Student success ready to soar with Butler Tech’s Aviation Education Hangar
The $15 million project next to the Middletown Regional Airport broke ground last year, and is now set to open for classes beginning in January.
As Butler Tech, a career technical education institution affiliated with 13 southwestern Ohio school districts, celebrates its 50th anniversary, another milestone will be coming right around the turn of the calendar year: the opening of its Aviation Education Hangar.
The $15 million project next to Middletown Regional Airport broke ground last year, and is now set to open for classes beginning January 2026.
According to Butler Tech’s Public Relations Coordinator AJ Huff, students formerly spent half their school day at Butler Tech’s main campus in Fairfield Township for their academic core classes and were either bused by the school or drove themselves to a temporary location at the Middletown airport.
Now with the opening of the new 28,000-square-foot facility, students will spend their entire school day at the center next to the airport. Academic core classes and lab facilities, as well as lunch, will all be on this campus.
Butler Tech aviation student Adrian Alejo said of the change, “Going to an actual aviation building is really surreal. … Just being at an airport is just so amazing to me because I love aviation, it’s something that I’m super passionate about.”
Students currently in the aviation program are either on two-year or three-year program tracks. The two-year program will phase out with the graduation of students in May 2026, and students who apply moving forward will be on the three-year plan.
The program is expected to expand Butler Tech’s aviation curriculum to include 100 more students, for a total class size of roughly 150 students annually.
Applications for the program have already opened and will close March 15, 2026. Applicants will begin their first term in August 2026.
According to Butler Tech’s website, the new program offers students different learning paths, from aviation maintenance and engineering to ground school with manned and unmanned aircraft.
Both Huff and Pat Meade, a Talawanda Board of Education member and the representative of Butler Tech on the board, said the opening of the new facility has come in tandem with a rise in student interest in the aviation industry, as well as the growing demand for employees within it.
Huff said of the aviation industry, “the turnover for this field is huge,” and Meade added, “the Air Force base in Dayton has made this region an aviation area.”
For Talawanda students particularly, Meade said, having 100 new spots in the program “gives our kids a greater opportunity to get one of those spots. … When we have kids compete for 50 (spots), we turn away kids.”
As more students enter the program, more space is needed for aviation projects.
Currently, Butler Tech has two planes in a hangar shared with the Butler County Police Department. When the new aviation center opens, it’ll have its own 8,000-square-foot hangar.
