Yorkshire Aero Club: Flight school 'that brings the sky to everyone' fears for its future if Doncaster Sheffield Airport closes

But that dream is on the verge of being shattered.

The nightmare scenario for him and hundreds of workers is that DSA owners Peel could close the site. They say it’s now ‘commercially unviable’.

The 20-year-old from Carlton in Lindrick near Worksop, is currently totting up his flying hours, learning his craft piloting small aircraft as part of Yorkshire Aero Club.

He’s currently undertaking his Private Pilot’s Licence (PPL) and needs to fly solo for 150 hours before he can take his commercial licence. An expensive step but a bridge McKenzie is willing to cross when the time arrives.

On the blustery runway to the left of the main terminal, McKenzie completes some checks on a light aircraft that will be heading out later that day.

“It would be a massive shame if we lost the airport,” he said.

“It provides lots of jobs for people but also it’s a place where I’ve done a lot of my private pilots’ licence training so it’s got a special place in my heart.

“I’d love one day to fly a commercial jet out of Doncaster because it’s the place where I learnt to fly and it would be a special moment.

“It’s a fantastic airport, great facilities, long runway, brilliant terminal – you ask people about this place and no one says a bad thing about it. Everybody likes it.

“It’s so convenient, it’s fast and it goes to the perfect destinations for people.

“This place is really special. To experience flying out of Doncaster is something that is so special to me and so many people.

“I hope a lot of other future pilots get that opportunity to fly commercial aircraft from here. It’s been so good for my training from the very start because you get used to the commercial operations and procedures that you don’t get at other airfields.”

The club does operate from another, smaller airfield in Sandtoft in North Lincolnshire but as the organisation’s director Dan Harris explains, it ‘seriously limits’ what they can offer.

“It is worth pointing out that if DSA does close, we couldn’t really call ourselves the Yorkshire Aero Club for obvious reasons,” he says.

“You hear a lot about levelling up and we feel we can help with that. We provide opportunities for people who can go on and secure high-paid, high skilled jobs.

Before embarking on his flight instructional career, Dan spent 15 years in the classrooms of Doncaster in various schools.

Dan, having caught the bug to fly in 2008, went on to gain his Private Pilot’s Licence (PPL), Commercial Pilot’s Licence (CPL), Instrument Rating (IR), Flight Instructor’s and Examiner’s ratings and has now amassed over 5,000 hours of flight time.

He said that Yorkshire Aero Club is a place where everyone can come and try their hand at in the cockpit and when he started the club, he felt it was important to take the elitist perception away from flying.

Alongside co-founder James O’Toole, the flight school got off the ground in 2018 and has gone from strength to strength. It’s a non-profit organisation and offered to help transport supplies during the pandemic.

The club has nine aircraft, dedicated staff including instructors and apprentices. Around 150 students are going through flight training and exams.

YAC has helped train University of Sheffield students during their Aeronautical Engineering degree who have gone on into high-skilled, high paid jobs.

But it’s the successful record of training budding flyers of the future with young people having a real chance of becoming commercial pilots with major airlines who pay big salaries that makes it stand out.

“I love teaching and I love flying, this was the perfect fit for me,” Dan added.

“We try and take the snobbery out of flying. We’re local guys and we take out the nonsense that surrounds it and we tell people you don’t have to be millionaires to learn to fly. We try to bring the sky to everybody.

“We’re a massive success story, going from one aircraft and one instructor. I don’t understand why Peel can’t make DSA a success.

“It’s mainly the jobs for us if it goes. We have Sandtoft but losing this will massively affect what we can do.”

Lynn Cooper comes regularly from Baslow in Derbyshire to YAC and has done so for the past four years.

The 51-year-old former civil servant wanted to challenge herself and found flying was her passion.

Lynn from Baslow in Derbyshire, said: “I absolutely love it here, it’s a fantastic place to fly from and we use the same entrances as the professional commercial pilots – there’s not many places where that happens.

"The people here are brilliant – people think learning to fly is an old boy’s club but Yorkshire Aero Club, there’s no elitism here.

“It would be devastating if the airport were to close. For us it would be horrendous and it would affect what we do. But for all the jobs associated with the airport. It would be so sad, it can’t happen.

“I pursued my dream, it’s a sense of freedom when you’re flying and I’d hate to think people in future couldn’t do this anymore from here.”

Peel's other major tenant on the tarmac is the Vulcan To The Sky Trust - the charity caring for one of the last surviving Avro Vulcan aircraft. The Cold War relic will now have to leave the site in 2023, having been in Doncaster since 2011, as the lease agreement is ending.