Meet Madeline Welin
From Cessna 150 to C–17
“I have so many photos of me as a 1-year-old, a 2-year-old, sitting in his lap in the cockpit,” Welin said. When she attended high school, her father took her up in a small airplane, and she knew then that this would be her career. Shortly after, in 2019, Welin applied for and received an AOPA Foundation You Can Fly High School Flight Training Scholarship, which funded most of her private pilot certificate and cemented her determination. “My parents couldn’t afford to pay that for me,” she said. When she was looking for colleges, she found that the University of Colorado Boulder had a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, where she would also receive a full-ride scholarship. After four years, Welin earned a slot for Reserve pilot training and then went to Vance Air Force Base in Enid, Oklahoma, to train with the U.S. Air Force, getting instruction in the Beechcraft T–6 Texan II and—as she’d decided to go “heavy”—its turboprop versions on a Redbird simulator. Later, she would move on to the Boeing C–17 Globemaster III.
At age 25, Welin is currently a first lieutenant co-pilot flying the C–17 III based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Welin is modest about her accomplishments. “The best thing is that women are doing this. Even in my pilot training class, there were so many more women than there were 20 years ago, and that’s awesome.”
Welin is ultimately following her father’s footsteps. He used to be a C–17 pilot. While Welin is a reservist, she is full-time on orders to continue her follow-up training. She flies locally three or four times a week, practicing low and slow flight, takeoffs, and landings for as long as three to four hours. Once a month, those missions can be longer, can lead her overseas, and can involve transport or cargo. She clearly loves this career, even though she’s away from her actual family a lot. But she doesn’t think that’s necessarily all bad, because she gets to share her experiences with them. And “It’s, you know, serving your country. Like, that’s why I do it. I love to serve something bigger than myself.”
Apart from flying the C–17, Welin’s favorite parts of her career are the crew and the places she gets to go. “My squadron is a really awesome squadron, it’s just who you fly with, and it’s not just work, it’s family. Everyone knows everything about you and would give you the shirt off their back,” she said.
The C–17 she flies is as tall as a five-story building and as long as about half the length of a standard American football field. Welin said that a lot of people are intimidated by the size and think that the aircraft must be hard to fly, but she thinks it’s absolutely achievable. “Going from a Cessna 150 to this is a huge process, at least a couple of years, but it’s still worth it. And I truly believe anyone can do it if they set their mind to it,” she said. 
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