Pilots

As a child, Svea Wall was scared to fly. She grew up in a family of, as she puts it, white-knuckled flyers. Ironically, at the age of 20, she earns her living in N911GM, the Cessna Citation business jet she copilots for Rochester Aviation in Rochester, Minnesota. How did she get in the right seat of a jet so fast? It's not the young-woman-gets-all-the-breaks story you might be expecting.

Wall is the first to admit that sometimes women have it easier than men. However, her ambition has earned her the copilot slot with just over 1,000 hours of flight time. Like most women in aviation, she has experienced her share of being mistaken for the secretary or the flight attendant. But, she explains, it is not just men; women, too, are not yet accustomed to seeing women as pilots. For example, Wall laughs when she tells the story about the time she walked into an FBO and saw a man and a woman debriefing from a flight lesson. She thought, "It's really nice to see more women learning to fly," only to find out later that the woman was the flight instructor.

Her fascination with flying began at the age of 14 when she decided to face her fear and go up for an introductory flight and actually fly a small airplane. An amazing thing happened — she liked it so much that she forgot to be scared. At 15 she started taking lessons merely because she enjoyed it so much. She wasn't even planning on getting a rating, and a career as a pilot never entered her mind. But then she started thinking that it would be nice to share her experiences with her friends, so she decided to go for her private pilot certificate.

At 16, while still a student pilot, Wall heard about the Cliff Robertson Work Experience Program sponsored through the Experimental Aircraft Association, and she applied. She was accepted and spent her entire summer with a host family in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, washing airplanes and working around the airport. In exchange for her labor she got a tailwheel endorsement and 35 hours flying a Piper Cub off a grass strip.

After that summer she continued working on her private certificate. By the following summer she had not only her private pilot certificate, but an instrument rating as well. By the end of the next summer, she decided to fly airplanes for a living. Once back in Minnesota, she earned her commercial and flight instructor certificates.

While spending her summers flying, Wall took advantage of a state-sponsored program and opted out of her last two years of high school. Instead, she took classes at a local community college. At the age of 18, she graduated with an associate's degree in liberal arts and a grade-point average of 3.97. She is currently enrolled in an independent study program at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and expects to graduate in May 1998 with a bachelor's degree in professional aeronautics and a minor in aviation business administration.

Wall got all of her ratings at Rochester Aviation; and then the flight school hired her to do sightseeing and photography work. She later went to work for the school as a flight instructor. She proved herself and quickly became the chief flight instructor. She had been teaching for a little over a year when her employer offered her the opportunity to go to FlightSafety International for initial training in the Citation. While she liked teaching, she knew that it was a good move career-wise. She packed her suitcase and headed for Wichita.

Now that her schedule is busy with charter flights, she says she misses teaching — "although," she adds, "[the Citation's] like a big Cessna 172; it just goes faster." She pauses and adds, "I love flying that airplane." She plans to return to FlightSafety in May to get a type rating in the Citation. Her big limitation is not having an ATP certificate. When she turns 21, she wants to apply to the FAA for an exemption to the age-23 rule.

Right now, she likes the excitement of jetting off to many different places. Nevertheless, she says that carrying a pager around all day and staying within 30 minutes of the airport will eventually get old. She gets to turn the pager off only four days a month.

Wall thinks that in the future she would enjoy flying a small jet in the corporate world. But she adds that she might look for an airline job primarily for the stability and schedule, which would allow her to get married and have children.

Many pilots would consider flying for the airlines as their career goal. Although she feels that the experience would be invaluable, her real ambition is to return to flight instruction. She has a passion for antique airplanes and would like to open a flight school that specializes in older airplanes, especially taildraggers.