ABOUT LAUNCHPOINT
LaunchPoint Aviation Group, LLC was founded in Missouri to create practical pathways into aviation through safe instruction, useful education, responsible stewardship, and meaningful opportunity.
Our initial flight-training objective is a focused sport-pilot program serving southwest Missouri and the surrounding Ozarks. But LaunchPoint's purpose extends beyond a single pilot certificate.
We believe aviation can teach and reward qualities that matter well beyond the cockpit: preparation, discipline, judgment, craftsmanship, curiosity, humility, and personal responsibility.
As LaunchPoint develops, we intend to combine flight training with aviation education, vocational exposure, historic preservation, and opportunities for people to discover where they may fit within the broader world of aviation.
OUR MISSION
Our mission is to create practical pathways into aviation through safe instruction, useful education, responsible stewardship, and meaningful opportunity.
Aviation should remain demanding. Safety, competence, preparation, and sound judgment cannot be compromised.
But the path into aviation does not need to be unnecessarily confusing or inaccessible.
LaunchPoint exists to make that path clearer.
WHY WE EXIST
For many people, aviation feels distant long before cost, training, or regulation ever enters the conversation.
The terminology is unfamiliar. The pathways can be difficult to understand. Professional aviation training can be expensive. People who did not grow up around airplanes may simply never have someone tell them where to begin.
LaunchPoint was created to help change that.
Our goal is not to lower aviation's standards. It is to lower unnecessary barriers to understanding and participation.
We believe more people should have the opportunity to discover aviation, understand the paths available to them, and make an informed decision about whether one of those paths is right for them.
HOW WE INTEND TO OPERATE
Aviation requires the discipline to know both when to proceed and when not to.
No schedule, convenience, business objective, or ambition should outrank sound aeronautical judgment. LaunchPoint intends to build a culture in which preparation, honest assessment, and respect for limitations are treated as responsibilities rather than slogans.
Worthwhile things rarely happen on their own.
Good aviation depends upon preparation, sustained effort, attention to detail, technical competence, and respect for work performed correctly.
Whether the task is learning to fly, restoring an aircraft, researching a regulation, or maintaining equipment, the standard should remain the same: do the work carefully and do it well.
Aircraft, history, resources, opportunities, and the trust of others should be handled responsibly.
Stewardship sometimes means restoring something. Sometimes it means preserving it. Sometimes it means deciding that something should not yet fly.
LaunchPoint intends to approach each responsibility with the same question: what has been entrusted to us, and how do we handle it well?
Aviation should remain demanding, but it need not be unnecessarily inaccessible.
LaunchPoint seeks practical ways to help more people understand aviation, evaluate the paths available to them, and determine whether one of those paths may be right for them.
Aviation creates opportunities to teach, mentor, preserve, and serve.
LaunchPoint intends to use flight training, aviation history, technical learning, and community engagement to help others better understand the field and discover meaningful ways to participate in it.
Founder, LaunchPoint Aviation Group
Chad Mann's interest in aviation began in childhood and followed him through college, law, and eventually into the cockpit.
Today, Chad is an active flight student in southwest Missouri, is building a Zenith aircraft, and is leading the responsible preservation and restoration of The Old Scotchman, N8777B.
Raised in a close Christian family in southeast Missouri, Chad grew up in a home where faith, gratitude, generosity, and service were ordinary parts of daily life. His grandfather and father both preached in the family's non-denominational Christian tradition, and those principles continue to shape how he approaches his work, responsibilities, and opportunities.
Chad attended College of the Ozarks from 2010 through 2014, graduating magna cum laude with dual majors in Criminal Justice and Corrections. Through the College's work program, he served in Keeter Center maintenance, College of the Ozarks Security, and the Criminal Justice Department.
After college, Chad attended the William H. Bowen School of Law in Little Rock, Arkansas, graduating cum laude and entering the practice of law in 2017. He later established his own Springfield law practice, where his faith and values continue to influence his approach to service, professional responsibility, and helping people through difficult circumstances.
Aviation remained a long-term goal, sustained in part by conversations with pilots and aircraft-maintenance professionals at M. Graham Clark Airport.
He founded LaunchPoint Aviation Group in 2026 after changes in the Sport Pilot framework created what he believed could become a more practical entry point into recreational aviation. The idea was simple: aviation should remain demanding, but the path into it should not be unnecessarily confusing or inaccessible.
For Chad, The Old Scotchman reflects much of that same philosophy. An old airplane can be viewed only for what is broken, worn, or missing—or someone can take the time to understand what it was, what remains, and what it can responsibly become again.
Its restoration brings together history, craftsmanship, education, patience, and stewardship. More importantly, its story creates an opportunity to inspire someone else to walk into a hangar, speak with a pilot or mechanic, and begin imagining a future in aviation.
That is ultimately what Chad hopes LaunchPoint can create:
A clearer starting point for people who want to discover where aviation might take them.
CURRENT DEVELOPMENT STAGE
LaunchPoint is currently working through the foundational requirements necessary to prepare for flight-training operations, including:
These elements must be completed before LaunchPoint begins accepting students or providing flight instruction.