This morning, I heard
an interview with Amelia Rose Earhart, a pilot, who is planning to circumnavigate the globe in a single-engine airplane. At 31, she’ll be the youngest woman to do it and, inspired by her namesake
Amelia Earhart, she’s taking nearly the exact route mapped out but never completed by the more famous Earhart in 1937. That Earhart disappeared over the Pacific Ocean and her remains were never found. Amelia Rose is confident that she won’t meet the same demise. She described the route and says one of the things she’s most looking forward to is all the places she and her co-pilot will be landing and staying including Trinidad and Tobago, Senegal, Brazil, Tanzania and The Maldives. I imagine it will be pretty exciting for the witnesses on the ground as well, especially girls and young women, to see Amelia Rose step out of an airplane flying around the world.
 |
| Courtesy of Amelia Rose Earhart |
Then she explained how she got her name. Her father’s last name is Earhart and though he is not related to Amelia Earhart, he and his wife thought that giving their daughter the name was a unique opportunity. Imagine what this girl could accomplish with the name of a famous female role model! Growing up, people always asked Amelia Rose if she was going to be a pilot and she always replied no until the day she did decide to learn to fly. And loved it. Ten years later, Amelia Rose has become the role model she was named after. Not only is she embarking on Earhart’s voyage, she is going to be the first person to share the experience
live via social media. She hopes to inspire girls to pursue aviation and, because she struggled to pay for her own lessons as woman in her twenties, founded
Fly With Amelia, a non-profit that introduces flying to teenage girls and helps pay for their lessons.
 |
| Courtesy of Amelia Rose Earhart |
I first flew as a passenger in a single-engine airplane a few years ago, on a date. Not usually the type of person to trust others with my life – especially someone I’ve known such a short period of time – it must have been love because from the moment Jacob started talking about flying, I wanted to do it. On our fifth date, we planned a trip from the Oregon coast to the San Juan Islands in the Puget Sound, Washington. It’s about a two hour flight in his Cessna 182 and we’d land directly on Center Island compared to a laborious 10-hour journey in which we’d drive from the coast, through Portland and Seattle traffic, to Anacortes to wait for a boat shuttle to the island.
After loading up and getting the plane out of the hangar, Jacob showed me how to buckle up (you use a three-point seatbelt like in a racecar), put on my headphones, and position the microphone. The microphone is vital because it’s the only way you can communicate while the plane is in flight. Small planes are pretty bare bones – compared to a large commercial plane – so they’re loud. You're inches away from a 230 horse-power engine. The headphones allow the pilot and the passengers to hear the radio, talk to others via the radio and talk to each other in the plane. Jacob went through a long laminated checklist. This took a while but it comforted me to see how methodical he was. He said matter-of-factly, “If there’s anything wrong, I don’t fly. Ever. No matter how badly I want to get where I’m going.” I smiled and admired him for his conviction. He didn’t take this lightly and nor should anyone.
The checklist comprised of physical checks of various components outside the airplane, checks at the control panel and listening to the engine. A seasoned pilot can tell instantly if something is amiss. Pilots and planes are far more regulated than automobiles and there are far fewer pilots than drivers so going strictly by percentages, it’s far safer to put your life into the hands of a pilot than a driver. I felt safe. Finally, all the checks cleared and we taxied out to the runway. I expected to be scared but I was afraid I’d be sick. Since I was a little girl, I’ve experienced motion sickness. I never feel good as a passenger in a vehicle, buses are a nightmare and I’ve actually used the sick bag on an airplane. For me to travel by boat it has to be a ferry, a large ship or I have to be medicated and flat on my back. I found that out during a romantic sunset sail around Lake Washington in Seattle on a gorgeous 26-foot sailboat. I didn’t see anything but the sky directly above me.
 |
| ©2014 by Angelique Little |
To my surprise, taking off was smooth and easy, nothing like the gas-guzzling thrust of velocity a commercial jet has to get going to take off. A small plane feels more like a glider. We took off into the wind – you always do – checking the wind direction with the bright orange windsock. Though, to be fair, on the coast the wind is always coming from the west or the north so pilots using this runway always take off going west. Once airborne, Jacob turned the plane towards our destination and we were on our way. Taking off and landing is most of flying; staying in the air is fairly easy providing you have enough fuel, can see where you’re going and have alternate landing spots available in case there’s engine trouble.
