{"id":9432,"date":"2018-08-02T10:22:30","date_gmt":"2018-08-02T15:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.envoyair.com\/?p=9432"},"modified":"2018-08-02T10:22:30","modified_gmt":"2018-08-02T15:22:30","slug":"women-with-wings-first-officer-paige-stawicki-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.envoyair.com\/2018\/08\/02\/women-with-wings-first-officer-paige-stawicki-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Women With Wings: First Officer Paige Stawicki"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cMom, can boys be pitots<\/em> too?\u201d<\/p>\n

Such an innocent but honest question from the four-year-old daughter of now-retired American Airlines pilot Beverley Bass. Her daughter, Paige Stawicki, couldn\u2019t quite pronounce the word pilot, and only knew what she saw, which was that her mother and her friends were all pilots and all women.<\/p>\n

Since her childhood, Paige looked up to her mother who was the third woman pilot to fly for American and the first woman to be a Captain at American \u2013 a true pioneer. When Paige finally decided to try her hand at aviation, she had some big shoes to fill, but thankfully had all the right tools and personality to be successful; after all, she is her mother\u2019s daughter.<\/p>\n

Now, at 25 years old, Paige is an Envoy First Officer flying the Embraer 145 out of LaGuardia Airport in New York. Her journey to the right seat wasn\u2019t a direct route, but there\u2019s no doubt in Paige\u2019s mind that she eventually made the perfect choice for her career.<\/p>\n

How to make a hard left<\/h3>\n

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After the tragedy of 9\/11, even at eight years old, Paige saw the difficult future that lay ahead for the pilot profession. Instead of soaring through the sky, young Paige eyed a future of scrubbing in for surgery.<\/p>\n

Many years later, Paige chose to\u00a0attend the University of Georgia where she majored in biology and psychology in preparation for medical school. During her first couple of summers, Paige shadowed a plastic surgeon in Plano, Texas, where she gained a new reverence for the life-saving work they do in reconstructive surgery.<\/p>\n

One day, after a disappointing practice test result, Paige said she had a \u201cmeltdown\u201d in her car, so she called her mother to vent her worries about continuing down the pre-med path. Beverley told her daughter \u2013 half joking, half serious \u2013 that she should just become a pilot.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just kind of hit me, why not become a pilot?\u201d Paige recalled. \u201cI love to travel, the pilot profession gave my family a good life, and aviation was my first love. So I thought, you\u2019re right, Mom. I should become a pilot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hard work pays off<\/h3>\n

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From that moment on, as Paige puts it, she had tunnel vision on becoming a pilot, beginning with her private pilot\u2019s license. At 21 years old, Paige was determined to gain any and every flying hour she could manage, no matter if it meant working three jobs to do it.<\/p>\n

She flew an aircraft for local traffic watch, and often times she would sleep in her car at the Addison Airport in between the morning and evening shifts. She even split ownership of a Cherokee taildragger so she could make up a few hours here and there, especially at night.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce Paige decided to become a pilot, she was out of control trying to earn hours,\u201d said Beverley. \u201cShe was all-hands-on-deck going forward, which I think she did because she felt behind at her age.\u201d<\/p>\n

See, when your mom is a famous pilot \u2013 Beverley\u2019s experience flying on 9\/11 was portrayed in the hit Broadway musical \u201cCome From Away\u201d \u2013 you feel some pressure to catch up to the woman who became a Captain at 24 years old. But Paige\u2019s laser focus and unwavering determination didn\u2019t just fall from the sky, it came from the woman she\u2019s admired and followed her entire life.<\/p>\n

The apple doesn’t fall far<\/h3>\n

\"IMG-DFW-FLT-Paige-Stawicki-july-2018-2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u201cMy mom gave me all the tools I needed to succeed in life,\u201d said Paige. \u201cWe\u2019re both determined, hardworking, focused, and a little bit alpha. Nothing gets in our way of our goals. With that, I felt like I could achieve anything if I worked hard enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her steadfast, can-do attitude isn\u2019t the only thing Paige got from her mother. She also has a galloping gusto for horseback riding.<\/p>\n

