![The DC-3 is considered one of the most iconic aircraft in aviation history. [Credit: Adobe Stock]](https://www.flyingmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/FLY0326_3.3-Unusual-Attitudes-e1773840690827.jpeg)
Recently, there have been emails from groups all over the country who have rescued DC-3s and, after years of work, gotten them flying. My friend Barry Schiff was bragging about being asked to fly the newly restored corporate Wrigley DC-3 to Catalina Island in California.
No freighter, that one!
Probably the saddest thing about the FAA’s revocation of all my certificates and ratings was the loss of my DC-3 and Lockheed Lodestar type ratings. But the truth is there are few if any DC-3s still hauling freight like they were in the 1970s through the ’90s.
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Assuming I haven’t told you before, and because this year is the 90th anniversary of the DC-3, I’ll relate how this 100-pound lady inspector, then in the Indianapolis Flight Standards District Office (FSDO), earned the type rating and accumulated 25 years of experience in the beloved and cantankerous “Gooney Bird.”
A man in the Chicago regional office in charge of assigning training and type ratings was an old friend from the Cincinnati FSDO. Leo Wonderly knew I had a Lodestar type rating, and the Indianapolis FSDO needed a DC-3 “specialist” for a large freight operator in its district. So, off I went to the storied Opa Locka Airport (KOPF) in Miami, poring over DC-3 manuals from various operators—only to find that all DC-3 manuals are essentially the same.
Our class of five flew a hard-used freighter at Don Turner’s establishment with an instructor, Hector Villamar, who became one of my all-time favorite pilots. Villamar had fled Cuba after landing in Miami years before as a copilot on Cubana Airlines. It took time and work (as a schoolteacher), but he gradually earned all his U.S. licenses and ratings. Hector was a helluva pilot.
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The class was curious. Three were newly hired copilots from Four Star Airlines in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I particularly remember one girl who had no “real” home but bunked with one of the crew or slept on the beach. But Pamela (“Pah-mell-a” to Villamar) had worked in construction in New York and, when a hurricane threatened the Florida Keys and the winds in Miami were too strong for DC-3 flying, we all drove to his house in Islamorada and hammered wood planks on the new roof. Pamela was obviously the most experienced roofer.
After the winds calmed, we flew out to the new Everglades Jetport, a huge airport with a long runway in the middle of a swamp west of Miami. In the 1960s, it was envisioned to be the replacement to Miami International (KMIA) and capable of handling supersonic air traffic. For multiple reasons, it never got off the ground, and the only users were training flights and drug runners. You could see wrecks of large airplanes in the swamp next to the runway.
The plexiglass on the landing light in the left wing of a DC-3 is secured by a pair of crossed safety wires to prevent it from blowing out due to strong pressure changes at large angles of attack. If it becomes dislodged, it’s a no-go item. When we saw it was about to “go,” we shut down, hauled a ladder out of the airplane, and somebody climbed up to try fixing it. Almost immediately, several cars came racing across the field, “narc agents” checking us out as a likely drug runner and throwing us in jail or the swamp.
Another student in our group was a disagreeable, know-it-all FAA inspector from the San Juan FSDO. We very definitely did not hit it off and, finally, Villamar pulled me aside: “Go back to the hotel and sit around the pool while you study. I’ll finish Rene up in the airplane, send him home, and then you and I will fly.”
![The author (right) reflects on flying all over the country in DC-3s. [Credit: Martha Lunken]](https://www.flyingmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/FLY0326_3.3-Unusual-Attitudes-Lunken.jpeg)
That’s what happened, and what a joy it was to fly alone with Villamar. We’d done all the required maneuvers so one day we flew across the “jungle” west of Miami. Villamar murmured that the thick greenery below looked exactly like what he’d flown over with Air America in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.
We flew down to Key West and turned back to Miami on the east side of the Keys, cruising very low over the water. On my final flight we came back into Miami from the west at night, and the picture of that clear, black sky, the bright lights of Miami, and the black ocean beyond is one of those images ingrained in your brain—something I’ll never forget.
Several years later, I was sent back to the FSDO in Cincinnati. But despite a full-time job as a safety program counselor (me?), I managed to go all over the country flying DC-3s.
No time to tell you about how I accumulated so much time in the airplane since, but I’ll try in another column. It’s a charming list of genuine characters, many who became dear friends and so many who are gone. Despite partial deafness and broken knuckles, I would give so much to do it again…to see them all again.
But I’m very sure we’ll all meet again on a long grass strip lined with Gooney Birds.
This column first appeared in the March Issue 968 of the FLYING print edition.
