MANKATO — Minnesota State University’s aviation program — on the brink of elimination — has emerged from its near fatal turbulence and won a reprieve. For now.

A collection of businesses and private donors has come up with about $600,000 to keep the program going for three years.

The program’s reprieve was announced this weekend at an aviation program celebration banquet.

But the reprieve is not without stipulations.

The program will spend the next three years in probation. In that time it will have to recruit enough students to make the program self-sustaining. It now has about 120 students.

“It was losing about $400,000 a year,” MSU President Richard Davenport said. “So that would have been the equivalent of four faculty.”

Aviation was in jeopardy of elimination because of its high cost and relatively low enrollment. When it was announced it was slated for elimination, Davenport said the program might be continued if private donors could pledge support to help cover the costs.

North Star Aviation and several other private companies, as well as several individuals, came up with the money to continue.

Davenport said he thinks the program’s chances of recruiting enough students to survive beyond 2013 are good. To help it along, the university plans to ramp up its marketing efforts.

He said the aviation program attracts students from Wisconsin, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois. Marketing efforts will continue to hit those areas.

Also, North Star President Mark Smith said that in the last few years that North Star has handled flight training for MSU’s aviation program, flight hours have gone up 40 percent. He also said he’d like to see the program’s student numbers jump to 300, the level reached during the late 1990s.

Smith said he led the effort to raise the money to keep the program going.

“Everybody pitched together and we got the job done,” he said.

Smith said Davenport’s approval to grant the program the three-year probationary period actually means the program will be around for six more years — even if the program is canceled after the probation, MSU would have to keep the program going for the students already admitted.

Another factor in the mix is the possible training of Chinese pilots at North Star Aviation and MSU.

Smith said that since an earthquake struck central China 21⁄2 years ago, the government has recognized the need to have more pilots to rescue victims of natural disasters.

“All of this was initiated by the earthquake two years ago that killed a quarter million people,” he said. “They need to train 20,000 pilots in the next few years, and they’ve identified us as a premiere pilot training institution in the nation.”

As of now, no agreement is in place to train the Chinese pilots. But in preliminary talks, Smith said, the Chinese have said they’d like to start in 2011 with 50 pilot trainees. They’d reside in the Mankato area for 12 to 16 months, complete several flight ratings, attend ground school on campus and then leave with a certificate of completion.

Davenport said the community’s show of support was clear.

“I was inundated with e-mail from all over the country,” he said. “And locally there was quite a push to keep the program going. ... The fact that the community stepped up to the plate says a lot about how important the aviation program is to the community and the airport.”

The aviation program prepares students for careers in air transportation, including airline operations and management, corporate aviation, airport management and government operations. The university contracts with North Star Aviation at Mankato Regional Airport to provide students with professional flight training.