Westmoreland County students tour Arnold Palmer Regional Airport, prepare for design challenge

Madison Labuda likes to learn how things work.

When Mt. Pleasant Area High School’s gifted program announced an opportunity to tour Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Unity and participate in a design challenge, she could not pass it up.

“To be here and tour (the airport) and learn how all the planes — where they’re stored, where people come in — I just think it’s cool,” said Labuda, a sophomore.

Nearly 150 Westmoreland County middle and high school students toured the airport Wednesday, from Mt. Pleasant, Penn-Trafford, Franklin Regional, Norwin, Yough, Greensburg Salem, Derry Area and Greater Latrobe school districts.

Over the next four months, they will work in groups of four or five to design a scale model of their own airport design.

High school students also will create a business plan for their airport, said Maureen Grace, the gifted support teacher from Mt. Pleasant Area High School who organized the challenge.

It is a demanding task meant to enrich students, Grace said.

“We just wanted to do something that would challenge the students and get them to step out of the classroom and do things they wouldn’t normally do,” she said.

Students talked to the airport’s customer service employees, learned about airport security from TSA agents, saw how baggage is delivered onto the plane and walked along the passenger boarding bridge.

They toured various maintenance facilities, learning about the fire rescue resources onsite and how the plane and runway are de-iced in the winter. Students even took a bus ride down the runway and saw aircraft up close in one of the hangars.

The challenge is timely to the airport’s $22 million expansion project, which will add a new 32,000 square-foot terminal by 2028.

“We’ll certainly look at (students’ design ideas) and see what they come up with,” Executive Director Gabe Monzo said.

Students who have never been to the airport might be able to provide unique insight, Monzo said.

Greensburg Salem seventh grade student Brandon Pigza had never been inside the airport prior to the tour.

“It was cool looking around here,” he said.

Part of the challenge, Pigza said, is to consider the future of airport transportation when creating their designs, including the possibility of unmanned aircraft.

Luke Nichols, one of Pigza’s classmates, was drawn to the creative aspect of the challenge.

“I’m interested in doing this challenge because I like designing things and building things,” Nichols said.

If the tour sparks an interest in aviation with just a handful of students, Monzo said he will be pleased. Workforce development is a hot topic among airport authorities.

“I didn’t go to college, and I’ve been in aviation for 40 years,” said Monzo, who is president of the state aviation council. “It just so happened that I sort of stayed in the right spot with a lot of common sense, and I’m where I am today. If one of these kids does the same thing, we’ve done our job.”

One goal of the design challenge, Grace said, is to expose students to new career paths.

“Many students want to be teachers because that’s all they’ve ever seen,” Grace said. “While it’s great to be a teacher and teachers are probably an underappreciated profession, it’s not the only thing out there.

“They need to see what engineers do, what pilots or air traffic controllers do — what doctors, lawyers (do),” she said. “The more they see before they commit to a career, the better.”