Kay Hall: I went and did my first flight, and as soon as the wheels were off the ground, I was hooked.

Christine Russell: Don't be afraid to try something new the first time. No one expects to get into an airplane the first time and just know how to fly it. 

Stephanie Goetz: I pulled back the yoke for the first time, and I thought, “Where has this been my whole life? This is incredible.”

Lucy Jabbour: That’s Fly With Kay, Plane Lady, and Jet Girl Stephanie – who we had the chance to talk with at AirVenture, an annual air show and gathering of aviation enthusiasts that’s held each summer in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. I’m Lucy Jabbour and this is a special bonus episode of ‘The Air Up There.’

Various People: This is your captain speaking. The feeling I get when I’m flying; you get an adrenaline rush. Seeing something fly is awesome. As soon as I had that flight, I just decided. Flying airplanes is all I’ve ever wanted to do. I get so excited about aviation, aeronautics, space, math, and science and engineering. Like star gazing and just wondering what it would be like to be up there. There is a space for you. There’s a lot of camaraderie. The support from the people. The air traffic controllers. There's so much freedom. I fell in love with it. I developed a passion for it. Just know you can do it. There’s certainly a place for everybody in aerospace.

Lucy Jabbour: I’m here at AirVenture with Kay Hall who you probably know as Fly With Kay. So, Kay, tell us, how did you get involved in aviation? 

Kay Hall: So, six years ago, when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do, obviously, after high school, I knew my biggest thing was I wanted to be able to travel. And I actually looked into becoming a flight attendant first. And I decided, if I'm gonna go through all this hard work and I'm gonna spend all this money, I might as well be the one in control of the airplane instead. So, I went and did my first flight, and as soon as the wheels were off the ground, I was hooked. I knew that this is what I was meant to do, and I kept doing it.

Lucy Jabbour: Do you have advice for maybe, like younger people who are taking a look at aviation and maybe, maybe they're a little intimidated by it. What would you say to them?

Kay Hall: At least go for your first flight. It's called an introductory or a discovery flight, and it gives you the opportunity to see what it's really like. But you've got a safety pilot on board. Your instructor will make sure that you are a-okay, but you're gonna actually get to see what it actually feels like to fly an airplane, to take it off, to turn to the left, to turn to the right. And hear some of those radio calls. And I want to add to that, because radios are usually what scares everybody more than anything. All it takes is practice. I've been flying for six years, and I still butcher some of my radio calls, because I'm human. Everybody is, and we're all bound to make mistakes. 

Lucy Jabbour: And Plane Lady, Christine Russell is here. How did you get into building an airplane?

Christine Russell: So, we were originally going to buy a plane for ourselves. We have a couple in a club, and we decided to get our own. And then we came out to Oshkosh for the first time, and it happened to be one of the years that they were doing the one-week wonder, where they build an entire airplane in a week, and we were fascinated, and we went over there the first day, and we found ourselves going back the next day and the next day and spending more time and asking more questions. And suddenly it became one of these things, of I think we could do this. So, we started to look into it a lot more. And we joke it's the most expensive two rivets that we ever set because the two that we got to set on the one-week wonder is really what led to us building our own airplane. So, it's been it's been really cool, though I'm glad we did it.

Lucy Jabbour: What was your introduction to aviation in general, then?

Christine Russell: Oh, that would be my family with my dad and my grandfather. They were both air force pilots, and so I grew up with aviation all around me. In fact, when I was little, every airplane that went overhead was Daddy. So, I absolutely love it. I got to be fortunate enough to go to all these different air shows and crawl around a bunch of different Air Force planes and it just stuck.

Lucy Jabbour: What advice do you have to other people who are looking at whether, you know, they want to get their hands in and it's the mechanical side, or, you know, just generally aviation, what advice would you have to people maybe taking a look at it?

Christine Russell: I think the biggest thing to say is don't be afraid to try something new the first time. No one expects to get into an airplane the first time and just know how to fly it. So, the same applies for going into a workshop or picking up a tool that you've never heard of. Everyone at some point started not knowing what to do, and just don't be afraid of that, and to get in there and to try it and to make some mistakes and learn from it. There's nothing wrong with making mistakes, so you just learn from it, and you keep improving, and it just keeps getting better.

Lucy Jabbour: I’m talking with Stephanie Goetz, aka, Jet Girl Stephanie. How did you get into aviation?

Stephanie Goetz: I got into aviation a little bit by chance. So, I was a newscaster for ABC, CBS and NBC News affiliates over 10 years, and I got a call out of the blue that a flight instructor wanted me to do a story about aviation. So, I said, why not? Let's do that. I had no idea I would be flying the airplane. So, he put me in the left seat of a Piper Archer, and he's like, here's how you take off, here's all the controls and everything. And I pulled back the yoke for the first time, and I thought, “Where has this been my whole life? This is incredible.” From that point, I was hooked and I was in love with aviation.

Lucy Jabbour: What advice do you have for other people looking at aviation as a possibility or a career?

Stephanie Goetz: Explore it and don't count yourself out. Me being a journalist, I didn't have a whole lot of particular interest or experience with a lot of STEM and so I thought, Oh, I probably can't do that. But just because I didn't have experience with it, or had been spending much time with it didn't mean that I couldn't start doing that. And so, once I got into aviation and was a lot more around more technical subjects, I found that I was very good at that if I applied myself. So, not counting yourself out and also, it's so critical to have people around you that will support you. There's so much knowledge that others know that we don't and so it was really important for me to have those people around me, and wow, did they ever bolster me. The other piece to that is always be learning. The amount of knowledge I've gained by being open and having a growth mindset has been phenomenal.

Pilots Portal PSA: Thinking about becoming a pilot, but don’t know where to start? Set your destination to the FAA’s Pilots Portal! If you have questions about the pathway to becoming a pilot, the pilot’s portal has answers at faa.gov/pilots. Find test guides, study tips, handbooks, FAA contacts and guidance! Start your flight path today at faa.gov/pilots. That’s faa.gov/pilots.   

Lucy Jabbour: Thanks for listening! ‘The Air Up There’ is available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and now on Spotify! We may be in our off-season, but stay tuned for more special content releases as we gear up for new episodes this Spring. To catch up on episodes you may have missed go to faa.gov/podcasts.