Opening the flight deck door

Logbook

Who: Madison Wooley, flight attendant and pilot

Ratings: Private pilot, instrument rating

Favorite airplane: Air Tractor, Piper Super Cub

Advice for students: “Apply for every scholarship ever. You miss 100 percent of the shots that you don’t take.”

It was a journey born from adversity, self-discovery, and winding paths and adventures.

Born in Louisiana, Wooley grew up around aviation without ever imagining it as a career option. Her mom’s side of the family owns and operates a crop-dusting company, so she spent her childhood watching crop-dusting aircraft over the fields of Louisiana.

“I grew up under the wings of an Ag Cat,” Wooley said.

Wooley’s career moved onward, and she graduated college with a degree in communications and marketing. She had a brief stint in motor sports before returning home to Louisiana, where she built a successful career in communications and marketing for country clubs, even advancing to leadership roles.

In early 2023, everything changed. “They say bad things come in threes, well we had more than three things,” Wooley recalled.

Within weeks, Wooley lost her childhood dog, her grandmother passed away, and then she was involved in a serious car accident that left her with a broken hand and foot. She doesn’t quite describe the car accident as a “wake-up call”; she says it was more a moment of peace, thinking it was her time, with her faith guiding her through the experience.

“Obviously it wasn’t [my time], but it taught me that life is too short for the things that aren’t meant for us,” she said.

Two weeks later, she lost her job.

What followed was three months of unemployment, which was a good time for Wooley to travel and also start charting her life forward. That’s when a friend who had just graduated from flight attendant training reached out and told Wooley that she had to apply to be a flight attendant.

“You belong up here, you will thrive up here; you belong in the industry,” Wooley recalled her friend telling her.

And after an application to her hometown major airline, Wooley interviewed and started training in late 2023. But she still had one major epiphany ahead of her.

During an early morning flight, working as a flight attendant, the cockpit door briefly opened as one of the pilots prepared for a break.

“The light from the flight deck was shining so perfectly. It illuminated the whole cabin,” Wooley said. “It was the whole shebang. It was like angels were singing. It just descended upon my head that I was meant to be on the other side of that door.”

At first, she dismissed the thought. But after a week of prayer, research, and conversations with pilots and family, she decided to pursue flight training. On her twenty-sixth birthday, the decision became final.

“The first thought on my brain that day was, ‘I don’t want to wake up when I turn 30 and regret not starting now,” Wooley said.

Today, Wooley balances life as a flight attendant with the demands of flight training, relying on support from family, co-workers, especially pilots at her airline, and fellow aviators in general. Recently instrument-rated, Wooley credits organizations like The Ninety-Nines and her company for helping her along the way and encourages other young pilots to keep pushing forward.

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