Shaesta Waiz gave some talks in the Honeywell/BendixKing booth at Oshkosh. While the company has been forcing most of its customers to convert to Garmin, e.g., by making transponders that do ADS-B OUT but not IN and by failing to come up with a replacement for the CRT-based EFIS systems that it sold through about 2008, Honeywell/BendixKing has done some work with Internet connectivity for aircraft and Ms. Waiz used their AeroWave system for her 145-day 22-country 182-hour round-the-world trip in a 2001 Bonanza. She began the flight with 750 hours of flying experience, which included 200 hours of Bonanza time and a lot of instruction by Fred Furgang, a Bonanza expert.
One of Waiz’s themes is that women need to be “empowered” and “inspired” to become pilots (so that they can join men in doing a worse job than the software in a DJI drone?). Her talk, though, suggested that women actually have an easier time accomplishing aviation projects than do men (certainly they can be hired by a U.S. major airline with much less experience; see “The purported airline pilot shortage“). She called up ICAO to tell them about her plan and the international bureaucrats there got national bureaucrats worldwide fired up to help out. Male round-the-world pilots had told Ms. Waiz to expect nightmares in Egypt regarding airspace access, airport access, and 100LL fuel access. When Ms. Waiz showed up, however, the Egyptians had assigned female air traffic controllers to every sector through which she traveled (i.e., without being inspired by Americans, Egyptian women have somehow gotten sufficiently into aviation to be able to work Center, Approach, Tower, and Ground!). When she landed, instead of being greeted by soldiers holding automatic rifles she was greeted by 11 officials from the Egyptian equivalent of the FAA.
How oppressed are women in Afghanistan, from which Waiz’s parents migrated as refugees (then reared six daughters in California, including Ms. Waiz herself)? No insurance company wanted to deal with the risk of a Bonanza in Kabul so Ms. Waiz flew there commercially from Dubai for a 2.5-day break. Cut to next slide: Waiz in a meeting with the President of Afghanistan. Would he have met with a male round-the-world pilot?
Waiz shows up to Christmas Island and finds that there are two residents with pilot certificates… both women. If more men than women are pilots in the U.S. and Europe, is this simply an example of “The More Gender Equality, the Fewer Women in STEM” (Atlantic)?
Readers: Is airline promotion of more women going into aviation (example from United) a sign of righteous altruism or simply that they would like to pay lower wages as a result of larger labor supply? (like a Silicon Valley employer promoting immigration and #Resisting Trump!)
Some practical tips: Controllers outside of the U.S. and Europe aren’t accustomed to light aircraft having to deviate around weather. “Deviating right” will upset them. “Flying to Fix XYZ” is a better way to explain a decision to abandon a flight plan route. Those crazy long over-water legs are less plagued with bad weather and over-land routes. An exception is the inter-tropical convergence, a reliably horrible place to be flying due to convection (claimed the lives of those aboard Air France 447, for example, though mostly due to primitive flight control software plus pilot error).
Regardless of pilot gender ID, is flying around the world in a single-engine piston airplane a good way to inspire people regarding STEM? The engineers who created the Bonanza (first flight 1945) and its engine likely died at least 25 years ago. It is mechanics who enable continued flights in Bonanzas, not engineers or scientists. Also, isn’t flying long distances over water in a Bonanza actually ignoring what we’ve learned from engineering? Engineers have given us multi-engine and turbine-engine aircraft that render the journey much safer and more comfortable.
Matt Guthmiller flew in less time, I think, in 2014, as well as being younger…? But he was male so he doesn’t count, or am I missing something? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beechcraft_Bonanza#Notable_flights
Young Guthmiller needs another few years before he can be fairly described as “stale, pale, and male,” but “pale and male” was apparently sufficient to quell media interest in his achievement (youngest person at the time ever to fly around the world).
No doubt all the Icon A5 videos have tiny women because #1 they look a lot better than the average woman who has to make money. #2 They would never get off the ground with 2 bald fat men.
OT, it was sad to hear about Matt G.’s friend Colt, who died in a plane accident in Alaska. Apparently the passengers, a woman and her child, both survived. I haven’t been able to determine just what happened there. Some indications that the plane may have been overloaded. Have you heard anything about it, Phillip?