Cascade Warbirds has awarded the first scholarship from its new aircraft maintenance program to Kloe Manderville, a student at Big Bend Community College in Moses Lake, Washington, who is working toward her Airframe and Powerplant certificates. The program is offered at two Washington schools — Big Bend on the east side of the Cascades and Clover Park Technical College in Puyallup on the west — and recipients are selected by faculty recommendation in collaborative review with the organization’s A&P Scholarship Chair, Robin Hill.
The notable part is how the organization describes its own timing. Cascade Warbirds has funded pilot scholarships for decades. Commanding Officer Bob Stoney said this program was “overdue.”
He’s right, and the reason is worth spelling out.
Who Got It, and How
Manderville is pursuing A&P certification at Big Bend, one of Washington’s two community college aviation maintenance programs on the eastern side of the state. She was recommended by Big Bend faculty working with Hill, which is a meaningfully different selection mechanism from the essay-and-application model most aviation scholarships use.
That design choice matters. An essay competition rewards students who are good at applying for things. A faculty recommendation rewards students the instructors have watched work for a term or two — which, in a hands-on trade program, is closer to the thing being funded. It also means the award can reach a student who would never have found the application on their own.
Manderville sent the organization a thank-you note. For a volunteer group running a first-year program on donated money, that is the entire feedback loop.
Two Schools, Both Sides of the Mountains
The two-campus structure is not incidental. Washington’s geography splits its aviation workforce in half:
| School | Location | Side of the Cascades |
|---|---|---|
| Big Bend Community College | Moses Lake | East |
| Clover Park Technical College | Puyallup (South Hill campus) | West |
Moses Lake and Puyallup are roughly 180 road miles apart with a mountain range in between. For a working student in Grant County, a scholarship available only in Puyallup is not a scholarship. Covering both sides is how a small volunteer organization gets statewide reach without statewide money.
Clover Park offers Airframe and Powerplant certificates separately — five quarters each — plus a two-year degree track running eight quarters. Big Bend’s Aviation Maintenance Technology program is a two-year, 134-credit Associate of Applied Science. Both feed the same FAA certification, and both sit in a part of the training system that gets far less attention than flight schools do.
Why “Overdue” Is the Right Word
Here is the structural problem Stoney’s one-word assessment points at.
Aviation philanthropy flows overwhelmingly toward pilots. Cascade Warbirds’ own portfolio is a fair illustration: its Memorial Youth Flight Training Scholarship runs about $1,350 per award and covers private pilot ground school, tuition, books, and two introductory flights, and its Continuing Aviation Education Grant pays $2,500 toward a private pilot certificate in staged installments. Both are good programs. Both existed for years before anything addressed maintenance.
That pattern repeats across the industry, and it isn’t malice — it’s visibility. Flight training is the story everybody tells about aviation. The costs are dramatic and widely reported: the median private pilot certificate now runs around $16,500, up roughly 83% from about $9,000 in 2020, according to Redbird’s State of Flight Training 2026 report. A scholarship that puts a teenager in a cockpit is easy to photograph and easy to explain to a donor.
Nobody photographs a torque wrench.
Meanwhile the shortage on the maintenance side may be the more binding constraint on the industry’s future. And critically, it is not a capacity problem. Roughly one-third of aviation maintenance technician school seats nationally go unfilled, according to the Aviation Technician Education Council. The classrooms exist. The instructors exist. The FAA-certificated Part 147 programs exist. What’s missing is students who know the career is there and can afford to get through the program.
That is precisely the kind of gap a $1,000-or-so scholarship and a faculty recommendation can actually move. A pilot shortage needs capital. A maintenance pipeline problem largely needs attention — and a small amount of money delivered to the right person at the right moment.
What the Shortage Looks Like in Numbers
| Measure | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| A&P school seats unfilled nationally | ~1 in 3 | ATEC |
| Average age of U.S. aviation mechanic | 54 | ATEC |
| Estimated mechanic shortfall | ~10% | ATEC |
| North American maintenance technicians needed through 2044 | 123,000 | Boeing Pilot & Technician Outlook |
| Global maintenance technicians needed | ~710,000 | Boeing Pilot & Technician Outlook |
The average-age figure is the one that should worry operators. A workforce averaging 54 is a workforce with a retirement cliff in it, and A&P certification is not something you can accelerate past a certain point — the FAA requires documented experience or completion of a Part 147 program, and the practical and oral exams are not waivable.
The industry has started moving. The AOPA Foundation added a maintenance pathway to its high school aviation curriculum, with field testing scheduled for 2028, and Part 147 itself has been undergoing modernization that gives schools more flexibility in how they deliver training. But a curriculum that field-tests in 2028 does not help a student enrolled in Moses Lake in 2026.
