| Central Oregon Aviation Firm Throttles Up Expansion and Offers Pilots New Horizons |
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| WorkSource recruits for Enterprise Zone Business |
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Mary Schu Dominick, President, Chief Pilot/Chief Instructor
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If you've ever dreamed of soaring in the ultimate freedom, flight, Central Oregon's Wings of the Cascades has an individually - tailored flight instruction program for you. Whether you are pursuing flight for personal recreation or a challenging profession, their mission is to change lives through aviation.
Wings of the Cascades began as little more than a vision for May Schu Dominick. She had no planes, but as a savvy pilot, she had something more valuable - 35 years of experience as a corporate pilot flying for big names like tire mogul Les Schwab. In the beginning, Mary ran her flight school out of her car trunk. She had a knack for finding people who had planes, but didn't know how to fly them. Finally, in 1998, Mary had taken her passion for flying and gift of teaching others to the next level. She bought her fledgling firm's first Cessna and set up shop at the Redmond Airport.
Today, Wings of the Cascades has positioned itself squarely in the booming recreational area of Central Oregon, where private and regional aviation is expanding, with seven aircraft and more on the way.
"Right now is a fantastic time to get into aviation flying," says General Manager Gary
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General Manager Gary Dominick
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Dominick, who is also Mary's husband. "The industry itself has pretty much recovered from 9-11. Following that, there were several flight schools that went out of business, as you can imagine. So it was a real down time for aviation. The last two or three years it has increased to the level before 9-11 and in some ways, it is expanding. And where the expansion is occurring is in the regional carriers. The smaller jets. Commercial jets are still having their difficulties. There are flights being cancelled at regional airlines because they don’t have the pilots."
 The Cessna Pilot Center now has 40 to 50 full-time students and a lot of part timers who split their time between family, work and flying. As an FAA-approved 141 flight center, they can qualify pilots for their private license or as a regional airlines jet pilot in about 12-14 months, depending on the student's motivation.
"We have a lot of career changers who are sick and tired of doing whatever they've been doing," Gary explains. "Now is just a wonderful time to get into aviation - flying."
Although an ardent supporter of education, Gary thinks training for a career in flying rivals the expense and outcome of pursuing a baccalaureate degree.
"It is not inexpensive. To get your private pilot’s license, which is the first level, its somewhere
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Flight Training Manager
Sylvia Stinson
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between 12 and 15 thousand," Gary says.
Compare that to four years of in-state undergraduate tuition at the University of Oregon, and you'll be looking at an investment of at least $25,000, without the promise of landing a job.
"You come out of our program, and you are pretty much assured of an interview. And with the type of training you get here, and the affiliations that we have, it’s a high probability of coming out with a job," explains Gary.
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Flight Instructors "Cougar" Laymon (L) and Luis Pla
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Flight training and charter flights have been the mainstay for Wings of the Cascades, but recently the firm has ventured into aviation maintenance, refueling, and private jets. They're expansion qualified them as an Enterprise Zone business which offers tax abatements for developing a new jet center at the Redmond Airport. It will be the Desert Wings Jet Center and will feature Mustang Jets, Cessna Skycatcher trainers, and more staff to operate the new facility.
That's when Gary cruised in to meet with Patti Cook and the recruiting staff at WorkSource Redmond. "I immediately called Patti, met with her, started talking to her about what our needs were – established a profile, because at that time we were hiring not just maintenance folks, but admin folks as well. We had referrals from her and have hired some individuals from those referrals. She’s always available if we have a question or an issue. And in addition to that, she follows up. 'How are things going?' 'How was the applicant we sent over – how did that work?' That was exceptional follow-up. So we really appreciated that."
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Director of Maintenance William Wilkinson
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"Patti has really been great. We are an Enterprise Zone business. We have already exceeded the number of people that we said we would hire and we will exceed that by even more once we get our new facility. We will basically expand everything we are currently doing: Flight instruction, outside maintenance for aircraft, we will be doing fueling and have more of a focus on the jet traffic that will be coming to Central Oregon. It’s a recreational area – this place is booming and it will continue to – even given that it is a little bit of a slowdown now. What’s drawing people here is the recreation. You’ve got mountains, Mt. Bachelor and all the wonderful snow. You’ve got all the streams and camping areas, golf courses, and development. It’s not going to slowdown. A lot of the people who come in would not like to wait in lines for their security check for the commercials, they have their own jets. So that’s going to be a major focus of who we will be catering to. They come in to a destination resort, and we hook them up with that."
"Before working with WorkSource we went through a staffing agency. And I guess we hired a couple from there and they worked out somewhat okay, but we have saved a fair amount of money from our personnel budget by using WorkSource. We’ve been real fortunate too, from the referrals we got from WorkSource – the quality. It is a good class of folks who come to us. No replacement issues. That saves money. You look at down time, overload of the people who are here, that’s all costs – so that’s all savings. We really appreciate being able to work with WorkSource. I’m impressed."
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Lee Garcia, Accounting
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Pam Nord, Executive Assistant
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