Andrew Sandell, a 17-year-old senior at McDowell High School, is a certified pilot after completing Air Force Flight Academy training at Bowling Green State University.

"I just completed the Air Force Flight Academy, the JROTC program which is an eight week course at different partnering universities, I went to Bowling Green State University for this one," Sandell said.

"Any small plane like the Cessnas and Pipers the ones that have just one engines like the propeller engines, I can fly any of those basically anytime I want, internationally with any flight plan that is using the outside as reference," Sandell said.

"It has been a lot of my family, my mom is always worried, I text her, "hey, what's up," and then I will text her later and say, "I am 500 miles away," but it is also mostly my instructors who put in a lot of work and paperwork to get me this far and without them I would not even have this wearing this flight suit that I wearing," Sandell said.

John Nygaard, Maj, USAF (Ret.) McDowell AFJROTC Instructor said, "he is a certified pilot at 17-years-old, there is a lot to be said about that, he is a hard worker, very sincere cadet, a good kid to have all-around and it absolutely comes as no surprise that he would achieve this accomplishment."

"It is definitely a very rare experience, I am very grateful for everything that got me this far, the course itself taught me so much about myself, how to manage money and how to be an adult because I basically started college before I ended high school," Sandell said.

Sandell was granted a scholarship that was worth $30,000 dollars and globally only 200 of 11,000 applicants are chosen with an extra 100 from college ROTC's and the United States Air Force Academy.