Jacob is VFR (Vision Flight Rules) rated which means he has to have visibility or he can’t fly. To fly without visibility, a pilot has to be IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) rated which means extensive instrument training, accompanied flights and staying current by clocking IFR hours. When you hear about a plane flying into a mountain, it's more than likely the pilot flew from (Visual Meteorological Conditions) VMC into I(Instrumentmore than likely flying IFR. The part of our brain that tells us how far away something is when we see it and how quickly we need to move to avoid it is ancient and highly developed. It’s our animal brain. The part of our brain that can read instruments, do mathematical calculations and make decisions without our senses is quite new and well, just not as reliable. I'm not sure I would have felt safe if I couldn’t see where we were going.
 |
| ©2014 by Angelique Little |
|
This trip certainly would not have been as enjoyable if I couldn’t see the gorgeous landscape spreading out around us. Flying between 9,000 and 13,000 feet, a small plane enjoys the most spectacular view. Below the cloud line, you rarely see the big jets flying at 30,000 feet and above. Small clouds traveled at our level and below, their perfect shadows moved along the ground across fields, roads, farms and towns. I watched out own shadow crossing rivers, following mountain ridges and flying through clouds. A tiny rainbow encircled our shadow at all times and I took pictures of it. To our left, the ocean opened up in a fantastic brightness, reflecting the sun back at us. In Washington, mountains rose, canyons deepened and I could see tiny rivers trickling through them like on a 3-D topographical map.
 |
| ©2014 by Angelique Little |
|
I felt like Peter Pan soaring above lakes, watching tiny cars drive on tiny roads, watching little dots of animals grazing on miniature pastures, and seeing the work of decades of gardening laid out as patches of color and greenery. It was just incredible. I also loved listening to the radio, though. As we passed through towered airfields, we might hear from air traffic control (ATC), checking in and letting us know if someone was coming up on our left or right or straight ahead. Part of the co-pilot’s job is to watch out for other aircraft. Usually, you’re flying at a slightly different altitude so it’s pretty easy to avoid getting in anyone’s way. In a bigger flight zone, however, like Seattle’s Sea-Tac airport, it’s not uncommon for ATC to ask you to change altitude or modify your path slightly to avoid oncoming traffic. Their job is to land planes at the airport. To do that, they need to know what everyone else in their airspace is up to. And in their airspace, you do what they tell you to do.
 |
| ©2014 by Angelique Little |
|
After a beautiful flight, we were at our destination and ready to land. I’d already taken a lot of pictures out the windows but Jacob asked me to make a video of our landing. He does this himself quite often with his cell phone, in its mount on the window. I pointed the phone at the front window and the propeller looked really weird in the video. It’s there and then it’s not there. It doesn’t look continuous, it looks like it’s appearing and then disappearing. But I had to focus because apparently, this happens really fast. We were nearly on the ground! I usually would brace myself and breathe deeply, maybe even closing my eyes, but he’d asked me to video so I was holding my phone and watching instead. To land a small plane, you basically starve the engine of fuel to slow it down. The trick is to slow down enough to land but not enough to stall – in which case you can still land but you have less control over the plane. The moment before landing is almost silent as you glide towards the ground. I saw some people on the side of the runway waving at us. “Is that your family?” I asked and then, we were on the ground. I didn’t hear or feel a thing. We gently slowed and pulled into a spot off the runway and then Jacob stopped the plane. Smoothly, perfectly.
 |
| ©2014 by Angelique Little |
|
On the return trip, we talked more about flying. About how he’d always wanted to do it and when he had a good job, he bought a plane. It’s not cheap but it’s not the most expensive hobby either. If your priority is to fly and you are willing to spend less on a car, house and vacations, it’s definitely possible. If you rent a plane rather than buy one, it’s something most anyone with a good job could do. One of Jacob’s flight instructors was a woman but the percentage of licensed pilots who are female is 6%, similar to other male-dominated occupations. The biggest reason could simply be that flying
hasn't been marketed to women and girls and they simply don't think to do it. I'm guessing that after the
media blitz with dozens of pictures of the lovely Amelia Rose flying around the world, that could change. Though she's just one of many female pilots working to get
girls interested in flying, she is certainly the most high profile.
