Helena woman named "master pilot" by FAA

From SeattlePI:  Helena woman named "master pilot" by FAA
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Many people know Patricia Johnson as an educator. She taught physics and earth science in Helena for 27 years, and now she administers school grants at the Office of Public Instruction.
To fellow pilots, Johnson is a lifelong student and aviation advocate. To air traffic controllers, she is N5812R — the registration number printed in bold letters along the side of her 1966 Cessna 172 plane, which Pat calls "Romeo."
Johnson may not be your typical flying ace. She doesn't perform aerobatics shows, fly fighter jets or take off in treacherous conditions. Flying for her is a hobby and an escape. She's had many adventures over a lifetime of flying, but notes that she's done most things only once.
But Johnson's flying experiences are singular in other ways as well.
She was the only woman in the student flying club at the old Montana State College in Bozeman, where she first took a seat inside a cockpit 51 years ago.
And this year, she joined another, much more selective club, as she became the 42nd person in Montana, and the first woman, to earn the prestigious Wright Brothers "Master Pilot Award" by the Federal Aviation Administration.
The Master Pilot designation recognizes at least 50 consecutive years of aviation expertise and safe flying practices. Johnson's flying record is as spotless as "Romeo's" gleaming nose cone.
Education and flying have never really been separate in Johnson's life. Airplanes often figured as examples in her physics classes, and earth science students learned about geology through photographs taken during her journeys above the continent.
Johnson says she didn't deliberately try to bring aeronautics into her classrooms, but as the stuff of her imagination, it certainly made its way inside. She once brought an engine into a school basement, and students at C.R. Anderson helped her replace the fabric covering over the wings of her 1948 Aeronca Champion.
Many years later, Johnson ran into a former student working at a bank. "I'm taking flying lessons," she told Johnson, "Remember when you showed us how you were re-covering your wings?"
Johnson has taught aerospace education workshops at Carroll College for teachers, and has received several national awards for her efforts, including the Scott Crossfield National Aerospace Education Teacher of the Year.
In 1984, she was selected as the Montana candidate for the NASA Teacher in Space program, for which more than 11,000 teachers applied nationwide. (Its inaugural winner, teacher Christa McAuliffe, died in the 1986 Challenger Shuttle disaster).
Brent Vetter, co-owner of Vetter Aviation where Johnson keeps her Cessna, said he appreciates her work as a kind of ambassador for aviation.
"She's promoted it throughout her life," he said. "I find that to be refreshing." Vetter said airports can be intimidating places for novices, which often keeps them from taking to the air.
While she's been a leader in aerospace education and outreach, Johnson herself has always been a careful student of aviation.
"She's very conscientious," Vetter said. He first met Johnson in the 1970s, when she sought help learning to fly a plane with a tail wheel. "Recently she just went through a ground school that I taught." Johnson didn't need to, he said, but she wanted to catch up on the latest changes in navigation.
"She's trying to be as good a pilot as possible, and I admire her for that. She's strived to always stay abreast of the latest developments," Vetter said.
Yet, Johnson points out the instruments in the cockpit of "Romeo" are all original to the 47-year-old machine — as are the chrome ashtrays in the seatbacks.
A true student, Johnson said she always asks for advice from others, especially the local pilots where she's traveling. "Safety is very important. I'm a fair-weather pilot," she said. "You can't be macho, you can't say 'I know it all,' because you don't."
Being cautious hasn't prevented her from having grand adventures. Johnson has flown through the Grand Canyon and taken a lesson in aerobatics (two more things she's done once). She also took a long trip through Canada to the Arctic Circle, camping alongside the plane during many of her stops.
"In these years as a leisure pilot, I have flown to some interesting places and have met some fascinating people," she wrote in her application letter for the Master Pilot Award, after being nominated by several instructors and peers. "It has been a good life."
Despite her 51 years in the air, flying wasn't something Johnson had ever dreamed of.
"My father — I didn't know it — hated airplanes," she recalled during a recent interview. "When we grew up, we had trucks and cars, and we had rubber battleships that floated in the bathtub," she said, "and dolls — we had lots of dolls — I hated dolls."
Not airplanes, though.
When she first entered a plane in college — tepidly, upon the insistence of an acquaintance — Johnson said she was shocked to learn that airplanes had wheels. "I knew nothing," she laughed.
The two went for a flight over Bozeman in a tiny Cessna 120. "We got in and I liked it," she said, her eyes widening.
So Johnson borrowed money from her sister to join the student flying co-op in January 1962. She flew solo in April, and then participated in the National Intercollegiate Flying Association meet in Oklahoma that same year.
"I would get up in the plane when I was a student pilot, and I'd fly the practice area and turn off the radio and be all alone," Johnson said. "I know how crowded you are in college. I was free.
"Flying is for freedom of spirit. It takes you away from your ordinary cares and worries. It's just a nice serenity."
Johnson said she's grateful to have had so many years of "the pleasure of flight," though she says she isn't any more deserving of the award than the next pilot.
"It doesn't make me feel special, because I'm not. I'm just me, living my life," she said.
"I've always been the only woman or the first woman or something like that," Johnson said, "because it's only more recently that the young girls are doing all the things they're doing.
"I hope it encourages young women to fly. That's really what I hope."

