Students at Joseph Melillo Middle School (JMMS) and East Haven Academy (EHA) participating in the co-ed Aviation Career Exploration (ACE) Program soared high on a round-trip flight from Tweed-New Haven Airport to Baltimore on March 31.

The five-month ACE program is the first of its kind in the United States and is co-sponsored by Avelo Airlines, Aviation Career Exploring, and the Boy Scouts of America. Students from JMMS and EHA learn about the many aspects of aviation and airlines, from piloting and air traffic and emergency control to aeronautical engineering and on-flight hospitality. The round trip was the program’s inaugural flight, with more occurring in the coming months.

The journey began early in the morning as 35 of the schools’ students arrived at the academy at 6:30 a.m. Mayor Joseph Carfora met with the airborne students, handing them an official Town of East Haven pin and named them town ambassadors for the day.

“They will represent us well. It’s this moment that make[s] me so proud of our students, and I look forward to having a homegrown generation of aerospace professionals,” said Carfora. “Whenever we have the opportunity to show our young people an interesting career path, we should pounce on it. I know we are constantly looking for more partnership programs. You never know how these moments can impact their journey into the future."

The students were as excited as ever for the journey to unravel, said Jennifer Sicignano, one of the teachers at EHA who is involved in coordination between the school and ACE.

“Seeing the faces on the kids was just amazing. There was so much excitement that was happening that morning for our flight down,” said Siciginano.

Sicignano said that the co-ed program provides students from both schools an opportunity to have “a hands-on experience” with the various aspects of aviation and to see in the future. “what job opportunities are available for kids” who were selected.

“We always talk about college prep for students, and not that it doesn’t impact the middle school age students, because it does, but it’s mostly high school, that college prep,” said Sicignano. “Bringing this aviation program down to a middle school level, with the hope of continuing year after year with this program, will follow them into high school.”

Job shadowing and falling directly into a career following graduation from high school are examples of opportunities that lie ahead for middle school-aged students in East Haven. The co-ed partnership between students of a business like Avelo also gives them a head start before entering its sister program of Careers in Technical Education programming at East Haven High School, which shares these same goals with aviation education at JMMS and EHA.

Ecstatic students arrived by bus to Tweed around 15 minutes early, allowing them to be in the cockpit, see its many controls, and sit in the pilot’s seat.

Following around 10 minutes of situating their seating arrangements, JMMS and EHA students and staff prepared for take-off.

The first flight taking the program airborne was also the very first flying experience of some of the students, including Giovanni Carrano, a seventh-grade student at EHA.

“I was excited and nervous at the same time. It was my first time flying, so I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t know what it was going to feel like. I definitely loved the window seat,” said Carrano. “And take-off - [It’s] the best part, though…I don’t know how to really describe it, but from what I’ve heard other people describe it, it’s like a roller coaster.”

Carrano, too, saw the program as a “unique opportunity” that was too good to pass up with its multiple career paths in the field of aviation, from being an engineer to a flight attendant.

The latter role in airline hospitality was an influence for JMMS seventh-grader Dasha DeLeon Mendoza to join the program, specifically thinking of her mother.

“I felt what’s interesting about it…my mom, she’s going to be a flight attendant, and so then I was interested in that too. Because you can fly everywhere around the world, and helping people, because you’re a flight attendant, and making them safe and everything,” said DeLeon Mendoza. “I just wanted to see the experience of that.

It was also the first flight for JMMS eighth-grader Blake Dennis, who was also excited about the experience. Dennis said his fascination with aircraft, and encouragement from his grandfather to take part in aviation as a career or in the Air Force, paved the way for a career path he’ll be training for in a few years.

“It just made sense, and now I want to be a pilot. So as soon as I turn 16, I’m going to flight school at Tweed,” said Dennis.

Mason LaCroix, a seventh-grade student at EHA, is another student with a fascination for planes whose grandfather played a role in that interest.

“My grandpa lives by Lighthouse Point, and the planes would be flying by all the time, and I just always wondered just how in the world these things are flying off the ground. That doesn’t make any sense,” said LaCroix. “And then I learned a bit about it, and then I started to really enjoy planes. And I watched Top Gun with my dad, so that made me even more interested in planes.”

LaCroix said being with two of his friends who had never flown before was the highlight of the trip for him.

The round trip was around three hours in total, as students took off from Tweed at 8 a.m. before returning from Baltimore at 11 a.m.

The experience left the students excited for the months ahead with the program, which includes a field trip to Orlando on May 19 in one day. There, they will get hands-on experience with flying and its operational components.

“The kids will have the opportunity to fly a flight simulator; they’ll see all the emergency gear within a plane,” said Sicignano.

The students will head back to Tweed on May 24 to meet with pilots at the Robinson Aviation Center, who will take them onto planes and give them a chance to use its controls for take-off and landing.

It’s all part of the very first kind of co-ed aviation program between industry and middle school students in the country.

“It’s definitely an exciting opportunity for everybody involved,” said Sicignano.