COVER STORY


THE BIG PICTURE Priest and Delahoussaye tell D.O.M. magazine that this project was about giving back to the industry that has given them so much. “The other piece of this that we are trying to say is that many students these days are


training on aircraft and components and don’t know the story behind them,” says Priest. “They don’t know where it came from or why. We want to try to instill in the students the history behind the aircraft they are training on. We want them to


understand that this aircraft’s purpose in its life was to save lives. We want them to understand the background and some of its history, and let the aircraft tell its story.” “When we got back home, I loaded some of the photos on social media,” says Delahoussaye. “We got tons of people commenting, ‘Great job.’ ‘Schools are really needing this.’ ‘Congratulations!’ My intent was to light a fire in the industry for people that have run-out aircraft that don’t know what to do with them. Otherwise, they would sell them to a broker that would use some of the serviceable parts and salvage the rest. There are a lot of airplanes that are sitting in hangars. I got an email from a guy that asked if we would pick a Learjet up and dissemble it and take it to a school in California. Within a day, before we could finish deciding if we wanted to tackle the project, they found someone to help them.” “We want companies to understand that this is an option for their out of service aircraft,” Priest adds. “We had a company that had an aircraft which was no longer useable to them. It was no longer an asset. There may be a number of older aircraft that will be coming out of service with the upcoming ADS-B mandate. This is one alternative where a company can get some value through a tax write-off and have the aircraft moved to a place where it can be an education tool for the next generation of technicians. While it was fun for us, and we had a great time doing it, we wanted to let people know that this is something that is greatly needed. A&P schools desperately need training aids. Many schools need higher-levels of technology in the schools as training aids than they have. Some of these training aids are extremely expensive to purchase. A lot of these schools have very limited budgets. Donating is a way to move the aircraft out of the books and out of the facility while giving it a second life!”


1-2 page AMT vertical.indd 1 10 DOMmagazine.com | july 2019 8/7/18 9:35 AM


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68