A 17-year-old Washington D.C. resident has become one of the youngest Black aviators in the nation.
Christopher Ballinger is a rising senior at Sidwell Friends School. He enrolled in an eight-week Air Force Junior ROTC flight academy program over the summer.
The flight program was held at Walla Walla University in Washington State. Ballinger was one out of hundreds of applicants selected to attend. He said the schedule was very demanding but rewarding nevertheless.
Ballinger told WUSA-9, “This has been a phenomenal experience for me all the way around, but it has been intense.”
“We wake up at 6 a.m., some mornings at 4:30 a.m. to get ahead of the winds to fly six days a week, hours and hours of ground school, studying to pass all the tests, but it’s so worth it,” he continued.
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The program is a collaboration between the aerospace industry and the Air Force to address the nationwide pilot shortage and increase diversity, as minorities currently represent only 12% of all Air Force pilots.
According to their website, “Boeing predicts an annual need to hire 6,000 civilian pilots a year for the next 20 years. The military needs to quickly push that number over 8,000.”
Ballinger will be certified to fly any single-engine land plane after passing an FAA inspection. He hopes to move forward in his pilot career, helping to account for the discrepancies in the aviation industry.
“I have had this interest for a while,” Ballinger said. “This was something that was calling for me.”
He plans to apply and attend the Air Force Academy after high school to fly military planes.
He encourages others to “look for any and all opportunities if one shows up, take it because I promise you it will be worth it. Even if it doesn’t feel like it in the long run or maybe right after, you will see some results.”
Congratulations Christopher! Keep up the incredible work.
