How Not to Fly an Airplane: A Female Pilot's Journey

Shirley M Phillips knew she wanted to be a pilot when she was fourteen years old, thanks to an introductory flight in a Cessna that her father gave her and her twin sister at their local airport. Living in a small New England town where no one in her family had aviation experience, and at a time when only two percent of professional pilots were female, her decision to pursue aviation from the moment she left the ground set her on an unexpected path.

How Not to Fly an Airplane is about learning to fly before you are old enough to drive a car, and teaching others when you are nearly always mistaken for being the pilot’s girlfriend, wife, or daughter. It’s about the many mistakes you can make in an airplane, and what it’s like to solve them, thousands of feet in the air or just a few feet above the trees. It’s about finding a sense of identity as a twin, becoming the first pregnant pilot at an airline, and losing a friend and former student in an infamous plane crash.

Shirley M Phillips lives in southern New Hampshire so close to an airport she can critique all the landing approaches from her deck. She shares her home and keyboard with her cat, Amina. Her writing has been published in The Atlantic, Dr. T.J. Eckleburg Review, RavensPerch, and Chicken Soup for the Soul: Lessons Learned from My Cat, among other publications. More information can be found at her website at shirleymphillips.com.

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