I could tell you today’s flight of a two-seat kit airplane with the students who built it on board was an inspiring sight. But I’d rather let Dorothy Evans make that point.  The retired school teacher in Bridgeport, Connecticut heard about the flight on the radio yesterday and decided she had to see for herself the airplane high school students put together.

The non-profit Tango Flight Inc., based in Texas, is behind the program which sends a Van RV-12 kit airplane priced between 40 and 60 thousand dollars, with detailed assembly instructions to high schools around the country. Shop teachers and volunteers with aviation backgrounds, guide the assembly.

Once the planes are built, they are inspected, test flown and sold for roughly double the kit price. This finances the next build. The idea is to teach STEM skills and open students’ eyes to careers they might not have considered.

That was certainly the case for Tainy Perez, the 19-year-old whose radio interview drew Dorothy Evans to Sikorsky Airport. But it was equally true for other students at Bridgeport’s Bassick High, which is 94 percent minority and has some of the state’s lowest proficiency scores.

Students do a prelight check with Tango Flight’s Aaron Hollander

According to his older sister, Jocelyn, Cristian Rojas, was always tinkering with things around the house.

“He’s always doing some little thing. Always trying to fix something,” she told me with evident pride in her  brother’s role in building a plane. “He went into the program and said, ‘This is what I want to do.'”

The build-a-plane class at Bassick started three years ago, when Perez was in her sophomore year. She was in auto mechanics and had no particular interest in airplanes but shop teacher Stephen Blume suggested she check it out and was not surprised that she loved it. In his experience, most students do.

“They’re definitely excited about it. They love class. They run to come to class,” Blume said. “These kids have wonderful experience.”

David Paqua, a private pilot, an A&P mechanic and one of the volunteer instructors noticed right away that Perez was enthusiastic. She also had an aptitude for the work. When Perez graduated, Brenda Ranzha, who would become this year’s class valedictorian, stepped into Perez’ shoes. Ranzha plans to study engineering at the University of Connecticut this fall.

These are the results Tango Flight’s Aaron Hollander says he wants to see.

“Initially I wanted to see a lot of the students get involved in aviation as a career,” said the Tango Flight board member and the pilot who accompanied all of the students on their first flights.

“But I quickly came to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter. As long they get exposure to something they might enjoy and realize they can do something. They can see a vision that goes beyond their high school and where they live.”

After a ceremony in the hangar of Three Winds Aviation, Michael Rivera was the first to buckle into the small cockpit. He said he was not nervous to go up in the airplane he helped to build.

From a distance, his fellow student, Mohammad Islam and his parents watched the takeoff. Islam had responsibility for installing the wheels and he breathed a sigh of relief as they left the ground. He laughed as I reminded him takeoff isn’t the toughest test of the wheels, landing is.

Rivera and every other student landed safely in the plane they made. The building of a life with a broader horizon comes next.