"One day, a girl won't have to wonder if she belongs in the cockpit; she'll just know she does."
On Adele Dobler | HeliOps Magazine


"One day, a girl won't have to wonder if she belongs in the cockpit; she'll just know she does."

Dylan grew up in the world of aviation; his father was a helicopter pilot in the French Air Force for 27 years and is now an aerial work and firefighting pilot. "I remember going to air meets, seeing my dad up there showing thousands of amazed people what a helicopter can do, and dreaming about being that guy in the sky.

Leigh Coate's first flight was in southern California at age 15, when her stepdad, a private pilot, took her up for a spin in a Cessna 172. "That feeling, when we were 1000 feet up looking down at all the cars on the freeway stuck in slow-moving traffic, was mind-blowing. It was absolute freedom – up above it all."

The sun's heat reflects off a mottled grey tarmac, glancing back up onto the Fire Boss AT802F faithfully waiting there for me alongside Riley Payne's red-shirted form.

"As a kid, I would always look to the sky when aircraft passed over, and I loved airshows. When it came time to decide what to do for a career, I knew it needed to be hands-on and dynamic. Initially, I thought about going into corporate aviation flying business jets, but then I took an [...]