Pilots

It’s early Sunday morning at Chandler Municipal Airport, just southeast of Phoenix. On this spring day, the desert sun already is broiling the ramp. Mary Durst is preflighting the Piper Archer while Jackie Mascaro grabs the coffee and files the flight plan for the short VFR hop down to Tucson. Durst climbs into the left seat and Mascaro the right, and both begin performing their separate and coordinated duties with the precision of a professional flight crew that has shared the same cockpit for years. Yet, until a couple of months ago, neither one had a pilot certificate. After taxiing to the active runway, Durst flips to the tower frequency. The controller replies, "Is that you, Thelma and Louise?" At Chandler, they are well-known.

Durst grew up in Baltimore, Mascaro in San Jose, California. Both are 40-something, professional single mothers, and relative newcomers to Arizona. They began their flight training separately, realizing dreams fueled in childhood. When both were student pilots, they met by accident at Chandler and a friendship developed. As the two began spending more time together at the airport, one of the resident hangar rats dubbed them "Thelma and Louise," after the Susan Sarandon/Geena Davis film about two women who terrorize the Southwest in an old Ford Thunderbird convertible. At the end of the film, with the law closing in, the protagonists become airborne by driving their T-Bird off of a cliff and into the Grand Canyon. Airport humor. The moniker stuck.

Because of career and family pressures, neither Durst’s nor Mascaro’s flight training was particularly expeditious. Durst works as a computer programmer, while Mascaro is a commercial real estate executive in the booming Phoenix market. (Maricopa County gets 200 new residents a day, and the roads and airspace are becoming increasingly crowded.) A fair amount of rust would accumulate between lessons, and Durst’s instructor would sometimes, out of frustration, revert to his native tongue, "conversational" French. Then he would pause and say, "Oh, I forgot, you are on the five-year plan."

"I don’t think our instructors thought we ever would finish," says Mascaro. Both had memorable solo flights. The desert sun is not kind to avionics, and Durst’s radio quit in midpattern on a 115-degree-Fahrenheit day, right when three T–6 warbirds decided to do a flyover. In heavy traffic, Mascaro was directed into a nonstandard pattern and became disoriented. But both persevered. "We were shamed into getting our licenses," says Durst. She also cites reverse encouragement from her ex-husband, who counseled, "Why don’t you forget all this silly flying nonsense and act your age?"

Since getting their tickets, they have pursued flying separately and together. "We have learned so much by flying with other people in other types of airplanes," says Mascaro. "We are learning all the time." Durst has developed a passion for all things aerobatic and has logged passenger time in a Pitts and a Sukhoi. She recently entered her first International Aerobatics Club contest in a Great Lakes biplane. "I saw a 74-year-old man and a 71-year-old woman compete at the Copperstate contest. They inspired me. And I love flying the Great Lakes—it’s noisy, bulky, and slow, but the open cockpit is very romantic."

Durst also works the scheduling desk at Chandler Air Service on Saturdays in an effort to learn more about the business side of general aviation. Working the desk also allows her "to meet so many interesting people with so many interesting stories." One was a woman from Germany who had come to Arizona to build time. For two weeks, Durst flew right seat with the German pilot, and acted as her designated navigator and communicator within the maze of Phoenix’s airport-rich Class B airspace.

From that experience, Durst counsels other neophyte pilots, "Go fly right seat with people whenever you can; you see everything." Durst claims the experience sharpened her navigation and communication skills well beyond the 150 hours of pilot-in-command time she has accumulated to date.

Durst practices what she preaches. When she flies with Mascaro, they alternate left and right seats and pilot-in-command duties. Both have accumulated numerous right-seat takeoffs and landings.

Lifting off from Chandler this Sunday, Durst is at the controls and Mascaro is minding the navigation. Mascaro eyeballs a Cessna Skyhawk below and off their right wing; it stays with them, and she tracks it all the way to Pinal. Setting up for the approach into Tucson, Mascaro rattles off the landing checklist and Durst efficiently complies and cross-checks. On final, Mascaro softly remarks, "You’re a little high," and Durst quickly responds with a subtle slip, followed by a greaser.

As for future plans, Durst thinks she might want to pursue a flight instructor certificate while Mascaro toys with opening an aerial photography business. There are more places they want to fly to together, but the Grand Canyon will not be one of them. Says Jackie, "We figured we’d stay clear of there."