 

Virtual Museum: Women in Aviation on stamps and First day covers

I've got a collection of women pilots on First Day Covers and Cachets, and I share it at this website here:

http://volcanoseven.com/FirstDayCovers/

The exhibits include:
1929 Women's National Air Derby
1930 Women's National Air Derby
1948 All Woman Transcontinental Air Race (otherwise known as the Powder Puff Derby)
1966 Powder Puff Derby
1977 Powder Puff Derby
Angel Derby (International All Women's Race) 1972
1993 Air Race Classic
Amelia Earhart contemporary covers to new commemorations
Jacqueline Cochran
Louise Thaden
Katherine and Marjorie Stinson
Bessie Coleman
Harriet Quimby
Jacqueline Auriol
various other pilots

If you're in to aviation history as told on stamps and first day covers, please check out my virtual museum!

There's also a few entries in all aviation - the Smithsonian Milestones of Flight series, for example.

Flying high! Ayesha Aziz set to become first Kashmiri woman pilot

From India Today: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/kashmiri-teen-ayesha-aziz-set-to-become-commercial-pilot/1/310749.html

A 17-year-old Kashmiri girl studying in a Mumbai school is all set to become a commercial pilot. She alward has a student pilot licence by Bombay Flying Club.

Ayesha Aziz, whose parents are from Khawaja Bagh in Baramulla, said she always dreamt of flying an airplane.

"As a child I used to think whether one day I will be able to do that. I am glad that I am a pilot now. My dream is gradually turning into a reality," she said.

She said she was working hard to bag the commercial pilot licence. "This year, I will be 18 and will clear the criteria."

Ayesha has also earned a Flight Radio Telephone Operator's Licence and is a member of Indian Women Pilots Association.

While she was in Class 12 at Christ Church School in Mumbai, a NASA team visited the school and selected her along with two boys, for a space training programme.

"NASA was an awesome experience. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity. It felt great....I do not have words to describe my feeling," she said.

"We're proud of our daughter," Ayesha's father said.

Ayesha said Kashmir played a significant role in her life and she was emotionally attached to it.

She also told girls in Kashmir not to be bothered by politics and to follow their heart.

Moore Co. Woman 1 Of 2 Pilots Killed In Alabama UPS Plane Crash (August)

This tragedy happened in August and I'm a bit late sharing the news on it.

http://www.newschannel5.com/story/23132362/moore-co-woman-1-of-2-pilots-killed-in-alabama-ups-plane-crashhttp://www.newschannel5.com/story/23132362/moore-co-woman-1-of-2-pilots-killed-in-alabama-ups-plane-crash

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP/NewsChannel 5) - A Moore County woman was one of two pilots killed when a UPS cargo plane crashed and burned Wednesday morning on the outskirts of an Alabama airport.

