Women Can Fly at HWY 2018

This was my third year as event coordinator for our annual Women Can Fly event at my home airport. Since women make up only about 7% of pilots (and I'm tired of being one of the very few ladies hanging around the airport), it's something I especially enjoy putting together. I've found each year has gotten exponentially easier as I figure out the best ways to put everything together, and this year somehow crept up on me! Before I knew it, it was late June and time to start setting up.

My dad and Zach came down to help with the event, so we went to the airport the day before to set up as much as we could. This was the lovely weather we had for pretty much the entire day.

Luckily, Dave (the airport manager) had already moved some of the equipment into my hangar, so we were able to set up the preflight briefing area without getting soaked. We did as much prep as we could, then headed home to try to get some sleep before the next day.

The next morning dawned with a 400' ceiling. Not exactly ideal, but the show must go on! Frank and Gary moved the HondaJet up to the ramp, and we started getting the hangar prepped for our volunteers and exhibitors. We had a short volunteer meeting, split everyone up into stations, and got them settled into their spots. Zach got the exhibitor hangar set up beautifully (which I somehow didn't get a picture of), and I headed up to the pilot safety briefing, which was a bit quieter than normal since nearly half our pilots couldn't fly in with the low ceilings. The first participants started arriving around 8:30am, and we were off and running!

The clouds stayed very low through the morning, but we still had a lot of people come out anyway (which was great!). Many of our morning preflight briefings were nearly full houses, and it was great to see so many people happy to be there, even with the weather. 

Of course, it may have helped that we were able to do drawings for TWO HondaJet flights this year. At least something could fly with the low clouds! I was able to arrange for them to fly high over downtown DC again this year, though they didn't really get a view of the city with all of the clouds below. Oh well...they all still had fun!

One of the other nice things about the HondaJet drawing was that a LOT of people stuck around to see if they would win a spot on the afternoon flight. With all of our pilots stuck on the ground for the weather, the flightline turned into a bit of an impromptu static display area as the pilots took groups of girls out to get a closer look at their planes.

It turned out to be a good thing that so many people stuck around, because shortly after lunch the clouds finally started to break up. The clouds lifted enough for the pilots to safely fly, and it was kind of hilarious to see them all make a mad dash for the flightline when our safety officer and air boss agreed that it was time to start flying.

There must have been 40-50 people lined up, waiting for rides. I'm glad so many of them stuck around!

I had been able to get a few of my FAA buddies to come out and help in various ways. From left to right: Jen, Andrea, me, Susan, and Cat. Jen, Andrea, and Cat manned the ATC exhibitor table, telling people all about what we do, while Susan did a fantastic job (as always!) with our preflight briefing presentation. I, as usual, ran around making sure nothing was falling apart too terribly.

We had ladies of all ages come out to fly with us; Ms. Broussard was one of my favorites. Last year she came out and requested to fly in a high performance aerobatic plane AND do aerobatics (which she loved), and this year she wanted to try out the Piper Cub. Travis took her out for an extra long flight of airport hopping around some of the local grass strips. I'm not sure which one of them enjoyed the flight more!   :)

I was up at the flightline as the last few ladies were getting airborne; suddenly several of us had our phones go off at the same time. Nothing like a tornado warning to get your attention! Turns out there was a huge line of weather heading right toward us. We got the word out to all the volunteers, had them pack everything into the hangars as quickly as they could, and broke down the event in near record time. It was kind of hilarious to watch the ramp clear out as all of the pilots hightailed it back to their hangars, and we even had one pilot based at the Flying Circus take his last passenger over there and have their parent drive over to pick them up. Everyone scattered as the weather got closer until eventually there were only a couple of us left at the flightline, filing the pilot folders one by one as everyone safely returned ahead of the weather.

The last plane made it back and into their hangar about five minutes before...

...THIS hit the airport. It absolutely poured. Like, monsoon level rain. That's one way to shut it all down!

I wasn't about to walk back to my hangar in that downpour, so a bunch of us hung out at the FBO until the storm passed (which didn't take long). It was gorgeous weather behind the storm, but we had managed to get everyone who stuck around in the air before the weather shut us down. Not bad!

We even got a rainbow to end the day.   :)

Overall, the day went incredibly well. We didn't have any major hiccups, and for how crummy the weather was, we had a great turnout. By the end of the day, we had 177 people attend our preflight briefings, sent 10 lucky girls on a HondaJet ride, and when the weather briefly cooperated, had 14 pilots help us get 112 people in the air. Considering we really only had 3 hours of flyable weather, I'm absolutely thrilled with those numbers, and we couldn't have done any of that without the fantastic volunteers that pitch in to help us make the day so good for so many people. We tried out a few new things this year that should make next year even easier, so I'm hoping for better weather next year so we can get even more people in the air!