Yesterday at SFO, Captain Barrington Irving celebrated the first cohort of Bay Area students in his tuition-free aviation training program.
In 2007, Captain Irving set two world records when his plane touched down in Miami after a 97 day journey around the globe. He was the youngest person, and the first Black pilot, to fly solo around the world.
He says the accomplishment didn’t come easy.
"I did it with no weather radar, no de-icing," said Irving. "So on paper, I should have never made it."
And the plane he piloted, he made himself. Irving went to manufacturing companies, one by one, and managed to get 42 aircraft parts just from donations.
"That's how I used street hustle to get my hands on a $650,000 single-engine airplane to fly around the world," said Irving.
Now, at the Barrington Irving Technical Training School, or BITTS, he's helping young people in the Bay start their aviation careers.
"So it’s opening up mindset," said Irving. "But providing empowering experiences where a young person can say, you know what? I think I can do this."
In partnership with Signature Aviation, high school students at BITTS spend 6 weeks learning everything from soldering electronics to marshalling an aircraft.
"I absolutely loved aviation ever since I was a kid," said Skyler Chan, a BITTS participant and incoming junior at a San Francisco high school. He says this program is a dream come true, and shows off the model plane he built.
"We have to solder all the wires here using the soldering gun," said Skyler, "and then once it's done, it can turn on."
Skyler’s mom, Jessie Chan, says opportunities like this are usually out of reach for families like theirs.
"For some students... they cannot afford it, they think this dream is unreachable," said Jessie. But through BITTS, "it makes them think this is reachable. You make it like, 'oh, I can do it.'"
Captain Irving says that’s exactly the point.
