by Wesley Harris
Long before jets filled the skies, Louisiana Tech was teaching young men and women to fly. What began prior to World War II under a federal initiative—the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP)—grew into a postwar aviation pipeline and, by the late 1960s, a full-fledged collegiate School of Aviation.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration launched the CPTP in 1938–39 as the potential for global war rose to expand the nation’s pool of pilots. Students studied aerodynamics, navigation, and weather in campus classrooms, then logged flight hours with nearby civilian contractors.
After 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, the CPTP was retooled as the Civil Aeronautics Authority War Training Service, channeling graduates into military service. By the summer of 1944, the program had trained more than 400,000 pilots nationwide.
Louisiana Tech adopted a program in agreement with the federal Civil Aeronautics Administration to offer a basic pilot training during the war years. Students could learn to fly in addition to their major course of study.
The pilot pipeline did not vanish when war ended in 1945. Tech’s 1947–48 catalog shows the college operating a “Civil Aeronautics Administration approved flying school,” signaling that flight instruction remained part of the academic offering as veterans returned under the GI Bill and civil aviation boomed.
Through the 1950s and early 1960s, aviation training matured from short-course war programs into structured collegiate pathways, paralleling national shifts in regulation and professionalization overseen by the newly formed Federal Aviation Agency (later FAA). While the national CPTP/WTS era had ended by 1944, its footprint at Louisiana Tech—hangars, instructors, and a pool of experienced veterans—laid the foundation for degree-level aviation education.
I remember my parents taking my brothers and I to the Ruston airport in the sixties to watch Tech students practice their flying. The airport was so busy, within an hour or two we saw dozens of touch and go landings. It was cheap entertainment when opportunities for diversion were slim compared to today.
In 1967, Louisiana Tech formalized decades of flying tradition by founding the School of Aviation and launching the state’s first bachelor’s degree in professional aviation—an academic capstone to the training culture seeded by CPTP three decades earlier. University sources mark 2017 as the program’s 50th anniversary, underscoring that 1967 turning point.
For Louisiana Tech and North Louisiana, wartime pilot training brought federal dollars, new technical disciplines, and a cadre of aviation professionals to the region. For the nation, it created a ready reserve of airmen who would become instructors, airline captains, and air traffic leaders in the jet age. The arc from CPTP classes in the 1930s and 40s to an accredited four-year program by the late 1960s is a local story with national lift.
In 2017, the school integrated a new fleet of 12 Cessna Skyhawk and Piper Arrow aircraft. Ground, simulator, and flight training occurs year-round. Flight operations are headquartered at the Ruston Regional Airport in the Louisiana Tech Flight Operations building.
Tech’s School of Aviation has established itself as a high-quality degree program with a national reputation for outstanding graduates. Currently, undergraduate degrees are offered in professional aviation, preparing students to serve as pilots, and in aviation management, developing future professionals in the aviation industry. Graduate degrees include a Master of Business Administration (MBA) with a concentration in Aviation and a Master of Science in Engineering Management with Aviation Concentration.
