200 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 10 In a larger context, Cape Girardeau’s general aviation and flight instruction services have substantially increased over the past few years. It has offered private flight instruction through Cape Air Charter since the 90s, but in the past ten years, the airport has also seen a sharp rise in helicopter flight instruction. The increase in hosted aviation education attracted the attention of Southeast Missouri State University and the U.S. Aviation Academy, which partnered with Cape Girardeau in 2021 to bring a professional pilot program to its runways. According to Amos, the goal is to “create a pipeline to try to offset some of the shortages that the airline industry is going to experience.” Since being implemented, the pilot program has shown that it will strongly contribute to solving the pilot shortage.
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