The Ozarks Technical Community College Board of Trustees today approved for OTC to enter into an agreement with Premier Flight Center LLC, which is the first step toward the college offering an aviation-focused associate degree. Graduates of OTC’s program will be prepared to immediately work as commercial pilots.
The aviation program will consist of ground school classes taught by OTC instructors at the OTC Springfield Campus while Premier Flight Center LLC will teach flight training at the former Springfield-Branson National Airport terminal. North Star Aviation out of Minnesota owns Premier Flight Center, a Missouri-based LLC, and operates a flight school there along with a satellite location in Bowling Green, Ohio. Premier Flight Center LLC will provide the planes for the program.
Students will be charged the normal OTC Tier II tuition rate for ground school classes, which is $108 per credit hour for in-district students for the 2016-2017 school year. The lab fees for flight instruction to qualify a student to become a commercial pilot are $53,705, which is comparable to most flight schools.
The program still has to be approved by the Missouri Department of Higher Education, the U.S. Department of Education and has to be accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. Pending those results, the soonest OTC would begin offering classes is the fall of 2017.