Dallas, Texas, and view streaming video segments that describe aviation careers.

Reinforcing its school-to-career theme, Adopt-A-Pilot includes a national contest -- "What's Your Destination?" -- where classes are invited to script, direct, perform, and produce their own three-minute video depicting careers each student hopes to one day pursue. The winning class will earn an educational field trip to a nearby Southwest destination.

Since it began in 1997, the Adopt-A-Pilot program has reached more than 65,000 students in communities from coast-to-coast. Southwest Airlines originally developed the Adopt-A-Pilot program in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Education, America's Promise, the Smithsonian Institute's National Air and Space Museum, and others in response to the need for community involvement in schools. National leaders such as Secretary of State Colin Powell, former President Bill Clinton, and First Lady Laura Bush have recognized the community relations program.

The nation's largest carrier in terms of domestic Customer boardings, (through September 2003 - the latest data available), Southwest Airlines serves 59 airports in 58 cities in 30 states. The airline currently has more than 4,000 Pilots and operates nearly 2,800 flights a day.

FMI:  www.southwest.com