PHOTO COURTESY RANDALL ROCHON
INTHESPOTLIGHT By Dan Reed
Randall Rochon, Vice Chair, Organization
of Black Aerospace Professionals When black students see people like them succeeding in aviation, then they know they can do it too.
for two days in Chicago to discuss how they might increase the number of minority young people seeking to enter the field of aviation; the group ended up found- ing the Organization of Black Airline Pilots. In the 44 years since, the group has renamed itself the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals (OBAP) and embraced a broader focus: to increase minority participation in aero- space through exposure, training, mentoring, and scholarships. OBAP’s staff, volunteers, and mentors have touched hundreds of thousands of lives through the organiza- tion’s outreach and education programs. Still, less than 3% of US commercial pilots are black, and the number of black execu-
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tives and engineers in aviation barely regis- ters on the percentage scales. So much more work remains to be done. Randall Rochon, a United Airlines 757/767 first officer
and OBAP’s vice chairman, is the best kind of ambassa- dor for the group: someone who has directly benefited from its work. Rochon had fallen in love with flying as a kid, choosing a career as a pilot over the FBI. He attended OBAP’s Aerospace Career Education Academy and benefited from OBAP mentoring and networking during college. Thanks to that support, Rochon received a Diversity in Aviation Scholarship from Western Michigan University in conjunction with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, earning a bachelor’s degree in flight.
20 ROTOR 2020 Q3
ROTOR: How involved is OBAP in promoting rotorcraft careers? Rochon: A number of minority pilots enter the helicop- ter side of the business from the military. That’s the pri- mary source of black and minority pilots in the commercial helicopter world. But one of the things we’ve identified is the need to promote helicopter flying as an option to minority stu- dents. We don’t have numbers yet, but it’s pretty obvi- ous that minorities are a very small percentage of the employment base there. At OBAP Aerospace Professionals in School (APIS) events at elementary schools, students get to talk to the
N 1976, 38 BLACK US AIRLINE pilots—roughly half of all black pilots then employed by US carriers—met
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