JoAnna Scherer, a senior at Delaware Academy and Central School District at Delhi, received a $500 scholarship that will help her reach her goal of becoming a commercial pilot.
The Experimental Aircraft Association-Chapter 1240 recently announced that they were awarding Scherer the “Ready to Take Off Award and Scholarship” of $500, which she’ll be able to apply towards the cost of flying lessons, according to a news release.
She learned about the scholarship opportunity through DCMO BOCES Work Coordinator Christina McCall-Hopkins. McCall-Hopkins works with students at Delaware Academy through the Career Destinations program, and also sees Scherer at the DCMO BOCES Harrold Campus in Sidney Center, where she has been studying business technology.
Scherer received her scholarship award at the Aviation Day event on June 14, held at the Lt. Warren E. Eaton Airport in Norwich. She said receiving the scholarship “felt really good because training is very expensive.”
She said she tried to look for a part-time job but couldn’t find one that fit her schedule with school and that many businesses were looking for full-time employees. Once she received the scholarship she didn’t feel guilty about taking flying lessons. She said she didn’t want to ask her parents to pay for all of her training because flying was her dream and she wanted to pay for it herself.
Scherer said she has wanted to be a pilot since her first flight at 5 years old. “I got adopted from China,” she said, and the captain talked to her and gave her a badge to commemorate her first flight.
“I still have it,” she said. The gift was “very significant,” she said. “It instilled in me a passion and I have loved planes since that first flight.”
Scherer said she didn’t know if the pilot talked to all the children on the flight or just her, but the badge signified a “new chapter in my life,” and it was special.
Scherer said she started taking flying lessons in January in Sidney and has completed more than 28 hours of flying classes in a Cessna 150 plane, including 74 landings.
She is also taking flight simulator training. She said her favorite part of flying is “the views, and probably the feeling of turbulence. Most people don’t like that feeling, but I like the feeling of my stomach in my chest. If my instructor would let me, I’d probably pull 3 Gs.”
Scherer plans to get her private pilot’s license and go to Embry Riddle University in Daytona Beach, Florida, for an Aeronautical Science degree, the release stated. She said she wasn’t considering attending Embry; she was looking into attending either the University of North Dakota or Purdue University, however, several people encouraged her to go to Embry Riddle.
She ultimately decided to attend Embry Riddle after they gave her a better scholarship than North Dakota, she said.
Embry Riddle University has a partnership with the federal government that will allow Scherer to receive her commercial pilot’s license after 1,000 hours of training.
She decided to go to college instead of joining the Air Force, because “there was no guarantee I would be able to fly.”
She also weighed the amount of money she would make in the Air Force verses being a commercial pilot.
“Commercial pilots earn a good salary, and promotions increase that,” she said. “It should not take long to pay off the investment.”
She said her goal is to be a pilot for either Delta or United. However, a pilot at Air France “told me to love the job, not the airline. I just want to fly. That’s all I want to do.”