The Moore County News reported that Shanda Carney Fanning, 37, of Lynchburg, was one of the pilots killed, although UPS has yet to release the names of the two pilots. The paper said she was married to Bret Fanning, an employee at Jack Daniel Distillery.

Fanning worked at the Shelbyville Municipal Airport from 1999 to 2002. She worked for Hank Williamson at the airport. He said she loved aviation and was very responsible.

"She was not accident prone. She was not clumsy. She was very deliberate in everything that she did. She was an excellent employee. I trusted her without question," said Williamson.

The pilot and co-pilot were both killed, said Birmingham Fire Chief Ivor Brooks. The two were the only people on the plane. The crash site burned before the blaze was extinguished, Brooks said.

The plane crashed in an open field on the outskirts of Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport, said Toni Herrera-Bast, a spokeswoman for the city's airport authority. The crash had not affected airport operations, but it knocked power lines down in the area and appeared to have toppled at least one tree and utility pole.

Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board arrived on the scene around 11 a.m. They said the A300-600F aircraft was coming from Louisville and crashed on approach to the runway. The plane went through some trees before hitting the bottom of a hill.

The plane broke into several pieces before coming to rest about 200 yards from the initial ground impact. The fuselage landed near the runway. Officials said it was heavily damaged by fire.

As of Wednesday evening, the tail section was still smoldering and officials were unable to get the flight data recorder to look for clues into what happened.

"The plane is in several sections," said Birmingham Mayor William Bell, who was briefed on the situation by the city's fire chief. "There were two to three small explosions, but we think that was related to the aviation fuel."

NTSB investigators were still making an overall assessment to begin planning the next stages of their investigation. They expected most of their work to occur Thursday and hoped to have a better indication of what caused the crash.

Any witnesses who saw what happened have been asked to come forward and shed light on what they saw.

At 7 a.m. Wednesday, conditions in the area were rainy with low clouds but it was unknown if weather was a factor in the crash.

Initial information indicated there were no distress calls made by the pilots.

UPS spokesman Jeff Wafford said the plane was carrying a variety of cargo, but he did not elaborate. The names and hometowns of the crewmembers have not been released.

Chunks of riveted metal that appeared to be from the plane landed in the yard of Cornelius and Barbara Benson, who live in a two-story, split-foyer house just a short walk from the crash site.

Barbara Benson, age 72, said she and her husband, Cornelius, age 75, were awakened from sleep at the time of the crash by "this big sonic boom."

"I saw a big red flash through my bedroom window," she said.

As it got light, the two were able to see that the tops of trees around their property had been knocked onto the ground and that they were missing a piece of their back deck.

Cornelius Benson said planes routinely fly so low over his house that a few years ago, the airport authority sent crews to remove the tops from trees around his house.

"The planes come so close sometimes I've been able to wave at the captains as they pass," Barbara Benson said.

"It was just a matter of time before something happened," Cornelius Benson said.

Sharon Wilson, who also lives near the airport, said she was in bed before dawn when she heard what sounded like engines sputtering as the plane went over her house.

"It sounded like an airplane had given out of fuel. We thought it was trying to make it to the airport. But a few minutes later we heard a loud `Boom!'" she said.

Another resident, Jerome Sanders, lives directly across from the runway. He said he heard a plane just before dawn and could see flames seconds before it crashed. "It was on fire before it hit," Sanders said.

Residents of a home about a half-mile away from the crash site called police to report that a piece of the plane had fallen on their rooftop, Birmingham Fire Battalion Chief C.W. Mardis said. Police were dispatched to investigate that report, one of two in a neighborhood known as Airport Hills, Mardis said.

James Giles, who lives just off the airport's property, said the plane missed his home by a couple hundred yards, judging from the tree damage and debris. He was away at work at the time, but said it was clear from the scene that the plane was attempting to land on the north-south runway that is typically used by much smaller aircraft. Large planes such as the A300 typically use the bigger east-west runway to land in Birmingham, he said.

