ABOUT US

MARY A. SCHU AVIATION is owned and operated by Mary Schu (Dominick). She has been a professional pilot since 1976 and a flight instructor for nearly 30 years with more than 15,000 hours of flight experience. 

PROFESSIONAL EDUCATOR 
She is an educator with a Masters Degree in Education specializing in Learning Problems and holds an Oregon Teaching Certificate. She gave up teaching public school to pursue her passion of flying. She has completed additional post graduate work on her doctorate in Educational Policy and Management at the University of Oregon and has entwined the two gifts into a lifelong career that has touched the lives of thousands through aviation.

PROFESSIONAL PILOT 
In the three decades of aviation, she has achieved a single and multi-engine Airline Transport Pilot certificate, type ratings in IA Jet 121, 1123, 1124 Jet Commander and Westwind aircraft, and Cessna CE500 Citations. As a corporate pilot, she has flown thousands of hours of single-pilot IFR in piston twins, and turbo prop airplanes around the USA and Canada. She was also a type-rated captain and crew member for several flight departments in Oregon, the Midwest, and California on corporate jets. 

Mary was Chief Pilot in charge of the transportation flight department for Kansas State University for four years. She supervised all maintenance and wrote the standard operating procedures for the flight department. 

FAA DESIGNATED PILOT EXAMINER (DPE) 
Mary was an FAA Designated Pilot Examiner in Kansas for five years giving exams for private, commercial, instrument, certified flight instructor reissue, and add on including Instrument Instructor, and Multi-engine Instructor, and single and multi-engine Airline Transport Pilot Certificates. She also gave multi-engine flight examinations in the Beech 55/ 58 Baron, Cessna 310, and Piper Twin Comanche aircraft before moving to Oregon. She was reappointed as a Designated Pilot Examiner (DPE) in the Portland Hillsboro FSDO in 2009.

INSTRUCTOR PILOT 
As an instructor she has CFIA, CFII, and MEI ratings. She has logged over 15,000 hours of flight time, much of it instructional over the past thirty years. She is a certified FITS instructor in glass cockpit aircraft and factory approved in most of the new generation glass cockpit aircraft including Cessna, Lancair Columbia, and Cirus Design.

She previously instructed at Flight Safety International at the Cessna Learning Center in Wichita, Kansas and taught the Instrument Multi-engine Refresher Courses in the piston twin and turbo prop full-visual, full-motion simulators. She provided recurrent aircraft training for the Flight Safety Instructor Pilots in a Cessna 421.

FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR REFRESHER CLINICS
MARY A. SCHU AVIATION instructs the instructors and presents Flight Instructor Refresher Clinics around the country. (Previously known as Wings of the Cascades Spirit Flight, Inc.) Since 1997 the company has been approved as one of some 30 companies in the United States to provide Flight Instructor Refresher Clinics for certificate renewal around the country. She has presented the clinics for over 1000 instructors for the State of Arkansas, Montana Aeronautics Department, and the Aeronautics Department for the State of Oregon. She also provides the clinics at resort locations and on cruise ships. 

She was appointed by the FAA as an Airman Certification Representative able to renew all Flight Instructor certificates on location. She has been an Aviation Safety Counselor for fifteen years and has organized and presented several safety meetings per year that qualify for the FAA WINGS Pilot Proficiency Safety Program. She has presented over 50 ground school courses in the past twelve years for private and instrument training with a pass rate of 90 percent of all that take the knowledge test. Her pass rate among the hundreds of applicants she has recommended for certificates is over 94 percent. 

Mary has owned and operated an FAA 141 flight school and Cessna Pilot Center, an FAA Part 135 air taxi operation, and an FAA Part 145 maintenance facility. 

MARY A. SCHU AVIATION is an Oregon owned and operated small business.