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Rankin Inlet to host the northern-most flight school

Those with aviation dreams in the Kivalliq capital just got a tremendous opportunity to pursue them, as the Atik Mason Indigenous Pilot Pathway program is opening in Rankin Inlet and seeking its first students.

“It’s a fully funded opportunity for Indigenous community members to learn and fly and build a career as professional pilots,” explained Lisa McGivery, manager of Exchange Income Corporation, an acquisition-oriented company focused on aerospace, aviation and manufacturing.

“We’re really, really excited to have that program expand up there and give opportunity to more people to join the program and learn how to fly,” she said.

The pathway program started in Thompson, Manitoba, in 2022 as a response to the Truth and Reconciliation calls to action. This year, the program will be celebrating its first graduating class, with four students moving on to become line pilots and one becoming an instructor.

McGivery said the company wanted to focus on Northern communities and seeing as Calm Air is one of its subsidiaries, Rankin Inlet made sense.

“It gives a lot of the students the opportunity to fly in and out of their home communities, and that’s something that we’ve seen really good success with our initial Thompson class,” said McGivery. “A lot of the students were really excited to become a pilot and be able to fly into their home communities.”

Starting May, 12 students in Rankin Inlet will embark on the seasonal program, beginning with ground school lessons, including flight theory, aerodynamics, weather and aviation laws. They then move on to learning to fly and getting up into the air.

The aim after the first season is that students will be finished their recreational pilot’s license, and then in the following year, students can return to get their private pilot licence and onwards from there. Students who make it through both years will then have the option to transition to Moncton Flight College to pursue a commercial pilot licence and further training.

The only requirements to apply are a high-school diploma, be 18 or older, be in good physical health, have government identification and a Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. card.

“You don’t necessarily have to have any flight training,” said McGivery. “That’s kind of the beauty of the program. It gives the opportunity to people who may have always wanted to be a pilot and never had the opportunity to do so.”

She’s hoping to get as many applications as possible, saying that students will be selected every year for as long as the program is running – and currently, there’s no end date for it.

“I think this program is incredibly important for our Indigenous communities,” said McGivery. “I’m really excited to say that we’re now seeing people get to the point of graduating, and it’s really exciting to watch them excel through the program and graduate and move forward with becoming a line pilot.”

The program is named after Timothy Atik ‘Tik’ Mason, an Indigenous pilot at Perimeter Aviation whose experience inspired the project. Mason is also a Juno award-winning musician who is one of Manitoba’s few commercially licensed indigenous pilots.

Interested applicants can learn more at indigenouspilotpathway.ca.