Senior Member Samuel Ten of the Burke (Virginia) Composite Squadron has now finished Civil Air Patrol’s cadet aviation menu with so little left on it that the remaining work is airline hours, two other people’s private pilot certificates, and an alumni group he has asked the program to invent.
On April 24, 2023, at 17, Ten became the 233rd graduate of Cadet Wings, the merit-based pipeline — funded by the U.S. Air Force and the James C. Ray Foundation, now in its eighth year — that turns encampment, squadron activity, leadership billets, a solo check ride, and the FAA’s medical and knowledge exams into a private pilot certificate. The program reports an 89 percent completion rate, approximately three times the national average for flight schools that are not also a uniformed youth organization with a public affairs shop. Over 29 percent of graduates have added another FAA rating. Fifty-six have become certificated flight instructors. Ten, having completed the course, joined the part of the course that produces the course.
From Stowaway to Inventory
The intake event was a 2014 flight to his parents’ Malaysian homeland, taken at age 9, after which he was, in the official telling, totally and completely hooked on flying. A family friend introduced him to CAP. He began attending Burke squadron meetings at 11½, which is not an age at which CAP makes cadets.
“I was a stowaway for a little while,” Ten said, “so when I turned 12, I had already attended the mandatory number of meetings to become a cadet.” The age requirement, in other words, was treated as a waiting period for paperwork already in progress. His first orientation ride followed on Sept. 24, 2017.
What followed was not so much a hobby as a sequential emptying of the awards case. He became cadet lieutenant colonel and cadet squadron commander, earned the Gen. Ira C. Eaker Award, served as public affairs officer for the Virginia Wing, and helped that wing to a third-place finish at the 2022 National Cadet Competition. His favorite cadet memory was the placement. “Seeing that many cadets, the esprit de corps and camaraderie, was beyond extraordinary,” he said, a sentence that does a great deal of work for a bronze.
In July 2025 he traveled to Australia with the International Air Cadet Exchange, CAP’s two-week circuit for elite senior-level cadet ambassadors who build global goodwill, tour aerospace and military facilities, and stand in group photographs with cadets from over a dozen other nations. The Air Force Association named him the 2026 CAP Cadet of the Year, which is the sort of title that arrives after the rest of the résumé has already been filled in.
Peace, Control, and the Cessna 172
Kathrine Schmidt, senior program manager for cadet aviation, has explained the industrial logic. “Cadets [like Samuel] are learning what makes an ideal candidate before they’re eligible to apply, giving them time to intentionally pursue CAP achievements and aviation experiences,” she said. “As a result, the pathway to becoming a competitive candidate is increasingly embedded in the cadet experience.” Ten had been embedding since before he was allowed to join.
His solo came on Jan. 2, 2022, when he was a cadet first lieutenant, 16, and fresh from winter encampment. “I was 16 and the anticipation was off the chart,” he said of the drive to the flight line, a sentence in which the destination of several years of meetings is a parking lot next to an airplane. Alone, he reported peace. “You have control of the whole airplane. It was pretty spectacular.” Training is completed at a local flight school or with CAP instructors in CAP Cessna 172 aircraft, which is spectacular in a specific, four-seat way.
Cadet Wings, he said, “took the financial burden of learning to fly off the table.” “It’s a huge help not to worry about where the money will be coming from for the next lesson. All I had to focus on then was flight training.” The program’s most eloquent achievement remains the removal of the invoice.
Independence Day, Then the Line
He pursued the CFI on his own. He received it on July 4, 2025, the day he left for Australia, a scheduling decision that treated a flight-instructor certificate and an intercontinental goodwill tour as items that could share a calendar square. He has since completed Cadet Wings certifications for two cadets from Burke, among them Cadet Capt. Luke Secrest, for whom Ten served as instructor pilot. Schmidt notes that younger cadets watch older cadets in their own squadrons progress, earn certificates, and continue into advanced aviation opportunities. At Burke they can now watch the 233rd graduate sign the next two.
Ten graduated college early with a bachelor’s degree in professional flights and is building hours toward the airlines, which is what a completed CAP aviation catalog is for once the ribbons have run out. He took his parents up after the private certificate. “The smiles they had,” he said, made their “you got this” more meaningful. “They are super proud.” They had, to be fair, been saying it since the stowaway phase.
His advice for applicants is that Cadet Wings is “an amazing, spectacular program that goes beyond what a flight school can provide — giving you all the resources you need to succeed.” His one wish for its future is an alumni group for the graduates. “I’d really enjoy that,” he said. Having finished the available credentials, he would like a designated place in which to stand with the other people who also finished them.
His younger sister has not entered the pipeline. “She’s a dancer,” he said ruefully, which is the first recorded instance in the account of a Ten child remaining outside the FAA’s jurisdiction.