• The Aeronautical Initiation Certificate (BIA) is experiencing growing success each year in high schools that offer this subject, independent of the school curriculum.

  • Despite the participants' environmental concerns, aeronautics remains a field that "interests and makes people dream" but also fuels the hope of arriving at an aviation of the future, sustainable and non-polluting.

  • Guillaume Reymann, a young 22-year-old pilot, selected to represent Alsace in the 2022 Young Pilots Air Tour, believes in these future aeronautical engineers and pilots who are working to change the image of a field often considered elitist and little concerned about the environment.

Very often judged as elitist, sometimes as a too polluting leisure activity, light aviation does not always have good press.

So being 18 today and choosing to chain flight hours to satisfy a passion, even if many say they are aware that it pollutes, is therefore not so trivial.

Between guilt and the evil eye of comrades.

However, 11,000 young people, including 2,700 girls, pass the BIA each year in France.

A certificate of initiation to aeronautics, a diploma of National Education, a subject which does not however count in the average, independent of the school program nevertheless offered by more and more schools, when they can, or in flying clubs.

This patent validates a level of initiation to scientific and technical culture in aeronautics and the space sector... And above all very useful for really going into practice before obtaining the private pilot's license and flying on your own. .

“Beyond a simple leisure activity”

For Guillaume Reymann, 22, aviation touched him very young.

At the age of 14 he already obtained the famous diploma.

Today, he has been selected to represent Alsace at the prestigious Young Pilots Air Tour next July.

"It's true that aviation has this 'elitist' reputation," he admits.

But you have to go far beyond a simple leisure activity reserved for wealthy people who are not concerned about the environment,” assures the young pilot.

“Aeronautics is accessible even if it is true that it is expensive but behind it, there are aids.

But it's also career opportunities, so it can appeal to a lot of people, more than you might think,” he continues.

After a scientific baccalaureate, he continued with a DUT in mechanical engineering in aeronautics.

On the financial side, he owes nothing to anyone.

To pay for his flight hours, he worked on a work-study contract with an aeronautical component designer in Molsheim and took out a bank loan.

Now, the young man who went through Dassault in Bordeaux and Airbus industrie in Toulouse, will put his pilot career on hold for some time, the time to complete a flight test contract with Dassault in the United States.

It is “a universe that always makes people dream, and more and more”, confirms Alexandre Rongemaille, mathematics teacher at Le Gymnase Jean-Sturm high school in Strasbourg.

“It goes beyond the simple piloting of planes.

More than half of the students will not engage in aeronautical or space studies, in a professionalization.

Others are just drawn to these areas, see how it works.

The craze for aeronautics is not weakening.

It is an environment ahead of its time, underlines this professor, a former fighter pilot in the Air Force, with a lot of research that has been done, especially in recent years on pollution.

We remember Bertrand Piccard and his Solar Impulse which had traveled around the world in an electric plane.

We are working on non-polluting planes,

at least by their combustion.

»

Young pilots aware of the environmental issue

Although he recognizes, however, that light aviation remains polluting "and that it is difficult to admit it", Alexandre Rongemaille recalls that "the plane goes beyond a simple means of transport as can be the car.

It is a means of escape”.

For Guillaume Reymann, who is preparing his aerial tour for young pilots on a Cesna made available to him by the Alsace flying club, “young people who now practice light aviation […] are perfectly aware of this ecological problem. and will contribute to sustainable aviation which we hope will be much less polluting.

»

Aeronautics also wants to be inclusive.

“Each year, there are around twenty additional students who enroll at the BIA, notes Alexandre Rongemaille.

Girls and boys, even if boys remain in the majority, they are more and more numerous.

The Strasbourg private high school has chosen to triple the hours allocated to this certificate.

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