Moody Aviation, the aviation training arm of Chicago-based Moody Bible Institute, has begun the descent toward its new home in Spokane and expects to arrive as scheduled this summer.


The flight school, which trains pilots and aviation mechanics for missionary work in remote areas, last month received accreditation from Washington state that allows it to offer a bachelor of science degree in mission aviation technology and also has garnered Federal Aviation Administration certification, says Cecil Bedford, Moodys aviation department manager, whos already here.


Flight instruction and aviation mechanics training will begin here next month, he says.


Meantime, work is expected to be completed later this month on Moodys 21,600-square-foot hangar here, next to the Northwest MedStar air-ambulance service facility on the south side of Felts Field, in Spokane Valley.


Moody Bible Institute announced plans nearly two years ago to move Moody Aviation to Spokane from Elizabethton, Tenn., and shortly thereafter, some of its students started on-ground classroom work here. The Tennessee facility graduated its final class last month and is in the process of flying its planes to Spokane.


Bedford says the school here will have five Cessna 172s, two Cessna 206s, a Cessna 182 with retractable gear, and a Cessna 140 with a tail wheel. The school also has two flight simulators it uses in its training. Five flight instructors and two aircraft maintenance instructors will work at the school, he says.


Jack Lewis, acting academic dean of Moody Northwest, the Bible colleges longtime Spokane campus, says the pilot-training program takes five years to complete, and the maintenance program takes 4 1/2 years to finish. The programs at the Tennessee facility took the same amount of time, but a different curriculum is being used in Spokane.


Here, all students first will go through one year of Bible studies at Moody Northwests facility, which is located at 611 E. Indiana, then take additional Bible classes throughout their remaining four years in the program. After the first year at Moody Northwest, Moody Aviation students will go through two years of airframe and power plant training at Spokane Community College, finishing there with an associates degree in that subject and an airplane-maintenance certificate.


After that, flight students will receive two years of training at Moody Aviations facility at Felts Field, about two-thirds of which will involve flight training, with the remainder centering on additional maintenance instruction. Maintenance majors will receive 1 1/2 years of training in that field after completing coursework at the community college.


Upon graduation, the pilot students will have commercial and instrument certification and often will have a flight instructors license.


When the program was in Tennessee, Lewis says, students would take two years of Bible studies at the main Moody campus in Chicago, then would go to the small, eastern Tennessee town for three years of technical training.


In Tennessee, students were isolated from the Bible input, Lewis says. Its integrated into the program throughout their time here. Thats a much better environment to train missionary pilots.


When Moody decided to move the flight school to Spokane about two years ago, it immediately sent new students here to begin the five-year process by taking courses at Moody Northwest and Spokane Community College. Now, the initial class of students in Spokane has finished its work at the community college and will be the first to start flight training hereand eventually will be the first graduating class at the Spokane school.


Bedford says each class will have between 20 and 25 students, and the school will have a total of about 125 students once its fully ramped up again. Lewis says thats in addition to the 125 full- and part-time students who take biblical studies courses at Moody Northwest.


About 80 percent of Moody Aviations students are pilot majors, and the rest major in maintenance, Bedford says. Most of the students are young men of usual college age, between 18 and 23 years old, from throughout the U.S., who have little or no flying experience, Bedford says.


About 60 percent of the students who graduate from the program end up going into missionary work, and the rest go to work as commercial pilots, flying planes oftentimes for freight haulers.


Bedford says some students end up seeking commercial jobs rather than performing missionary work because they leave school with large student-loan debts. He says it currently costs just under $60,000 to complete all five years of education.


Commercial jobs pay better than mission work, through which compensation typically is provided through support raised by the individual pilots.


Moody Aviation graduates currently are working at remote locations throughout the world, including in South America, Africa, parts of Asia, and Russia.


Moody Bible Institute started in 1886 in Chicago and formed Moody Aviation there in the late 1940s. The flight school, which was located near OHare International Airport, moved to Tennessee in the late 1960s when OHare began to grow and take more space there.


Bedford says Moody decided to move the school to Spokane so that it could team up with a community college to handle part of the instruction and pare down its staff size. The flight school in Tennessee employed 35 people, substantially more than the 10 or so planned here, he says.