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To Hattie M. Junkin 1932-

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

December 27, 1938.

CIVIL AERONAUTICS AUTHORITY
WASHINGTON, D. C.

President Roosevelt today approved a program presented by the Civil Aeronautics Authority for the annual training of approximately 20,000 pilots in the colleges and universities of the United States, and authorized the allocation of $100,000 in National Youth Administration funds for the initial phase of the project.

This calls for a practical test of the plan during the second semester of the present school year in not to exceed a dozen educational centers in various parts of the country which will be selected on the basis of pioneering work already done by them in aviation training. It contemplates an average of fifty hours dual instruction and solo flying for a group of 300 college students between the ages of 18 and 25. This amount of flight training is more than sufficient to qualify candidates for the private pilot's certificates issued by the Civil Aeronautics Authority.

If results obtained at the chosen demonstration centers confirm the Civil Aeronautics Authority's belief in the soundness of its program, the training pattern developed between now and next June will be applied on a nation-wide scale in several hundred colleges and universities during the 1939-1940 school year.

The estimated cost of the first full-scale, one-year training program for 20,000 pilots is $9,800,000. That the goal of 20,000 pilots is easily attainable in a year's time from the 1,200,000 young men and women now enrolled in our colleges and universities is axiomatic considering the tremendous interest of modern youth in aviation.