The Air Race Classic board of directors on Tuesday announced the route for the 45th Air Race Classic, to be held June 21 to 24, 2022.
Next year’s competition will begin in Lakeland, Florida (KLAL), and end at the Terre Haute Regional Airport (KHUF) in Terre Haute, Indiana. Along the way, racers will have to make stops in:
- Moultrie, Georgia
- Muscle Shoals, Alabama
- Hattiesburg, Mississippi
- Pine Bluff, Arkansas
- Ada, Oklahoma
- Lawrence, Kansas
- Mt. Vernon, Illinois
- Tullahoma, Tennessee
Each year, the nonprofit parent company Air Race Classic Inc. hosts the four-day, cross-country race with a route designed to cover more than 2,400 miles, presenting a series of challenges and learning opportunities to racers—and still accommodate the range limitations for even the slowest airplanes. Racers have to navigate a myriad set of terrain, weather, wind, and airspace obstacles to get to their flyby timing location at the specified airports.
Race History
The Air Race Classic was first launched in 1929 as the Women’s Air Derby and featured only 20 women pilots, including Amelia Earhart, who famously flew from Santa Monica, California, to Cleveland, Ohio. Then, there was the All-Women’s Transcontinental Air Race, also called the Powder Puff Derby, after World War II that came to a halt in 1977 before resuming in 2002 as the Air Race Classic.
The pandemic forced organizers to scrap the race in 2020, and taking all precautions in 2021, this year’s version took a unique format, a one-day Air Derby, which allowed racers to compete close to home. Altogether, this flexible design attracted more than 200 pilots, making up 84 teams in the United States, Canada, the Bahamas, and New Zealand.
Planning a VFR flight flown during daylight hours on a single day between June 12 and 26, teams had to start and end at the same airport, and the route had to include at least five legs with a minimum of 65 nautical miles per leg. Pilots then had to estimate the time it would take to fly that route, and then fly it as close to their estimated time as possible, which was pre-recorded by race officials.
Flying a 2006 Cirrus SR20 G2, as team #49, Emma Hughes, Emily Hause, and Regine Rose Acosta from Western Michigan University earned the first-place prize.
One other usual accommodation during the 2021 race was the inclusion of light-sport, experimental, turbocharged, and rotor-lift aircraft under 12,500 pounds. Typically, aircraft were restricted to normally aspirated, piston-powered, fixed-wing aircraft.
For the 2022 race, the teams will be able to register starting on Monday, January 3, 2022, at noon ET at the Air Race Classic website.
