The United Aviate Academy tapped famed pilot and travel journalist Kellee Edwards to help kick off Women’s History Month by speaking to their class of diverse student pilots.
On Friday, United Aviate Academy hosted an honorary luncheon presented by the United Explorer Card from Chase at their base in Goodyear, AR. The exclusive event was open to female students and aimed at empowering women and people of color to become pilots.
During the luncheon, a diverse group of student pilots, consisting of women and people of color, gained industry insight from an established pioneer Black woman in aviation.
Edwards was proud to speak to the student pilots about her journey to gain her pilot license and how it helped propel her career in television. Edwards, who made history as the first Black woman to host a travel adventure show on The Travel Channel, spoke about her commitment to paying it forward and inspiring the next generation of women in aviation.
“What people don’t understand often is they see the limelight and the accomplishments, but it’s so hard to do the work that I do, especially being the first, often the only,” Edwards told BLACK ENTERPRISE.
Witnessing all of the diversity on the United Aviate Academy campus was an eye-opener for Edwards, who launched her aviation career often being the only woman, let alone the only Black woman.
“I didn’t have any female instructors like that. I was in a plane full of men all the time,” she said. “So, they have this community and I just told them all, ‘You guys are all going to be better pilots than me.'”
Elsewhere, we spoke with student pilot Abby Awosanya, a recipient of the Women in Aviation International scholarship, who shared her journey of wanting to become a pilot after taking long flights with her parents as a child to their native Nigeria.
“I knew I wanted to fly since I was six years old, during my first flight to Nigeria,” she told BLACK ENTERPRISE.
“You can ask me about my trip to Nigeria, and I couldn’t tell you anything about what I did when I was there, but I could tell you about my journey there and back.”
The luncheon comes two years after United Aviate Academy announced plans to train 5,000 new pilots by 2030 with at least 50% being women or people of color. The initiative is aimed at bringing much-needed diversity to an industry Black people once couldn’t enter unless they enlisted themselves in the military.
Now, with pilot schools like United Aviate Academy, learning how to fly a plane is more accessible than ever before. With pilots like Kellee Edwards and future pilots like Abby Awosanya, we are starting to see a shift in aviation that will make way for more Black pilots in the future.“There’s a common stigma that when companies open up opportunities for underrepresented groups to join their industry, that the quality is compromised,” Awosanya said.
“However, that’s not the case. We are just as equally talented and qualified to do the jobs that are there.”