Brigade Air, Inc. originated in 2000 as “Brigade Air, a division of CSB Ministries, Inc.” The division was spun off of CSB in early 2004.

While the Brigade Air curriculum and camping program was a new addition in 2000, CSB Ministries (formerly "Christian Service Brigade", founded 1937) had included aviation as one of its youth mentoring tools for many years.

The “Airman Trail” program was published from the mid-1940’s until the mid-1970’s. Many leaders in mission aviation today give credit to the Airman Trail program as their introduction to mission aviation.

Ken Frizzell (former COO, MAF), Jon Lewis (former VP Research and Planning, MAF; current President, Partners, International.), Jeff Plett (Manager of Recruitment, MAF Canada) are a few. Paul Robinson, founder of Moody Aviation used to take an airplane from Moody Aviation in Wooddale, IL in the 1950’s to the CSB Northwoods Leadership Training Center in Michigan to help with the Airman Trail program there.

Brigade Air is responding to new needs with new methods, but is also in one sense a revisiting of an older, tried-and-true program that has had measurable long-term success.