The school girls who attended the Girls in Aviation Day event on St. Maarten on Friday received more than they expected when the event was interrupted by the arrival of a pair of U.S. Marine Corps MV-22 Ospreys loading troops on a training mission. Coming after the conclusion of the Caribavia conference this week, the Women in Aviation International (WAI)-sponsored event at Grand Case Airport hosted 30 eleven-year-old students split equally between the Dutch and French sides of the island.
Held at the HeliRiviera hangar, it featured 11 stations, including "talk like a pilot" (introducing the phonetic alphabet), marshaling aircraft, learning about air traffic control, and aerodynamics. Veteran corporate aviation pilot Kristina Tervo also demonstrated how to read a sectional chart.
“It’s very important to get more ladies into aviation in different careers, not only pilots but maintenance and all the other fantastic careers that we have,” she told AIN. “When I started flying, I really didn’t have role models at all so what we want to do here is show that there are so many different possibilities in aviation.”
A highlight of the event was the display of a St. Barth Executive Pilatus PC-12. For many of the attendees, it was their first time aboard an aircraft.
The event had been under discussion since last year’s Caribavia, when several conference attendees, including WAI director of communications Kelly Murphy, met with Ludmila de Weever—who was at the time St. Maarten's minister of tourism, economic affairs, transportation, and telecommunications, and is now a member of parliament—and lit the spark.
“We hope to let girls know that any job is available to them, and they can see through this event that we have females that are in aviation-related jobs on the island already,” said de Weever, adding she hopes to make the Girls in Aviation an annual event. “By having a WAI chapter locally, its aviation scholarship program is available to help fulfill their dreams.”
