AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2025 - 53

Bahamas are on board. If we could get
Canada done, it would make me really
happy, " said Baker.
You Can Fly
Baker becomes animated when recounting
the genesis of the You Can Fly
program-to many, AOPA's greatest
achievement under his leadership (see
" President's Position, " p. 4). " I spent a lot
of time in listening mode when I came
on board, and I kept hearing people say,
'Kids don't care about aviation anymore.'
That was repeated so often, but I didn't
believe it, " said Baker. " So, we started
doing a little bit of research and found
out that there were no pathways for people
to get excited about aviation in the
ways that might have happened in the
past. GA was a growing business from a
manufacturer's perspective through the
late '80s, and they were out promoting
it. But who is promoting aviation today
to get people excited about it and show
them how to get started? "
Intent on making flying more accessible
and affordable, Baker envisioned
segmenting an aviator's life into four
areas: learning about aviation, the flight
training experience, affordable flying, and
getting rusty pilots back into flying. " And
so, we broke it down into those four components
and said we're going to try and
become a resource center for all the pieces
of that, " he said. Today, these resources
are embodied in the AOPA Foundation
You Can Fly program as the High School,
Flight Training, Flying Clubs, and Rusty
Pilots initiatives.
" I said, 'I think we can raise the money
to do this without using any of the membership
dues.' All the money would come from
donors, so we could build these resources
and put them out in the world, " said Baker.
" Our donors got excited about this idea, and
we raised well north of $50 million to create
this effort. Thanks to those generous
donors, the high school program is free. "
Raising the money was the easy part.
Actually building a rigorous academic
program that meets modern education
standards and captures the attention of
teenagers was much harder.
" You know, I've always been naïve, "
said Baker. " Because I had taken ground
school in eleventh grade in my high school
in White Bear, Minnesota, I thought, well,
how hard can this be? "
In hindsight, Baker's glad he didn't
realize just what a challenging project
he was taking on. " It's always good not to
know what it really takes when you jump
into some of these things, " he mused,
chuckling. " Because if you had it fully
fleshed out, you probably wouldn't do it. "
The You Can Fly High School team
had a big job ahead-build an aviation
STEM curriculum, prove that nonpilot
teachers could be trained to teach it, and
demonstrate that students would want to
take the class. " So, we started out small
and built on that success, " said Baker.
AOPA's High School Aviation STEM
Curriculum began with a ninth-grade
class and now offers seven different
courses for grades nine through 12. " It's a
big success now, but there's a much bigger
vision of what this can become, " said
Baker. " There are 25,000 high schools
in this country. And I said, 'Well, I think
we can be in 10 percent of them.' That's
2,500 high schools in 50 states. And it's
very gratifying to me to see this year
we're going to be almost halfway to the
goal that I had in mind. We have more
than 1,400 high schools that are affected
by this program, and almost 30,000 kids
in 48 states taking the AOPA curriculum
this semester. "
Important work remaining
Baker rattles off three issues that have his
attention but will not be fully resolved
when he leaves AOPA. " The biggest is this
unleaded avgas thing, " said Baker. " We've
got one fuel, GAMI's G100UL, that's now
for sale at one airport, and we've flown
it. There are a couple of others that are
hopefully around the corner. But it's going
to take a lot of effort to switch out and
move on to an unleaded future. "
Next on his hit list is insurance-
especially for a certain group of pilots.
" Insurance is one of the biggest frustrations
for highly experienced pilots. You
Baker demonstrates
GAMI G100UL unleaded
fuel in the dual-fuel
Beechcraft Baron,
awards the AOPA
Sweepstakes Grumman
Tiger to winner Alex
Young, and co-chairs
an Eliminate Aviation
Gasoline Lead Emissions
(EAGLE) meeting.
AOPA PILOT / January 2021
53
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2025

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