Charlotte Bair is about to head to Tennessee for a jet type rating, a step she said could make her one of the youngest women in the country, and almost certainly the youngest in Wyoming, to hold it.
The 18-year-old Lovell native already became a certified flight instructor in August. A type rating is required for a pilot to serve as pilot in command of a turbojet-powered airplane, and it applies to a specific aircraft type.
Bair told Cowboy State Daily she was inspired by her dad, a private pilot, to earn her own private license last year.
“I got my private license the summer in between my junior and senior year,” Bair said. “Then, while I was in my senior year, the high school let me go in the afternoons to flight school.”
As she prepares for her next step forward, Bair said she’s watching the reputation of young female pilots take two steps back.
A fatal Florida crash on Sunday sparked a wave of online attacks against the 20-year-old female first officer, commentary Bair said feels like a direct hit on young women trying to break into the industry.
“The biggest impact it's had on me as a pilot is probably just because I am a girl,” Bair said. “Girl pilots get enough backlash as is.”
‘Hit Really Close to Home’
Video of a Learjet slamming nose first into the ground beside a road in Palm Beach County, Florida, on Sunday caught attention across the country.
The jet was flying from Austin, Texas, to the Bahamas when it went down, killing all nine people on board, including 20-year-old first officer Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras of Boca Raton.
As Bair watched the video and listened to audio of Filgueiras’ last moments on the radio, she said the only word that can describe how she felt is heartbreak.
"Knowing how it feels to be the person in control of a flight like that, it hit really close to home for me,” Bair said.
As she started to read more about Filgueiras’ journey as a pilot, Bair said it struck her how similar it was to her own.
“She got her private license when she was 17, and just flew her butt off since then,” Bair said. “She fully deserved her spot in the seat she was in, and people are still going to judge her just because of her gender.”
Bair said Filgueiras’s skill was clear even in her final moments, as she can be heard declaring an emergency and warning controllers that the jet was going down before uttering her final words: “We’re out of time.”
To those who have been quick to criticize the pilot, Bair offered a simple reality check.
“Anyone who says that she didn’t handle that well, I’d like to put them in her position and see how they’d respond,” Bair said. “I thought she did a really good job of handling communications all the way until the end.”
The National Transportation Safety Board has not determined a cause of the Florida crash, but investigators are examining how weather may have played a role after the crew reported icing, a hazard that can cause pilots to lose control of an aircraft.
For Bair, the takeaway should be that ice and thunderstorms are a risk to planes. Instead, she said she's heard people use the crash as an excuse to claim they would never step foot on a plane piloted by a woman.
“It’s sending us back a few generations,” Bair said. “We haven’t passed this whole ‘Girls can’t drive’ and ‘Girls can’t fly' thing yet.”
Even as the conversation around female pilots seems to be moving backward, Bair is still pushing forward with her own career.
‘It’s Pretty Impressive’
After earning her private license, Bair went on to add her instrument, commercial and multi-engine ratings before becoming a certified flight instructor a little over a year later.
“I went a little bonkers with it,” Bair said. “It's kind of not normal to do all of it at once, but I really enjoyed the whole training process. So I just kept going with it and didn't regret it.”
Bair did that training at Choice Aviation in Cody, where she said she spent nearly every day.
Sheena Cichosz, Choice Aviation’s chief flight instructor, told Cowboy State Daily that Bair is one of only two or three 18-year-olds to earn a flight instructor certification in her 15 years at the school.
“It’s pretty impressive,” Cichosz said. “Not a whole lot of people do that.”
Cichosz, who helped oversee Bair’s training and worked on some of her progress checks and check rides, described her as an above-average student who did well on every one of her check rides.
“She’s a safety-conscious kind of pilot,” Cichosz said. “That’s what we train into all of our students at Choice. We’re not going to just sign off pilots just because they have the time. They have to be safe and proficient in their airplane.”
On the Florida crash, Cichosz said the same is certainly true about the young first officer who died.
Since women make up a small share of the pilot workforce, Cichosz said any crash involving a female pilot can be weaponized against women in the field generally. But any stereotypical framing, she said, doesn’t change the facts.
“As far as female pilots, we are good pilots,” Cichosz said. “Us girls can do it just like the guys can, no issue. We get the same training. We’re held by the same standards.”
Cichosz said Bair is a great example for any young, aspiring pilot, and the school would have loved to keep her.
“I would have hired her as a flight instructor for sure,” Cichosz said. “We’re super proud of her, and I know she’s going to go off and do good things, whatever they are.”
‘It’s All Her’
Bair is now a freshman at the University of Wyoming studying construction management. While a pilot’s path like hers typically leads to flying commercially, she said her career dreams are rooted in her hometown and her family’s business.
“My parents own a construction company and I just want to be part of that,” Bair said. “I love the area that we live (in) and I’ve grown up around construction, so it interests me.”
Her instructor certification fits that plan, Bair said, because it lets her give the pilots who fly her family’s company planes the flight reviews they need to stay legal. She also wants to keep flying with her dad.
“Most people who get their flight instructor's license do it to build hours so that they can go on to fly for the airlines,” Bair said. “I just kind of did it for the fun of it.”
But her dad, Devin Bair, told Cowboy State Daily that holding a private license and instrument rating himself gives him a firsthand understanding that his daughter’s accomplishment required a whole lot more than having fun.
“I know how much work it takes,” he said. “The fact that she has gone way beyond that and earned her commercial license and flight instructor certification at her age is impressive.”
Her mom, Stacy Bair, who leaves the cockpit to her husband and daughter, told Cowboy State Daily she’s watched in awe as her daughter takes to the skies.
“I’d love to claim it as a parent flex, but it’s all her,” Stacy Bair said. “I have a fear of flying, so she’s my actual real-life hero.”
Emma Jane Jackson can be reached at emma@cowboystatedaily.com.
