The air was buzzing Saturday as John Small Elementary School fifth-graders took to the skies for the final installment of the Wright Flight program: the opportunity to pilot a plane.

“It gives many of the students in Beaufort County the ability to do something they have never done in their lives, because they actually get to fly the plane and that’s not something every child gets to do,” said Betty Jane Green, principal of John Small.

It’s a scholastic awards program: if fifth-grade students can raise grades and be on their best behavior, all the while embarking on an aeronautics-based curriculum that covers social studies and science, in the end, students get to take off on what may likely be the ride of their lives.

“It’s been a great motivating favor for some of our students who struggle, and they are so proud of themselves,” Green said.

For 10 weeks, once a week, students sit down for their Wright Flight lessons. But along the way, something else happens that Green feels is the more important lesson.

“I feel like the main purpose is teaching students to set a goal, work toward the goal then be rewarded for achieving that goal,” she said.

On April 18 and Saturday, a combined 160 fifth graders took off from Washington-Warren Field for their Wright Flight flight. As the program is organized and funded by the greater community all schools with fifth-graders are invited to be a part of Wright Flight, and this year, for the first time, Pungo Christian Academy students got in on some airtime, Green said.

And it’s the greater community that makes this happen, Green said. Led by organizer Lydie Jennings, who also rounds up donations for the pilots’ fuel, in-school coordinator and John Small science teacher Sherrie Swain, and Dennis Millsap, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel from Winterville, who recruits pilots and handles the logistics, 160 20-minute flights leave and return to the airport on Wright Flight days.

“I can’t say enough good about the community members that make this happen because we couldn’t do this without them,” Green said.