Sweet Aviation, a flight training, aircraft rental, and maintenance business located at Smith Field Airport in Fort Wayne, has been recognized for its high standard of accomplishment in flight training by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), the world’s largest aviation association. Sweet Aviation has been awarded a spot on the 2016 Flight Training Excellence Awards Honor Roll, a title given to high-­scoring flight schools from AOPA’s annual flight training poll, and voted on by independent students and pilots. AOPA’s Flight Training Excellence Awards were created to highlight the best flight training the industry has to offer. “This year’s winners are great examples of high quality and effective flight training. The recognition is well deserved,” said Chris Moser, AOPA’s senior manager of flight training initiatives. “The Flight Training Excellence Awards were created to recognize best practices in flight training—excellent customer service, quality education, community development, and sharing knowledge. We are excited to spotlight their excellent work.”

“We’re extremely appreciative of our students and customers taking the time to provide us valuable feedback through the AOPA poll, and grateful to AOPA for creating a platform and culture that promotes safe flying and professional, responsible training,” stated Sweet Aviation General Manager and Chief Flight Instructor Joel Pierce. “The feedback we receive from this poll allows us to continuously improve, ultimately resulting in safer skies;; and at the same time, we’re proud that our instructors are providing exceptional, caring customer service.” The 2016 awards were drawn from flight students and pilots who voluntarily reviewed their flight training experience last summer through an AOPA online poll. The process yielded an evaluation of 789 different flight schools and 1,515 individual flight instructors.