What These Programs Actually Cost
For anyone weighing this path, Washington’s published figures give a rough shape:
Big Bend Community College — Aviation Maintenance Technology AAS
- Length: 2 years, 134 credits
- Tuition: $17,682.64
- Required fees: $0
- Books and supplies: approximately $2,500 (estimated)
- Completion rate: 79% of a reported cohort of 11 students
Two honest caveats on that data. First, the state’s CareerBridge listing shows a 0% employment rate and $0 median annual earnings for the Big Bend program alongside a $22 median hourly wage — figures that are internally contradictory and almost certainly reflect unreported data rather than actual outcomes. The page itself warns that small or new programs often have gaps. Nobody should read those as real placement numbers. Second, Clover Park does not publish program cost on its program page, so a direct comparison isn’t available.
What the numbers do establish is scale. Roughly $20,000 all-in for a two-year A&P program is real money for a working student — and it is also meaningfully less than the median private pilot certificate alone, before an instrument rating, a commercial certificate, or a CFI. That contrast is part of why the maintenance path deserves more funding attention than it gets, not less.
Clover Park’s program page claims its students average among the highest FAA certification pass rates in the nation. It offers no supporting data, and the page also notes that placement is not guaranteed. Treat the claim as marketing until someone publishes the figure.
What Isn’t Published Yet
Being straight about the gaps: as of mid-October 2026, Cascade Warbirds has not publicly posted the A&P scholarship’s award amount, application cycle, deadline, or detailed eligibility criteria the way it posts its pilot scholarships. The organization directs interested students to the counseling office at each school, and to its own youth programs page.
For students at Big Bend or Clover Park, the counseling office is the right first call. For anyone outside those two schools, there is nothing to apply for yet — this is a two-campus pilot program, not a statewide fund.
The Bottom Line
A volunteer warbird organization in Washington just handed its first maintenance scholarship to a student in Moses Lake, and its commanding officer publicly called the program overdue. Both halves of that sentence are the story.
Aviation has spent decades building scholarship infrastructure for pilots while a third of its mechanic training seats sit empty. Cascade Warbirds noticed and fixed it at its own scale, for two schools, starting with one student. That is not a solution to a national workforce problem. It is an example of the specific thing the problem responds to — someone with local relationships deciding that the mechanics deserved a fund too.
More information is available on the Cascade Warbirds website or from the counseling office at either school.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Cascade Warbirds A&P scholarship? It is a newly created scholarship program from Cascade Warbirds, a Washington-based warbird organization affiliated with EAA Warbirds of America, supporting students enrolled in aircraft maintenance programs working toward FAA Airframe and Powerplant certificates. It is currently offered at two schools: Big Bend Community College in Moses Lake and Clover Park Technical College in Puyallup. Recipients are selected by faculty recommendation in collaborative review with the organization’s A&P Scholarship Chair, Robin Hill. The award amount and application cycle have not been publicly posted; interested students should contact the counseling office at either school.
Who was the first recipient? Kloe Manderville, a student at Big Bend Community College in Moses Lake, Washington, working toward her Airframe and Powerplant certificates. She was recommended by Big Bend faculty in collaborative review with Robin Hill.
Why do aviation maintenance programs have unfilled seats if there’s a mechanic shortage? Because the shortage is an awareness and affordability problem rather than a capacity problem. The Aviation Technician Education Council reports that roughly one-third of aviation maintenance technician school seats nationally go unfilled. The FAA-certificated Part 147 programs, instructors, and classroom capacity largely exist — what’s missing is students who know the career path exists and can get through the program financially. That is why relatively small, well-targeted scholarships can have outsized effect on the maintenance pipeline compared to flight training.
How much does A&P school cost in Washington? Big Bend Community College’s two-year, 134-credit Aviation Maintenance Technology AAS lists tuition of $17,682.64 with no required fees and roughly $2,500 in estimated books and supplies. Clover Park Technical College offers Airframe and Powerplant certificates at five quarters each plus an eight-quarter degree track but does not publish program cost on its program page. For context, roughly $20,000 for a complete two-year A&P program is less than the current median cost of a private pilot certificate alone.
How many aviation mechanics does the industry need? Boeing’s Pilot & Technician Outlook projects demand for about 123,000 maintenance technicians in North America through 2044 and roughly 710,000 globally. The Aviation Technician Education Council estimates a current shortfall near 10% and puts the average age of a U.S. aviation mechanic at 54 — meaning a substantial share of the existing workforce is near retirement while roughly a third of training seats go unused.
Sources:
- Cascade Warbirds — Youth and Scholarship Programs
- General Aviation News — Deadline Looms for Cascade Warbirds Scholarships (February 17, 2026)
- Washington CareerBridge — Big Bend Community College, Aviation Maintenance Technology
- Big Bend Community College — Aviation Maintenance Technology
- Clover Park Technical College — Aviation Maintenance Technician Program
- Aviation Technician Education Council — Workforce Data
- Boeing — Pilot and Technician Outlook
