Many things go into being awarded “best small base in the Navy”, one of those things being the opportunities you provide your students. Fly-In’s, which happen regularly on the flight line at NAS Whiting Field, are one of many reasons leaders from across the U.S. Navy Installations Command chose Naval Air Station Whiting Field as the best small base in the Navy. The Commander Navy Installation Command 2024 Installation Excellence Award program recognizes naval installations with outstanding performance throughout 2023, which includes management, program excellence and community outreach.
One of those programs is the “Try before you fly” or Fleet Fly-In which joins instructors who previously trained at NAS Whiting Field with current flight students to provide knowledge and help them prepare for the career decision of selecting their fleet aircraft platform. All Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard helicopter pilots in the U.S. go through basic flight school at Whiting Field, and each student applies for and is ultimately assigned to more advanced training for a specific type of aircraft. The type of helicopter a pilot is trained to fly determines his or her fleet aircraft platform affiliation.
The students aren’t the only ones looking forward to the annual event. Instructors love seeing the excitement and motivation the Fleet Fly-In brings to prospective aviators each year, and according to them, the hands-on experience is the way to discover in which fleet you’d like to fly. It’s a good thing to get them excited; as a student, you’re doing all the classes, all the coursework, and then you get to see something you could actually fly in the fleet, most aren’t sure what aircraft I wanted to fly in the fleet, but at Fleet Fly-In you get to fly in a few of them and talk to the instructors.
That excitement and motivation pays off in a multitude of ways including the positive reviews and feelings toward NAS Whiting Field.
Garfield out.
