WARRENTON — Three aviation enthusiasts hope to share their passion for flying with the North Coast at a new aviation school based at the Astoria Regional Airport.

Phil Rohr, Dave West and Thaddeus Fickel — the president, vice president and secretary-treasurer for Astoria Aviation — met through their own projects at the airport and combined their skills to create the first aviation school the Lower Columbia area has seen in several years.

Rohr, a businessman who serves as the president of the local Experimental Aircraft Association, has been working to build his own aircraft. West is an aviation mechanic with Life Flight Network and Fickel is a certified flight instructor.

“We’ve been kind of doing this on and off for the last couple of months and had some students and saw that the need was pretty strong and decided to kind of band together and make this a reality,” West said. “And the whole area really needs it. There’s a lot of interest in aviation.”

Fickel had been giving private flight lessons to students for the past year, but found quickly that the demand was greater than he could meet himself. Combining forces with Rohr and West — and with the support of the Port of Astoria, which owns the airport — Astoria Aviation now offers flight training and aircraft rentals for experienced pilots and beginners.

Personal approach

As opposed to bigger flight schools, Astoria Aviation aims to bring a more personal, individualized approach to learning to fly. Pilots-in-training can decide on their own timelines and fly as frequently as they wish.

“The flying part is pretty much exclusively one-on-one with the instructor and the student,” Fickel said. “They progress at their own pace, and they have their own strengths and weaknesses, and as the instructor I get to figure out what those are and try to be efficient with teaching people in a way that is memorable and meaningful to them.”

If they’re committed, Rohr said, students should be able to obtain their private pilot license within a year and be well on their way to a career in aviation.

“The whole idea of this business is to promote aviation, get people involved and get the younger generation involved and make them realize it’s not impossible to get a good career in it,” Rohr said. “You don’t have to go to college for it; you can do it all here. We would like to be a one-stop flight school … There’s a lot of possibilities.”

Training options

Astoria Aviation also offers a ground school class on Tuesday nights to help people prepare for the written examination to become private pilots. While the course is catered to those new to flying, West noted that certified pilots and flight instructors can also join to refresh their skills or contribute their wisdom to new pilots.

“We are kind of here to support [experienced pilots] with extra training or, you know, maintenance on their airplane or things like that, and then trying to draw in new people,” Fickel said.

Many of the aviation school’s students had already begun their flight training at flight schools in Hillsboro and Kelso, Washington, and were excited to discover there was an opportunity closer to home.

There is also a place at the flight school for beginners: Fickel encourages those interested to take a “discovery flight,” a 30-minute introductory flight experience.

“A lot of people would like to be able to fly an airplane all by themselves,” Fickel said. “And we encourage people to come up for a discovery flight because they can see how easy it is and how attainable it is … airplanes are pretty easy to fly.”

Small for now

Astoria Aviation is a small operation, for now. Fickel is its only flight instructor, and they have just one plane — a 1973 Piper Cherokee 140, affectionately known as “Oscar” — in use, while the other — “Charlie,” a Cessna 150E — undergoes inspection.

But Rohr, West and Fickel see potential for expansion. They hope to bring in additional staff, including more flight instructors and mechanics, and acquire additional aircraft. They also intend to connect with local high schools and the community college to encourage students to consider aviation as a career.

“The biggest thing is getting kids involved, going around to the high schools and promoting that, because the world is in a desperate need for pilots right now,” Rohr said.

Fickel echoed the potential for growth.

“There’s small towns around here that have quite a bustling, busy flight school on the field,” Fickel said. “There’s no reason why Astoria can’t be one of them.”