The Year That Never Was
The year 2020 started off with a bang for us at Blue Chip Flight School. We welcomed our new students and by end of February, it seemed as though we would have our best year ever. However, COVID and the universe had other ideas. On the 23rd of March, it was announced that we as a country would be entering a hard lockdown from the 27th of March 2020 for a period of 21 days, but as all well know this was extended to a period.
This of course meant no more flying or training at our facility located at Wonderboom National Airport.
At Blue Chip, we took the very proactive steps to try and keep everybody’s training ticking over, no matter where in the world they might be located. Though the practical flight training was stopped, we managed to get SACAA approval to continue with our Groundschools, presented by Infinite Aviation, and ground briefings from the flight instructors via the Zoom platform. This ensured that nobody would be left idle for too long, and without progress being made, if only on the theoretical side.
In addition, we hosted many fun and informative chats, to keep our students and the public at large up to date with developments in the industry and to get to know some of the lecturers and instructors. This was done via our Facebook platforms as well as YouTube live streaming. These chats were a lot of fun for all of us involved, and the interaction was fantastic and refreshing. We also had a lot of fun with a Tik Tok challenge with our students and instructors, some of these videos included pilot Yoga.
Following the lifting of the hard lockdown, and having the necessary precautions being taken, such as sanitising of the premises, aircraft, and having written the necessary COVID mitigation strategies we were back in full swing again in July of 2020.
What was amazing to see upon our return to the skies and the airport, was the absolute enthusiasm and dedication to our return to the skies, from all involved, from students, instructors, and our extremely dedicated behind-the-scenes groundcrew. It was amazing to see what such a long time being removed from flight does to all of us. We were hungry to get back into the skies. This also presented a challenge, in that all our flight staff had to undergo dual checks to ensure that we were all competent and able to safely return to our passion of teaching people to fly.
We will be celebrating our 25th anniversary in 2021. We would like to use this opportunity to thank all our students for their continued support and our staff for their hard work during this extraordinarily challenging year. May you all have a blessed and safe festive season and a glorious, prosperous 2021.
Brendon Lubbe
Chief Flight Instructor
Blue Chip Flight School