Sheraaz Rasool is a London-based First Officer on the Boeing 787. As a long-haul pilot, he spends his days and nights crisscrossing continents, moving passengers from cities around the world to and from London Heathrow. He’s the son of a working-class Asian Muslim family from Birmingham. Like many pilots, Rasool was captivated by flight from…
Freddie Green is an Air Traffic Manager in Miami, Florida. As an Air Traffic Manager, he leads a team that serves many Air Traffic Control (ATC) operations in and out of Miami, including Center, Approach/Departure TRACON, and Tower. He’s also the National President of the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees (NBCFAE), where he…
Patty Wagstaff is a competition aerobatic pilot, U.S. National Aerobatic Champion, and 6-time consecutive “First Lady of Aerobatics”. Today, she owns and operates an aerobatic and upset recovery training (UPRT) flight school in St. Augustine, Florida. Wagstaff grew up in Japan, the daughter of a Japan Air Lines pilot, and didn’t consider a flying career…
The inspiration for Fly For The Culture is the friendship of two young men during the Korean War: Jesse Brown and Thomas Hudner. Their story epitomizes the kinship, sacrifice, and love that transcends the boundaries of race and culture. Jesse Brown grew up in Mississippi during the Great Depression. Although his family was far from…
Alexis Thind is a private pilot, currently completing her commercial pilot certificate in Squamish, a municipality north of Vancouver, Canada. After graduating from the University of British Columbia with a major in Political Science, Thind discovered her love for flying. She follows in the footsteps of her late father, a retired F-5 fighter pilot and…
When five-year-old Pinky Patel insisted on piloting the air museum static display, her mom suggested that a flying career might be a great fit — for her brother. As a first-generation Indian-American woman, a pilot career wasn’t part of the “typical path.” Instead, they thought, she should become a doctor. But Patel didn’t want to…
Malik Sinegal took his first airplane flight as a teen when a local volunteer offered to take him up for a flight lesson as part of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) Young Eagles program. But, he says with a laugh, “there was no way my grandma was going to allow me to get into an…
Merryl Tengesdal is the first and only African American female U-2 pilot. Her military career included flying The SH-60B Seahawk in the Navy and instructing in the U.S. Air Force T-34C and T-6 Texan II, before joining the rarefied U-2 program. The U-2 is a unique platform that operates well above 60,000 feet in a…