The Aero Experience Week In Review: Our Midwest Aviation Partners Focus on Long-Term Projects

By Carmelo Turdo

The Aero Experience wraps up another week visiting our Midwest Aviation Community partners to gather media for future stories and videos. In this week in review post, we include our visits to three area airports and look ahead to stories we will soon cover in detail. Here we feature the areas of humanitarian aviation, aviation safety, and aviation maintenance. We even have a last look at migrating natural flyers that were included in our previous post!

Spirit of St. Louis Airport, Chesterfield, MO

This week we visited Wings of Hope to celebrate the launch of their newest fleet aircraft, a twin-engine Piper Navajo, on a Medical Relief and Air Transport Mission from Columbus, NE to St. Louis and back. The Navajo recently underwent a year-long upgrade program that will be discussed in detail in the upcoming full-length story. Here we show the departure on the return flight from Wings of Hope World Headquarters. 

St. Louis Downtown Airport, Cahokia, IL

Our next stop is Big River Aviation, just across the Mississippi River at Illinois' third busiest airport. In their hangar, we found a variety of aircraft undergoing inspections and maintenance procedures for individual and fleet customers from around the region. Big River Aviation operates from their main facility at the airport along with a satellite location at Sullivan, MO Regional Airport. As seen in our previous week in review post, they also perform aircraft maintenance at other airports on a case-by-case basis as well.

Creve Coeur Airport, Maryland Heights, MO 

The Greater St. Louis Flight Instructors Association and the FAA presented a program by St. Louis TRACON controller Pete Seddon in the main terminal hangar. The two-hour interactive session reviewed the area's air traffic system and the practical application of pilot/controller communication in various scenarios. Here we show some views of the participants as well as recognition of the airport's support of the local aviation community with an award accepted by Albert Stix.

Natural Flyers: American White Pelicans in Clarksville, MO

The final edition in our natural flyers series features the migration of American White Pelicans to the Mississippi River at Clarksville, MO. These large, graceful birds have mostly replaced the Bald Eagles this far south along the Midwest waterways, and soon the migrating species will find their way back to their home territories. See the link above and previous stories for the full coverage along with the preview below.