Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology has purchased 32 new Piper aircraft to expand the training fleet at its Jones Riverside Airport (KRVS) facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The college also took delivery of Piper’s 5000th Archer as part of a batch of 22 trainers previously ordered by the school. Spartan operates a fleet of approximately 45 aircraft made up of Piper Archers, Piper Seminoles, Cessna 152s and Cessna 172s.
“With the purchase of these aircraft, we are re-committing ourselves to Tulsa and Oklahoma,” said Spartan College CEO Rob Polston. “We could have chosen many places to invest and operate, but we happen to believe in our strategic plan to make Tulsa the most sought-after destination for flight and mechanic training as well as the single-largest and most-recognized flight school in the United States.”
Spartan College was established in 1928. According to the school, it has provided training to more than 100,000 pilots and technicians from more than 60 countries. Programs offered at Spartan include aviation flight, aviation maintenance, aviation electronics technology, nondestructive testing, quality control and technology management.
They’ll use the Cessna’s to introduce students to rudder skills. My training there as one of those 100,000 alumni was much more than an introduction to the rudder for which I feel fortunate.
Interesting, for those who learned to fly in tail draggers, our first rudder lesson was on the first day of training when we attempted to taxi a J3 Cub to the runup area. After that, every flight was a rudder lesson, from takeoff, to keeping the ball in the center, landing rollout, to taxing back to the tiedown area, all rudder (heel brakes too), a rudder dance. After that, we could fly pretty much anything.