Andrea Read, flight instructor at Spitfire Aviation

There's an article today in an online newspaper called Daily Sound which is a profile on Andrea Read.

The title is "FLight School Continues to Soar" and the first 3 paras are:

Most pilots with the sort of flight time that Andrea Read has under her belt are flying the “heavy metal” as senior captains at major airlines.

The 40-year-old has logged approximately 14,000 hours in the cockpit, equating to more than a year and a half spent airborne.

She passed many of those hours in a four-seater Cessna 172 as president, chief pilot and certified flight instructor at Spitfire Aviation, a company based at the Santa Barbara Municipal Airport that celebrates its 10-year anniversary this month.

Nice to know some general aviation companies are still managing to float in this disaster of an economy the Dems are giving us.... forgive political rant, but Obama and his policies are going to spell financial ruin for this country!)

The article then says:

As a female pilot and flight instructor, Read says she stands out in a male-dominated industry. That has paid off in terms of gender diversity among her clients.

While just 3 percent of licensed pilots are women, Read says roughly 15 percent of her students are women.

I thought 6% of licensed pilots today were women...and that ratio has held steady since 1911! I wonder where they get those numbers from?

Here's the part I really like, Read owns Spitfire Aviation:

In the past 10 years, Spitfire Aviation has seen dramatic changes as well. When she started the business in March 1999, Read had one plane and one full-time instructor — herself.

Now she owns eight planes, employs four flight instructors, brokers plane sales and runs a full-service maintenance hangar

You fly, girl!