"They were just trying to get to a landing spot, anywhere," he said.

Atlanta-based UPS said in a statement that "as we work through this difficult situation, we ask for your patience, and that you keep those involved in your thoughts and prayers."

Previously, a UPS cargo plane crashed on Sept. 3, 2010, in the United Arab Emirates, just outside Dubai. Both pilots were killed. Authorities there blamed the crash on its load of between 80,000 to 90,000 lithium batteries, which are sensitive to temperature. Investigators found that a fire on board likely began in the cargo containing the batteries.

The Airbus A300 that had taken off from Louisville, Ky., crashed around 5 a.m. CDT about a half-mile from the runway, said Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said.

Airbus said in a news release that the plane was built in 2003 and had logged about 11,000 flight hours over 6,800 flights.

The A300 was Airbus' first plane, and the type first flew in 1972. American Airlines retired its last A300 in 2009, and no U.S. passenger airlines have flown it since then. Airbus quit building them in 2007 after making a total of 816 A300 and A310s.

Pakistan's only female fighter pilot becomes role model for millions of girls

From the UK Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/10279119/Pakistans-only-female-fighter-pilot-becomes-role-model-for-millions-of-girls.html She has already made history by becoming the first woman assigned to one of Pakistan's front line dogfighting squadrons. Now at the age of 26 Flight Lieutenant Farooq says she is ready for the ultimate test. "If war breaks out, I will be flying on my senior's wing as his wingman, well, wingwoman," she said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph at the headquarters of the Pakistan Air Force in Islamabad. India and Pakistan remain locked in a stand-off over the disputed territory of Kashmir. It has twice since partition been the cause of all-out wars and the dispute is flaring once again. Both sides have claimed they have been attacked with artillery and small arms. Last month, India accused Pakistani forces of killing five of its soldiers, stoking anger among Hindu nationalists of the BJP, although the killings were denied by Islamabad For Fl Lt Farooq, it would provide the ultimate chance to prove that women were every bit the equal of men in the cockpit. "When I get orders I will go and fight. I want to prove myself, to show that I'm doing something for my country." Earlier this year she completed her training to become Pakistan's first war-ready female fighter pilot, flying the F7-PG, a Chinese version of the MiG 21 jet. Not only does that bring the responsibility of helping guard the border with India, she has also become a role model for millions of girls who dream of following in her footsteps in a country where many are denied an education and forced to stay at home. Pakistan remains a patriarchal society. In swathes of the north-west, women are seen rarely unless it is beneath the billowing folds of a burka. It has not been easy. At every test of strength and endurance she has had to match the men – and sometimes do it without lavatories. When she was posted to 20 Air Superiority Squadron, at Rafiqui base in Punjab, about 100 miles from the Indian border, there were scant facilities for female officers. "They had to build them for me," she said with a smile. But for all the broken glass ceilings and new lavatory blocks, Fl Lt Farooq remains a traditional Pakistani woman in some ways. Three weeks ago she was married to her cousin, in a match arranged for her by the two families. "We played together when we were children so I think he always knew I would not be a traditional woman," she said. Things are changing gradually for women in Pakistan. There are about 4,000 in the country's armed forces. Some 19 women have become pilots in the past decade, but most fly transporters. Of the six fighter pilots, Fl Lt Farooq is the only one to have qualified for combat and to fly regular sorties along a border where two nuclear-armed nations face off. She said there had never been any doubt that she would pilot a fast jet. Her father, a doctor, died when she was three – an experience she said had steeled her to overcome challenges as she grew up in Bahawalpur. "I was always the man of my family," she said. "In my early childhood I developed some protective skills toward my younger sister and my mother. I was a young soldier." She signed up when she was 17 and since then has survived years of near constant testing that saw her 40 classmates whittled down by half. None of the three other women made it to fighter training. Now she flies one of the PAF's front line planes, an olive green headscarf tucked beneath her helmet. Her small frame, she said, meant she had to work harder in the gym to ensure she had the strength to control her multimillion pound jet. Every day she receives dozens of telephone calls from girls hoping to follow in her footsteps. "It's not a job that people here associate with ladies so as well as doing a job for my country I'm changing the thoughts of people," she said. "It's a big responsibility but one I enjoy." Her fellow pilots treat her as an equal, she said, often forgetting who they are flying alongside. "Sometimes they are asked, what is it like to fly with a lady," said Fl Lt Farooq. "They say: what lady?"

