A Davis Aerospace student flies solo, the first in 11 years, as the school heads back to City Airport

A student at Davis Aerospace Technical High School has completed a solo flight, the first by a student at the Detroit aviation school in more than a decade. The senior, Herbert Anderson, is the first to log a solo since 2015, closing an 11-year gap in a program built to put Detroit teenagers behind the controls of a real aircraft.

The milestone lands as the Detroit Public Schools Community District prepares to move Davis Aerospace back to Coleman A. Young International Airport, the campus the program lost in 2013. The district expects students to start classes at the on-airport site in fall 2026, according to Chalkbeat Detroit, which first reported the timeline.

Anderson has also passed the written portion of his private pilot exam. He has spoken about wanting to attend a service academy and eventually fly for the military, and the district has highlighted his flight as a sign that the school's hands-on training is back. "I'm just so glad that this program is back up and running, not just for me, but for multiple students. I've just happened to be the first," Anderson told Model D.

Davis Aerospace traces its lineage to the 1950s, when it operated as Aero Mechanics High School. The aviation program opened at the City Airport site in 1986 and grew into one of the few urban public school programs offering students direct access to flight training. In 2013, under a state-appointed emergency manager, the school was relocated to the Golightly Career and Technical Center on Detroit's east side, cutting students off from a working runway. The solo flights stopped, and the last one before Anderson's was in 2015.

The move back is funded through a mix of district money and a $7 million state appropriation, part of a project the DPSCD Foundation puts at $14.6 million. The renovated airport campus is designed to expand the school to as many as 200 students, up from roughly 100 currently enrolled at Golightly, per Chalkbeat Detroit.

The current curriculum, developed with the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, already covers aviation history, flight fundamentals and aircraft systems, and students can train on simulators and pursue a remote pilot certificate, according to the City of Detroit and the DPSCD Foundation. What the Golightly campus cannot offer is a runway. Being based at an active airfield, the district says, lets flight training fold into the regular school day instead of happening off-site as an exception.

For now, Anderson's solo stands as the program's first proof in 11 years that a Detroit student can take a plane up alone. The return to City Airport is meant to make that far less rare.