Plane & Pilot Magazine Spotlights our Program

Written By Beth White

“Youth in Aviation – The Next Generation” shined a national spotlight on a powerful truth: young people do not need deep pockets or long aviation legacies to step into this field. Through programs like Habitat for Aviation in Vermont, the Ron Alexander Youth Aviation Program in Georgia, and the Lakeland Aero Club in Florida, Cayla McLeod’s article highlights how hands-on learning, mentorship, and sweat-equity flight time create real pathways to pilot certificates, A&P licenses, and careers across the industry. These are places where teens restore airplanes, build kitplanes, and discover they truly belong in aviation’s future.

We feel deeply honored that Habitat for Aviation and WOMEN BUILD PLANES were included in this story and especially grateful to be interviewed by Cayla McLeod, an accomplished pilot, influencer, and all-around badass who uses her platform to lift up the next generation. Her belief in our work, and in the power of giving young people real tools, real airplanes, and real responsibility, reflects exactly what happens in our hangar every week. When you trust youth with meaningful work, they rise—and so does the industry.

Beth White

Education Possibilitarian, Artist, Writer, Doula, Mentor, Aviatrix, Breast Cancer Survivor, Pilot-in-Command at Habitat for Aviation


In the spring of 2022, Beth White emerged from a 10-month battle with breast cancer with an idea: to create an apprenticeship program at Franklin County State Airport where youth work alongside adult mentors servicing conventional and electric aircraft. A pilot and airplane mechanic apprentice herself, and with family roots in the trades, Habitat for Aviation provides an taxilane for world learning opportunities for youth and adults who love to work with their hands to enter the FAA’s apprenticeship certification track. Each day she puts systems in place that make real John Dewey’s philosophy that we “learn best what we live” – a deep throughline from her time at Antioch University New England and as Regional Director for Big Picture Learning. Each learning experience is grounded in relationships, relevance, and practice. In October, 2023, Habitat for Aviation launched its Women Build Planes program, where an all-female team of Modern Day Rosies is building an airplane at Franklin County Airport, in northwestern Vermont, to show folks everywhere that despite the fact that only 2.6% of airplane mechanics are female, women BUILD, FLY, and FIX airplanes.

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Miranda’s Journey: From Apprentice to Mentor Through Harbor Freight Fellowship Initiative