Jaars Center

Aviation Training Fleet Renewal

For nearly 75 years, JAARS has provided world-class aviation training for pilots, mechanics, and flight program administrators who support Bible translation organizations around the world.

Since communities and people groups without Scripture in their own heart language typically live in the most remote, difficult places on earth, mission aviation makes reaching them and conducting complex translation work among them possible.

Why is JAARS needed?

In the rugged areas where Bible translation takes place, airstrips are not long, flat, and paved. There are no runway lights. No control towers. No fences to keep animals away.

JAARS is one of the few organizations in the world equipped to train aviation pilots, mechanics and administrators to work safely and effectively in such environments. With our support, linguists and translators can do their life transforming work of sharing the gospel (and typically other life-affirming benefits related to literacy, healthcare, education, economic development, and cultural preservation) with minority indigenous people groups.

At the JAARS Center in North Carolina, we provide professional training for commercial pilots and mechanics who want to serve in mission aviation. Our training fleet replicates the aircraft—known in aviation circles as STOL (short takeoff and landing) aircraft—that pilots will operate overseas. We conduct the final week of training in the nearby Blue Ridge Mountains, where we set up runways on the side of a mountain and in unimproved fields, simulating runways they will use overseas.  They learn to fly very precisely, with margin, enabling them to take off and land on extremely short runways safely and consistently—exactly what will be required to handle off-the-grid airstrips with volatile ground and weather conditions.

How You Can Help

GIVE


To support this project and others like it, please give to Transportation Solutions or Training Solutions. Thank you for partnering with us in this ministry!

PRAY


Pray that God will supply the skilled staff needed to complete the upgrades and maintenance needed to renew our training fleet.

What is JAARS doing?

At the JAARS Center in North Carolina, we currently operate seven aircraft: five piston-driven STOL airplanes (Helio Couriers and Cessnas), a single turbine STOL aircraft (a Pilatus PC-6 Porter), and a Robinson R66 helicopter.

With this fleet, we can cost-effectively train pilots and mechanics on equipment and in conditions they will encounter overseas—especially as mission aviation continues to migrate to piston-driven aircraft that use more commercially available jet fuel.

It is essential that our training continues to replicate as closely as possible the aircraft and cockpit equipment our pilots will fly and our mechanics will service overseas. To be good stewards, we must keep our current training fleet well-maintained and technologically updated—rather than buying new aircraft. 

We’ve begun refurbishing and upgrading our fleet—with aircraft going in and out of service over a two-year period—in order to continue training pilots and mechanics for safe and effective ministry around the world. 

Who benefits from our work?

In Papua New Guinea’s Morobe province, 7,000 speakers of the Yopno language live in the rugged Finisterre Mountains surrounded by 12,000-foot peaks.

There are no roads into this area, so the Yopno people built an airstrip by hand, primarily to bring the Word of God into their community. Traveling from Ukarumpa to road’s end, then by boat, and finally hiking into this community requires a minimum of three days’ travel. By air, the same trip takes only 25 minutes!

That’s just one example. Today, more than 600 million people speaking roughly 5,100 languages have less than a full New Testament in the language they value most. And many of them live in remote, difficult regions like the Morobe province where transportation presents significant barriers.

Maintaining updated aviation equipment and training for the pilots who serve these communities makes it possible for language development and Bible translation to continue and accelerate, even in the most rugged conditions around the world.

We invite your prayers and advocacy for this important work. If God leads you to provide funding as well, your gifts to support our Aviation Training Fleet Renewal will help us:

  • Adapt our current fixed-wing fleet to new technology being adopted by our global mission partners
  • Keep aircraft in compliance with the FAA’s regulations for specific new avionics equipment
  • Continue to provide distinctive, mission-focused training and support for global aviation programs well into the future

To support this project and others like it, please give to Transportation Solutions or Training Solutions. Thank you for partnering with us in this ministry!

“What JAARS does from day to day keeps us going. And what we do from day to day, in the end, helps every tribe, tongue, and nation to hear the word of life.”

– Jeremiah Diedrich, missionary pilot-mechanic