John Travolta Donates Jet to Embry-Riddle

The Canadair CL41 Tutor is a turbine-powered two-seat aircraft designed originally by Canadair as a training aircraft for the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF). It is also flown by the Snowbirds, the RCAF demonstration squadron. It flies at a maximum speed of 480 knots (552 mph), a maximum altitude of 40,000 feet, and a maximum distance of 593 nautical miles.

Manufactured in 1967, the plane donated by Travolta was used initially for more than two decades as a trainer by the Royal Malaysian Air Force, which renamed it the Tebuan ("wasp"). After Travolta acquired the jet, he had to receive special authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly it because, as a military aircraft, it is classified as an experimental aircraft for civilian pilots.

Embry-Riddle will use the plane in its aircraft maintenance technology program. "Our goal is to keep it in airworthy condition and perhaps fly it occasionally for demonstration purposes," said Stan Mackiewicz, director of aviation maintenance, repair, and overhaul technology at the university.

Embry-Riddle offers an intensive, 16-month program that prepares students to take the FAA airframe and powerplant examinations and become certified as aviation maintenance technicians. Working in an FAA-approved repair station on the university's 100 flight training aircraft, students take apart, inspect, reassemble, and test-run turbine and reciprocating aircraft engines. The program includes work in an advanced composites lab and a sheet metal fabrication lab.

"Embry-Riddle is an outstanding university for aviation higher education and the perfect place for students to learn maintenance technology using the jet," said Travolta, who knows Embry-Riddle by reputation and as a former neighbor. For several years, he owned a home in Spruce Creek, a fly-in community near the university's Daytona Beach, Fla., campus.

Beginning with his blockbuster hit movie Saturday Night Fever, Travolta has appeared in a string of critical and commercial successes, most notably Grease, Urban Cowboy, Pulp Fiction, Get Shorty, and Face Off. He received Oscar nominations for best actor in Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction, a New York Film Critics Circle Award for best actor in Saturday Night Fever, and a Golden Globe for best dramatic actor in Pulp Fiction.

Donating his Canadair CL41 Tutor to Embry-Riddle will not ground Travolta, who fell in love with flying at an early age, built model airplanes as a boy, and named his only son Jett. He also owns and pilots a Gulfstream II and a Boeing 707-138B.

Embry-Riddle, the world's largest, fully accredited university specializing in aviation and aerospace, meets the needs of students and industry through its educational, training, research, and consulting activities. Embry-Riddle educates 24,000 students annually through the master's level at residential campuses in Daytona Beach, Fla., and Prescott, Ariz., at more than 150 teaching centers in the United States and Europe, and through distance learning.