OCTOBER 2018
NEW HAMPSHIRE
WO M E N MAGAZINE
READ NHWM. HELP NH WOMEN ACHIEVE THEIR DREAMS!
celebrating the women of New Hampshire
Meet
Captain Amanda pearson, 26-year-old pilot from nh
Inside:
What is a Headache? pg. 10
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PHOTOS PROVIDED BY AMANDA PEARSON 6 || NEW HAMPSHIRE WOMEN MAGAZINE
26-Year-Old New Hampshire Pilot
Flying Hight with
pilot AMANDA PEARSON
P
Passengers disembarking Endeavor Air, a subsidiary of Delta Air Lines, are often surprised to find that their captain is a charming 26-yearold woman. First Officer Amanda Pearson still looks more like the college student she recently was than an experienced aviator and flight instructor. She is one of a small number of female commercial pilots and passionate about flying and women in aviation. For Pearson, “slipping the surly bonds of earth” is almost a daily experience, as she helms her CRJ900, a 76-seat passenger jet, on frequent trips up and down the Eastern Seaboard. She is also rated to fly sea planes and is a flight instructor for single and multi-engine aircraft. If it flies, Pearson is interested in learning about it. “I gave myself sea plane training as a graduation gift after college,” she says. “I would like to learn about gliders next. I do hope to have my own plane one day, ideally a sea plane or glider, but right now I’m too busy to make that commitment, and I do love flying jets.” Pearson began her career in aviation almost by accident, but once she got a taste of flying, she never looked back. “I went to college for general studies and was not quite sure what career path I wanted to take,” she recalls. “Fortunately, my school had a flight school as part of its offerings. Some of my friends enrolled and I became intrigued by what they were learning. I signed up for classes and knew I’d found my calling. For me, flying is not a hobby, it’s my career. Getting in the cockpit never gets old. Every take off, every landing, every trip is different. I love flying for the challenges it presents. Challenges
WRITTEN BY CRYSTAL WARD KENT
keep me going. Flying is an amazing way to make a living.” Even Pearson’s personal time often revolves around flying. “I think sea planes are cool, but I also knew that learning to fly one would teach me what it’s like to land on water. Two years ago, I went hang gliding at Morningside Flight Park here in New Hampshire. It was incredible to go from flying with two jet engines to flying with no engine. It also taught me a lot about aerodynamics. I always like to learn something new, and especially as it relates to flying.” Pearson has been flying commercially for three years and says that every trip is unique. “You can start out with clear, sunny skies as you leave New York and then run into heavy thunderstorms building up as you approach Florida. You then spend the last part of your trip finding your way around thunderheads and lightening. You never know how the day will change. Winter flying is always interesting with the ice, cold and heavy snow, but we have fantastic ground crews. The team in Manchester, New Hampshire for example, knows how to plow those runways; they have it down to a science, and the airlines have so many safety procedures in place for de-icing and different flight conditions, that you feel pretty confident no matter what Mother Nature throws at you.
“Sometimes it’s not even the weather
that can make a flight challenging,” she adds. “Maybe there is a medical emergency on board or turbulence that forces us to change course. The goal is to prepare for the unexpected. I feel like I’ve done my job when we land safely and I see people heading off to where they need to go and know I got them there.”
Women & Wings Although aviation is a male dominated field, Pearson says she has experienced very little discrimination. “Working for PHOTOS PROVIDED BY AMANDA PEARSON an airline makes a difference,” she explains. “I have the airline behind me and I think that adds some respect. Sometimes, when I greet the passengers after the flight a few people will look surprised, but most give me high fives and think it’s cool that a woman was the pilot.
Continued on page 14.
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