FlyGuys Backs Elevate Scholarship for Second Year

FlyGuys is returning as a partner for the Elevate Scholarship Program, joining the National Center for Autonomous Technologies to offer 300 scholarships that cover the $175 FAA Part 107 remote pilot test fee, as sUAS News reports.

The program targets students ages 16 to 24 enrolled in aviation or uncrewed systems programs across the country. Applications open June 1, 2026, and there’s no GPA requirement attached.

Who’s Funding This and Why

The Elevate Scholarship is administered by the National Center for Autonomous Technologies and backed by a coalition that reads like a who’s who of the U.S. commercial drone space. FlyGuys, Prime Air, DroneDeploy, the FAA CTI Program, and AUVSI are all in.

FlyGuys is the headline partner here, and the company has a clear self-interest. Its marketplace connects more than 20,000 FAA-certified pilots to enterprise clients across construction, energy, insurance, telecom, and agriculture. Every new Part 107 holder is a potential future contractor on the platform.

CEO Joe Stough framed the case in workforce terms. “We’re proud to support the Elevate Scholarship Program for a second year because the need hasn’t slowed down, it’s accelerated,” he said. “Elevate gives young people a real way in: skills, certification and a clear path into an industry that’s growing fast and changing even faster.”

DroneDeploy’s Rebecca Lehman, who manages the scholarship, hit the same point. The program removes the cost barrier to certification and then routes recipients toward partners who can actually put the credential to work.

What the Scholarship Covers

The mechanics are simple. The Elevate Scholarship covers the $175 testing fee that every Part 107 applicant pays at a PSI testing center. That’s the only hard cost the FAA requires for the certificate itself. Study materials are free through the FAA, and recurrent training every two years is also free online.

Scholarship funds are issued as PSI vouchers rather than cash. Applications are reviewed within one to three weeks of submission, and eligibility is limited to students currently enrolled in an aviation or uncrewed systems program. No GPA hurdle.

What the scholarship doesn’t cover is the drone itself, any third-party prep course, or the time investment to actually pass the 60-question knowledge exam. But for a 17-year-old at a community college aviation program, $175 is the difference between paper interest and a real certificate.

The Workforce Math Behind the Push

The press release leans on three big numbers to justify the program. The commercial drone market is projected to reach $223.66 billion by 2034, the FAA expects demand for nearly half a million new drone pilots over the next five years, and the World Economic Forum estimates that 65 percent of today’s children will work in jobs that don’t yet exist.

Two of those figures deserve a closer look. The FAA’s most recent Aerospace Forecast projects the active remote pilot population will reach roughly 472,000 by 2028, which is a cumulative total rather than 500,000 brand-new entrants. The market size figure comes from a third-party research firm, not the FAA. The direction is right, the magnitudes are debatable.

What isn’t debatable is that commercial drone work has moved from novelty to infrastructure. Solar farms, insurance carriers, utility companies, and construction firms now treat aerial data capture as a standard operating expense. That demand has to come from somewhere, and the Part 107 pipeline is where it starts.

DroneXL’s Take

Here’s what I find genuinely significant about this program. Most drone workforce announcements are press release theater. A company partners with a school, issues a quote about pipelines, and moves on. Elevate is different because the funding partners actually employ the people they’re certifying.

FlyGuys has 20,000 pilots on its marketplace and is projecting 70,000 missions in 2026. DroneDeploy serves construction and agriculture clients who need Part 107 operators on site. Prime Air is Amazon’s delivery program. AUVSI is the industry’s biggest trade body. These aren’t sponsors looking for a logo placement, they’re buyers of the labor they’re funding.

That changes the math for a 16-year-old in a community college aviation program. The credential isn’t theoretical anymore. It’s the first step into a marketplace that’s actively recruiting on the other end.

The $175 fee is a small barrier in absolute terms, but for a high school senior or a first-generation college student, it’s often the difference between trying and skipping. Removing that friction for 300 students per year isn’t going to solve the pilot shortage on its own. It does signal that the industry has finally figured out that workforce development isn’t a charity line item, it’s a supply chain investment.

The honest part is that not every Part 107 holder becomes a working commercial pilot. The certificate is the entry ticket, not the career. But for the students who do follow through, the path from voucher to first paid mission is shorter than it’s ever been. That’s worth backing.

Photo credit: FlyGuys