Girls in Flight Training (GIFT), Texas
From our Vice Chair, Serena:
Last week fellow RHS member Hannah M. and I flew to Vernon, TX to participate in GIFT week! (Girls in Flight Training)
It’s a week long event for girls/women where the airplanes are charged the operational cost of each plane, (Usually $80-100/hourr wet) and all CFI flight/ground instruction is volunteer based and therefore free to the students!
It is organized to place all the private, instrument, and flight instructor students in their own classrooms with a ground instructor to go over material to prep them for both their written and practical exams. They would rotate all the students into their preferred plane (high vs low wing) and some even got to check off some requirements like their long xc, solos, and night xc.
At the end of the week, they took some of the ladies to the testing center to get the written done, and a couple girls even did their checkride! Depending on available funds, they actually offered to cover the cost of some checkrides. A handful of ladies even got a tail wheel endorsement in the cub!
Hannah and I were working on CFI, so they had us practice teaching by sitting in with the private class and helping them work through the written knowledge. We would also split into our own small group to practice writing and presenting lesson plans. We got to do some flying from the right seat in a couple different aircraft, and took advantage of the opportunity to fly some planes that the other students flew to Vernon in! We got time in a J3 cub, Cirrus SR22, Bonanza V35, and sat in the backseat of a twin Apache to absorb some multi knowledge!
We had an amazing time, and made some really great friends! This organization is always open to hosting anywhere in the country, all they need are some planes to fly at a reasonable cost to the students, classrooms to use, and CFI who would like to volunteer their time. As soon as Hannah and I get our CFI we absolutely plan to travel to their next events to donate our time to other future female pilots.