Beverley was a professional barrel racer in her youth, while Paige earned a scholarship to UGA and won many equestrian awards competing at her alma mater. Paige mentioned that piloting an aircraft and riding a horse have their similarities, and can see how many women who grew up riding horses also have an interest in flying planes.<\/p>\n

Maybe it\u2019s taking control of a horse\u2019s sheer power as you would an airplane, but Paige thinks it might be a pilot\u2019s penchant for multi-tasking that draws in the similarities to riding a horse.<\/p>\n

\"IMG-FLT-Paige_stawicki-horse\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Women in Aviation<\/h3>\n

\u201cAs a pilot, you\u2019re trained to be a great multi-tasker and to deal with so many variables thrown at you,\u201d said Paige. \u201cEventually, it becomes natural for us to be problem solvers. And that\u2019s not something that is gender specific. I think women make great multi-taskers and problem solvers.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Beverly was training to be a pilot in the 1970s and 80s, she said that women pilots were \u201crare birds\u201d and had to prove that they were skilled pilots before being considered \u201cone of the guys.\u201d Beverly began as a flight engineer and when she became Captain, she had finally earned the respect of her male pilot counterparts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was always welcomed as a woman pilot at American,\u201d recalls Beverley. \u201cNowadays, it\u2019s so nice to see all the opportunities young women have available to them to become a pilot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"IMG-FLT-Paige_stawicki-beverly-aa\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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There\u2019s not a moment that goes by when Paige isn\u2019t grateful for the path her mother, and many other women pilots, blazed for future generations of young girls to realize that an opportunity to be a professional pilot is possible. That\u2019s why Paige has taken to mentoring young women while they\u2019re in flight training, and shares her experience looking for flying jobs, applying to airlines and any boost of confidence they might need.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot everyone has an aviator in their family to learn from like I did,\u201d said Paige. \u201cSome girls need a resource like me who has been there to help them when they get stuck. It\u2019s the least I can do to help recruit more talented aviators to the field.\u201d<\/p>\n

“The best company for me”<\/h3>\n

\"IMG-DFW-FLT-Paige-Stawicki-july-2018-5\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Paige, however, didn\u2019t need much of a pitch to apply to Envoy and American Airlines \u2013 all her life she had dreamed of flying for American just like her mother. After a short stint flying for a corporate airline, where she chartered flights for celebrities like Rhianna and Justin Timberlake (!), she earned the necessary 1,500 hours to begin flying for Envoy.<\/p>\n

Besides being closer to home while training in Dallas, Paige also had the \u201csecurity net\u201d of the Flow-Through Program to American, which made Envoy the best company for her. She says she’s growing to like\u00a0New York, but flying the Embraer 145 is the best part of her job.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe E145 is so fun because you do a lot of hand flying, which keeps things interesting,\u201d said Paige. \u201cI really love my job – from the city to my jet to the people, I\u2019m just so excited. I also love the challenge of flying. Each flight and each day is different, from the person you fly with to the places you go.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same way she trained to become a pilot (full speed ahead!), she\u2019s a dogged Envoy First Officer who is willing to pick up any extra flying she can to keep herself busy. All the while free of regrets from leaving her pre-med degree behind and infinitely proud that she\u2019s following her mother\u2019s footsteps as a strong, woman pitot. <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMom, can boys be pitots too?\u201d Such an innocent but honest question from the four-year-old daughter of now-retired American Airlines pilot Beverley Bass. Her daughter, Paige Stawicki, couldn\u2019t quite pronounce the word pilot, and only knew what she saw, which was that her mother and her friends were all pilots and all women. Since her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":42134,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[105,64,65,66,77,437,78,144,438,110,86,51,68,118,79,92,98,80,91,439,440,81,355,82,83],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.envoyair.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9432"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.envoyair.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.envoyair.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.envoyair.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.envoyair.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.envoyair.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.envoyair.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.envoyair.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.envoyair.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.envoyair.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}