Woman pilots make Coast Guard history

From Aug 14: Ireland - Woman pilots make Coast Guard history

TWO Coast Guard pilots have made Irish aviation history by flying the first all-female mission for the service
 

The Shannon-based search and rescue Helicopter R115 flew its first missions with a female pilot and co-pilot, Capt Dara Fitzpatrick and Capt Carmel Kirby. Capt Fitzpatrick is the chief pilot for rescue 117 at the Waterford base and was on transfer to Shannon to build up flying hours on the new Sikorski S92, which is due to replace the S61 in Waterford in mid-September.

MISSIONS
"This was a historic occasion for the Coast Guard as this was the first all-female SAR helicopter crew and they carried out two missions on their shift," said a Coast Guard spokesman.
During the mission, the duo flew a cardiac patient from west Cork to Cork University Hospital before transferring a critically-ill five-year-old child from the hospital to Temple Street Children's Hospital in Dublin.
The work of the pilots has been the busiest ever this year.
Coast Guard helicopter missions have increased by 45pc so far this year as crews dealt with an increase in weather-related incidents and flew more medical missions, the agency has said.
The country's four helicopter crews flew 1,572 missions by the end of July this year.
The number of rescues of people on jet skis grew by 340pc as more people took to the water during the hot weather in July.
The rescues of swimmers rose by 68pc, persons on the shoreline by 54pc, canoes by 146pc, angling craft by 44pc and sailing vessels by 40pc.
"The other main contributory factor has been the aeromedical service to the HSE now on trial with the Coast Guard helicopters. Air ambulance missions are up 925pc to 123," said a Coast Guard spokesman.

"Pearl Carter Scott: On Top of the World”

Pearl Documentary Airs June 23 on OETA

"Pearl Carter Scott: On Top of the World” a documentary about the life of the Chickasaw aviatrix airs 9:30 p.m., Sunday, June 23 on Oklahoma Educational Television Authority (OETA).

Befriended by famous aviator Wiley Post in the late 1920s, Pearl was performing as a barnstormer and commercial pilot by age 14.

Designed to complement the award-winning film “Pearl,” “On Top of the World” shares the life story of the late Pearl Carter Scott, focusing on more than her flying career.

The daughter of a successful businessman in Marlow Oklahoma, Pearl Carter Scott was a dedicated and proud citizen of the Chickasaw Nation. 

She aspired until her passing in 2005 to do “whatever is necessary to help my fellow Chickasaws.” This included service as a Community Health Representative and as a member of the Chickasaw Tribal legislature. 

Inducted into the Chickasaw Nation Hall of Fame in 1995, she was also inducted into the Oklahoma Aviation and Space Hall of Fame, and the International Women's Air and Space Museum Hall of Fame

A charter member of the National Museum of American Indian at the Smithsonian, Pearl was listed in the 1978-79 edition of "Personalities of the South", the 1989-90 edition of "Outstanding Women of America", and in the Chickasaw Historical Section of the Memphis Magazine.

In 1990 she was honored as Homecoming Queen and Guest of Honor for the 60th Anniversary Celebration of Wylie Post's trip around the world.

The 30-minute documentary features interview with Pearl and her family members.

With OETA's statewide network of four transmitting stations and 15 translator stations, more than 1.8 million viewers tune into OETA on a weekly basis.

To find out the channel information at your location, please visit www.oeta.tv or call (800) 879-6382.