Actually;
I’m bloody angry now.
I suggest the media take look at the achievements of:
Caroline Grace
Svetlana Kapanina
Nic Orchard’s fantastic Dawn to Dusk 2018 (well worthy of the BW award in my opinion)
Dot Mathie who flys and maintains a stunning Auster via the LAA.
Many other members of the LAA with XX chromosomes.
Any of thousands of airline Captains and F/O’s with the same XX
quite a lot of military pilots, one by the name of Charlotte Thompson-Edgar who won the DFC for flying her Apache into one of the most famous rescues in Helmand.
Sheila Scott, who let a teenage me fly her aeroplane and inspired me utterly.
Polly Vacher, who still flies some very special aeroplanes.
And especially the true pioneers of women in aviation, the ladies of the ATA who in the 1940’s truly flew solo, in appalling conditions with a map, compass and stopwatch delivering everything from Tiger Moths to Lancaster’s.
All of them “poster girls” for Aviation, not whining liars with an ego too big to fit into a cockpit.
I suspect in T C-T’s case it wouldn’t have mattered how she had pursued fame, aviation was her choice, but had it been sailing, golf, bee keeping or origami the outcome would have been the same narcissistic behaviour, the same attacks on the “old boy network”, nothing ever her fault.
T-CT, I’ve been a PFA/LAA member since I was 14, the help and encouragement from that organisation as I made my way into professional aviation was profound. Now where I can I give some of that back, and I’m still younger than you!
SND