While the Terre Haute Regional Airport is gearing up for the highly anticipated air show in August, traffic will soon pick up as another event descends for landing in 33 days. The Indiana State Flight Academy will host the National Intercollegiate Flying Association.

While the competition will teach students new skills and give them a chance to network in the tightly knitted community of aviation, The event April 30th to May 5th will use 6,000 gallons of fuel from the airport and provide over 10,000 landings.

“We’ve invited 31 collegiate teams from 10 different regions across the country. We are expecting over 100 airplanes hear from those different teams,” said Indiana State Student Coordinator, Brock Rees.

“Some of the best schools best aviation schools around the country will be coming,” said senior, Rex Li.

In 33 days, Indiana state is set to host the 2018 Safe Con Nationals, testing students skills and awareness to safety.

“There are judges that actually look for safety handling of the aircraft. So students may be judged on we’re giving awards to how they walk around the aircraft. We try to create the most safest safety culture we can,” said Chief Flight Instructor, Kevin Donnar.

The competition will take place at both the airport and on campus as teams compete in preflight competitions, landings, aircraft recognition, cross country competition, and ground events like computer accuracy.

“It’s hard to find time to study for the competition with everything else cause it’s basically an additional group of classes along with everything else. Some of the competitions you don’t go as in depth with in school as you do here,” said Junior Kyler Pearson.

Because it’s an event that goes out of the class room, students will learn new skills beneficial to their career path after college.

“There’s a lot more networking opportunities. A lot of professionals a lot of airline pilots will be judges for the competition,” said Li.

“I look forward to networking and meeting new students as well as seeing what the new employers in the industry have to offer,” said Junior Wyatt Fuehrer.

This Indiana State Flight Team has competed in a regional competition but the national competition is a different flight plan.