Girls in Aviation Day Proves Inspirational Again

You can’t pick a career unless you know it exists—that was one of the main messages delivered at Girls in Aviation Day on September 20.

This marked the 11th year of GIAD events all over the world. The event, created by Women in Aviation International (WAI), is designed to inspire and show school-age girls the opportunities for careers in aviation that go beyond pilot, mechanic, and flight attendant.

Harvey Field Airport (S43) in Snohomish, Washington, hosted a GIAD event on Saturday, and for the first time one was held at King County International Airport/Boeing Field (KBFI) in Seattle.

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Harvey Field is a nontowered facility famous for its skydiving and flight training operation. The airport has that classic “small-town feel,” and according to Cailee Landis, who celebrated her sixth year volunteering at Girls in Aviation Day, among the activities, the 20 or so girls who attended met speakers from the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), an Army Black Hawk pilot, and a LifeFlight nurse.

“They toured the airport and got to see the dispatch center for the flight training and got to preflight an airplane with instructions, and then got to check out the skydiving operations and the maintenance facility so they could learn about the path for people who make the parts for aircraft,” said Landis.

Another popular activity was making rivet necklaces in the shape of small airplanes. For the unfamiliar, using a rivet gun can be very much like using one of those Spritz cookie guns—it takes a hard squeeze to get it to work.

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Meanwhile, 24 nm to the south of S43, some 60 girls and multiple adult volunteers got a chance to tour KBFI, which guides said operated like a small city. The airport has its own police and fire department, with the latter bringing out its tanker truck capable of holding 3,000 gallons of water and giving the girls a chance to activate the boom nozzle. There was also a demonstration of how to marshal an aircraft from one of the local line service technicians.

A class in chart reading proved to be challenging and educational, and then the girls were given a bus tour of the airport, which began with a drive past the Georgetown Steam Plant built in 1906 to power the region’s electric streetcars. The airport was built in the 1920s, and the tall exhaust stacks on the building were taken down because they created a collision hazard for the aircraft on approach. The plant was decommissioned in the 1990s, and the building has been recognized as a National Historic Landmark, a Seattle Landmark, and a Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark.

South of the plant, the Boeing Company has its finishing division, and there are rows and rows of jet tails peeking up from behind a blast fence. The girls also saw the Museum of Flight, which offers a plethora of educational programs in addition to the aircraft displays.

One of the surprises, according to some of the participants, was that in addition to jobs as pilots, mechanics, and flight attendants, there exist aviation-related jobs in engineering, manufacturing, dispatching, and logistics, and that a career in the military is an option, but not a requirement, for an aviation career.

Several adult volunteers with careers in aviation shared their stories, and at KBFI a 15-year-old CAP cadet talked about her experience with the organization and the opportunities it has presented.

At the end of the day the girls were given a specially branded cookie, a pink Girls in Aviation Day backpack, a Girls in Aviation Day T-shirt, and a certificate of participation.

According to WAI, the concept of Girls in Aviation Day was to create a day with hands-on activities “designed to inspire, empower, and connect youth ages 8 to 18 with the world of aviation.”

Judging by the smiles, it appears the mission was accomplished.