Are you ready to see the region from a new perspective — soaring above Mercer County? Members of the Mercer College’s aviation faculty will offer small-plane rides, taking off from the college’s hangar at Trenton-Mercer Airport. The first event takes place on Saturday, March 24, with a rain date of Sunday, March 25 The second event takes place Saturday, April, 28, with a rain date of Sunday, April 29. ##M:[more]##All take place from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The cost is 20 cents per pound (weights are kept secret), with a minimum charge of $8 and a maximum of $22 per person. The 20-minute rides benefit the college’s flight team, which took first place at the Region VII competition of the National Intercollegiate Flying Association last fall. Proceeds from this event will help the team finance its trip to the national competition at Ohio State University in May.
John Mavraganis, a graduate of West Windsor-Plainsboro High School, Class of 2000, is a flight instructor at Trenton-Mercer Airport employed by Mercer College. “His student pilots think very highly of him and many students request him to be their instructor,” says Regina Dripps, administrative specialist in the aviation school. “He’s quite popular.” Three of his students on the flight team, Luis Nazario, Tabatha Ialacci, and Marc Schambers, are on the flight team.
Born in Annapolis, Maryland, he became interested in aviation at a very young age. The Blue Angels (the Navy flight demo team) not only performed at the Naval Academy’s graduation each year, but they also practiced in the area.
“Those planes screeching overhead out of nowhere, rattling the house, certainly made a big impression on a young boy,” he says. “The anticipation was one of the best parts, because you knew they would be flying around every year, but you never knew what time. The raw power of those planes could be felt on the ground, and I understood it very well, even at a young age. By the time I was three or four, anything that flew equaled awesome to me.”
His first time in a plane was when he was seven and flew Delta Airlines to Disney World with his family. His first time in a small aircraft was the last day of a flight course he took with Mercer’s flight program when he was in the seventh grade. “Again, this was another big impression — to this day I remember the exact runway we took off from, and where the planes were all tied down,” he says.
The family moved to West Windsor in 1989. His father, Peter, is an insurance broker for Marsh & McLennen, LLC. His mother, Libby, a former government relations specialist and then an active stay-at-home mom, is now retired. His younger brother, Ted, is at Gettysburg College, studying political science and running for the track team.
After high school, he studied music, veterinary science, and political science at Penn State. “None of those majors was my passion,” he says.
He was bitten by the flight bug again in 2002. While at Penn State, he saw an ad for flight lessons in the school’s newspaper, and took seven or eight lessons in Pennsylvania and two lessons at Princeton Airport, he discovered Mercer’s aviation program. He worked a summer job at Ronson Aviation at Trenton Mercer Airport. “One of my coworkers was a flight instructor there and I was his first student,” he says. “Very serendipitous.”
After a brief stint back at PSU, he returned to West Windsor late that fall to pursue aviation as a career and degree. While working at Mercer, he took classes with Thomas Edison State College, and transferred his PSU credits. Mavraganis received his bachelor of science in applied science and aviation flight technology this past fall.
“The ability to become a professional pilot seems to pass a lot of people by,” he says. “I knew people when I was in high school that had a love of aviation just like I did, and also like I, had no idea that there was a program right in our backyard.”
Two of his former instructors are airline pilots, and there are Mercer graduates flying private jets for corporations including Phizer and Johnson & Johnson. Some are in the Air Force, flying not just airplanes but helicopters, and one graduate runs his own seaplane school in Maine.
Although there is no hourly requirement to become a flight instructor, both an instrument and commercial certificate is required. A commercial requires 250 hours, and extra flight time after that is most likely needed for the instructor certificate.
Mavraganis, 24 and single, moved to East Windsor last March. While not teaching or flying, he works at Mccaffrey’s Wine & Spirits in Southfield Shopping Center.
“It’s a dream held by a lot of people, but for most, it remains just that — a dream,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be that way. There are fantastic career opportunities out there, and for most of us, the Mercer program has given us the opportunity to do something we love, and it’s located in West Windsor, right in our backyard.”
— Lynn Miller
Flight Fair, Mercer County College, Trenton Mercer Airport, Ewing, www.mercercounty.org/airport/dir.htm, 609-530-1272. Take I-95 to the Scotch Road exit, then follow the signs to Ronson Aviation. The college’s hangar is down the road to the right of Ronson. Food and beverages will be available. Saturday, March 24, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
