Students learn a new air craft

John Burroughs High School students set to reassemble an airplane.Its doors may be crooked, its wings ripped off and rudder bent, but to the students of John Burroughs High School’s small engine and aircraft repair class, the little Cessna airplane sitting behind the school is better than any luxury jet.

Squinting behind protective goggles, students in the class are acquainting themselves with the plane, which arrived in pieces about two weeks ago. They are examining the engine, radio system and the steering system and wondering how on earth they’re going to put the little Cessna back together again.

“I hope to be working on this thing as long as I can,” said senior Josh Gonzalez, who hopes to be a commercial pilot. “I’ve been around planes a lot, but I’ve never taken things apart and put them back together like this.”

Over the next year, students will be working to reassemble the airplane -- fixing the engine, repairing the doors, and even securing and reattaching one of the wings.

Acquiring the plane, a two-seater light enough to be pushed by hand, has been a mission of teacher David Vezina for more than six months.

After spending a year using engines and parts for class examples, Vezina thought his students could benefit from seeing a working whole.

“You can look at an engine and now know how it will look when it’s in an airplane,” Vezina said. “With an actual plane they can see how all the systems work together.”

Even in Burbank, however, finding an unused plane is difficult.

“Nobody wants to give a plane up. It’s not like a car, where people will just donate them,” Vezina said.

Vezina, a former pilot, found what he was looking for in buildaplane.org, a website dedicated to linking schools with cast-off planes. Lyn Freeman, a representative of the Build A Plane organization, helped Vezina to locate a banged-up plane in Northern California.

From there, Jerry Wallace, a representative of the insurance company that had taken possession of the plane, facilitated a deal for the school to purchase the plane at a heavily discounted rate, and Dennis James, an airplane enthusiast from Pleasant Grove, loaded the Cessna on a truck and drove it to Burbank, free of charge.

“I would have given up if it wasn’t for them,” Vezina said. “They were so enthusiastic about it, that I kept up my enthusiasm.”

The plane, damaged from a water spout that rose up from a nearby lake, will require a lot of attention from students.

“They have their work cut out for them,” said Principal Emilio Urioste, who believes the experience with the plane will open new career paths to students.