Four years after its pilot-training program was ended, Daniel Webster College students will again be able to take flying lessons for college credit under an unusual arrangement with a Massachusetts flying school.

Pilgrim Aviation of Plymouth, Mass., will base two Cessna 172 Skyhawks at Nashua Municipal Airport as of January, said Glenn Carter, dean of aviation science for the school. Under what is known as an articulation agreement, which allows college credits to be transferred between institutions, DWC students can take flying lessons with Pilgrim to obtain a private, instrument rating or commercial pilot’s license, and use that as general elective credits in various degree programs at the college.

“These are credits not just into air traffic management or aviation management programs, but also into business management programs, homeland security, psychology programs,” said Carter, a retired Navy officer.

The arrangement with Pilgrim Aviation will not, however, reinstate the flight operations program that was a core part of Daniel Webster College, which started as New England Aeronautical Institute in 1965 before becoming a four-year college in 1978. The college is right next to Nashua Airport and has long been associated with it.

The flight operations program involved hundreds of students annually in dozens of planes, and was the main reason that Boire Field was once called the second-busiest airport in New England. The new program will involve only a handful of students at first.

“We’re excited to have them provide flight instruction here, excited for any opportunity we have to encourage business here,” said Nashua Airport Manager Stephen Bourque. The airport already has five flight schools.

Getting a private pilot’s license in a Cessna Skyhawk usually costs from $8,500 to $9,000 at Pilgrim Aviation, depending on how many hours a student must fly to master the skills, said Matt Graves, marketing director for the cost.

The cost for Daniel Webster College students will be higher, to cover some of the special program costs, he said.

That expense would be partly balanced by reducing the payment students make to Daniel Webster College because of general elective classes they don’t have to attend to get their degree.

However, getting a pilot’s license will still be more expensive that taking traditional classes, as was the case when flight lessons were part of a degree program at the school. In its heyday as a flight operations school, Daniel Webster College had the highest average student debt load among New Hampshire colleges because of those extra costs.

DWC was in financial straits when it was bought by ITT Educational Services in 2009, a for-profit company. ITT dropped the flight program as of 2010 for financial reasons, which contributed to a drop in enrollment of about half, from roughly 1,200 to about 650.

Carter, who graduated from Emery-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida, said most universities with flight programs such as Emery-Riddle lease their aircraft, whereas Daniel Webster College owned dozens of small planes based at Nashua Airport, which contributed to the cost of the program.

The arrangement with Pilgrim Aviation is an unusual, perhaps unique, way to bright flight training back to the school, he said.

“Right off the bat I have four students in my school interested in getting into it. In engineering there are a couple. Once the word gets out nationwide, we’ll see more,” he said.

Pilgrim Aviation owns 13 aircraft and has about a dozen employees who work out of four small airports in Massachusetts, said Graves. It offers flight training up through the level of certified flight instructor,

“We will be setting up operations this month and hope to be active out of Nashua by the first of the year,” he said.

The company will start with two airplanes based at Nashua and see how things go. “We own our entire fleet, and as planes are necessary we can move them around,” Graves said.

The arrival of Pilgrim is good news for Nashua Airport, also known as Boire Field. It lost a lot of flight business, including income from aviation fuel sales, when DWC stopped the flight operations program. It has also been hit by the overall decline in general aviation, a term for non-commercial, non-scheduled flights, that followed the recession and the increase in the cost of aviation fuel.

Nashua airport averaged 125,000 operations – takeoffs and landings – per year as recently as 2005. In 2013, it saw only 60,000, according to Federal Aviation Administration reports.

Operations are trending slightly higher this year than last year, the first uptick since 2008, said Bourque, and the declining cost of oil should eventually cut the cost of flying.

David Brooks can be reached at 594-6531 or dbrooks@nashua
telegraph.com. Also, follow Brooks on Twitter (@GraniteGeek).