Flight Training - March 2013 - 31

TIME TO FLY: Pam Peterson prepares to fly with
CFI Tamara Griffith (left).
Harriett Smith, Robin
Turnbaugh, Laura Tweed,
and Michelle Bigbee take
a break from reviewing
instrument cross-country
techniques (below).

GOOD THINGS
If a woman spies another woman at the
airport, good things can happen. Faith
Drewry and Lacey Smith opened the FL
Aviation Center (www.flaviationcenter.
com) at Tallahassee Regional Airport in
September 2012. “At our open house, we
had 80 men and four women,” Drewry said.
“All four women were there because they
really wanted to fly and had seen an article
in the newspaper that two women had
opened an flight school, and maybe that
means it’s OK” to go check it out, she said.
“They’d never told anybody they wanted to
fly.” Drewry suspects that female students
may have to build up the confidence to say,
“Yes, I’m going to do this.”
WHAT CAN GENERAL AVIATION DO
TO HELP WOMEN BE SUCCESSFUL?
Recommendations from "Teaching Women
to Fly" by Penny Rafferty Hamilton:
• Develop a no-cost, readily available
database of female mentors for female

And yet often they struggle and, ultimately, let the dream of flying dissolve.
VIVE LA DIFFERENCE. During decades of
flight instructing, designated pilot examiner Mary Latimer has picked up on some
gender differences among student pilots.
Particularly in a ground school setting,
she says, “women do want a little more
in-depth comprehension of what’s going
on…..They know they don’t necessarily
need that information, but they want
to know the ‘why’ behind the do-this/
do-this/do-this. It makes them more
comfortable as fliers. They understand
what’s going on, and if you know what’s
going on, there’s less reason to be afraid.”
Unfortunately, in a traditional ground
school setting where males outnumber
women by a wide margin, females will
hesitate to ask questions if no one else in
the class has raised a hand, Latimer says.
Knowing this, Latimer started brainstorming a new way to give women a
supportive setting in which they could
learn about flying and ask as many questions as they needed to. She called it

GIFT—Girls in Flight Training—a weeklong, all-female academy in which she
would provide free ground school, free or
low-cost housing, and free flight instruction with reduced rates for aircraft rental.
SLEEP-AWAY CAMP. In a cavernous hangar at the Vernon airport, 30 or so women
sit on folding chairs, listening intently
as Latimer explains weight-and-balance
concepts. It’s a little chilly on this November morning, and some of the women are
swathed in blankets, brought from a small
house on the airport. It’s one of three free
housing options for the students.
The first GIFT, held in 2011, attracted
18 women. In 2012, thanks to advance
notice in AOPA publications, nearly 40
have arrived. They range in age from
early twenties to mid-sixties, but all share
a common bond: They want to learn to
fly, or they’re struggling with something
that is keeping them from being successful. Several are married to aviation—their
husbands are pilots.
Then there’s Jessi Jenison, from Tyler,
Texas, who has wanted to fly since she
was 12. Nobody in her family is a pilot,
and she’s had no encouragement from
anyone during two years and 30 hours of
sporadic training. “This is a blessing for
me,” she says.
An orange-and-white Cessna 152
taxis up to the hangar and shuts down.

student pilots, and promote it through
flight schools and aviation media. Create
an online “keep flying” support community
for female student pilots.
• Develop flight training that utilizes more
simulator time, and increase women’s confidence level by building what they already
know instead of going strictly by the FAA
curriculum steps. A sequence of instruction
needs to be flexible to recognize the difference in learning styles.
• Individualize and personalize the flight
training with additional self-study options
for women (for example, map-reading and
geography through free websites such as
www.nationalgeographic.com and www.
knowledgehouse.info).

MARCH 2013 FLIGHT TRAINING

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Flight Training - March 2013

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