TURNERS FALLS — After around five years of advocacy, Franklin County Technical School’s aviation program is ready for takeoff within the next two years with help from a $4.2 million state grant.

Superintendent Rick Martin accepted the award, which was part of a Massachusetts Skills Capital Grant Program round worth more than $50 million, during a ceremony held Tuesday at Essex North Shore Agricultural and Technical School. The $4.2 million in funding will be put toward “a 12,000 square-foot instructional lab to launch a new Aviation Maintenance Technician Program that will educate approximately 100 traditional day students and adult students each year,” according to the state’s announcement.

As part of the process, Franklin Tech will be approved as an aviation maintenance technician entity, making the trade school one of only a few Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) “Part 147 aviation-approved” high schools in the country, according to Martin. A similar program is available at Westfield Technical Academy.

“To finally get approval and to get into an elite, small group … I couldn’t be happier for the future of Franklin County Technical School,” he said. “The excitement is endless.”

Martin said he is “very hopeful by this time next year to have a hangar up,” adding that he is optimistic that the aviation program could begin in fall 2024.

Having first contemplated the idea of starting an aviation program five years ago, Martin, a pilot himself, said he went on to spend “a number of years going through a bunch of loops and hoops” to get the idea off the ground. In this time, he submitted yearly grant applications with increasingly great monetary requests, hoping to make the most of the “highly competitive” grant program. Those by his side have been nothing but supportive of his efforts along the way, Martin said.

“Anyone I was talking to was excited about the idea,” he commented.

Enthusiasm, Martin said, stems from the potential “to be able to put something in play that’s going to put (the) school on the map.” He said the program would make Franklin Tech a “major player” in closing the skill gap created by aviation technicians aging out of the field with no successors.

“When you’re talking airplanes, it brings out the kid in everybody, so it will elicit the attention from young boys and girls thinking about the impact of flight,” Martin projected.

While no specific cost assessments or design plans have been completed, Martin said he has spoken to “various engineers” to field “ballpark ideas” of what the school’s future aircraft hangar might look like. He described a facility roughly 100-by-100 feet with a 20-foot-high hangar door that would accommodate aircraft as large as small corporate jets. It would be positioned somewhere within an 8,000-square-foot plot of land shared between the school and the neighboring Turners Falls Municipal Airport.

In addition to the hangar being a focus of the grant, “the equipment portion of it is major,” Martin said. The hangar will be outfitted with training modules for both jet engines and piston airplanes. This training will be complemented by software programs, including “some fun, fancy stuff that will help students get excited about the field of aviation,” such as a flight simulator. A third facet of the hangar’s contents will involve kits for students to assemble their own “flyable aircraft.” For now, pilot training will not be offered as part of the aviation program, but Martin said this may change “down the pike.”

Martin said while specifics have not yet been hashed out, he expects the Turners Falls Municipal Airport to play a major role in supporting the school’s new program.

“There is going to be a massive collaboration,” he said. “I don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like right now.”

“We’d like to have as much involvement as possible, and the (Airport) Commission and (Massachusetts Aeronautics Division) are all about it,” commented Airport Manager Bryan Camden, who is also a School Committee member and Franklin Tech alumnus. “It’s really going to put the school and our airport on the map. It’s really exciting.”

Other partners include the Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation, the Bridgewater State Aviation Science program and the newly established University of Massachusetts Amherst’s aviation research and training center.

Martin predicted that the addition of the aviation program may “stabilize enrollment,” counteracting a drop-off in numbers that is otherwise anticipated to occur within the next handful of years. He added that the program might bolster adult enrollment, too, as the plan is to eventually offer it through the school’s Career Technical Institute night class program.

Reach Julian Mendoza at 413-930-4231 or jmendoza@recorder.com.

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