WAI Chapters Get an Early Start on Girls in Aviation Day 2019

Six Girls in Aviation Day events in September will kick off the Girls in Aviation Day worldwide outreach, planned for October 5, 2019.

The WAI Utah State University Chapter will hold its event on September 14, and expects 150 participants, while the WAI Gone with the Wind (Atlanta) Chapter expects 400 participants.

WAI Stars of the North Chapter (Minneapolis, MN) was the first chapter to host more than 1,000 girls. This year, its event on September 21, 2019, will involve 2,000 girls. The relatively new WAI Bluegrass Chapter (Louisville, KY) will hold its event as well on September 21 with an expectation that 800-1,000 girls will attend. The WAI Sooner Chapter at the University of Oklahoma will hold its Girls in Aviation Day event on September 21 as well to coincide with the university’s open house activities where they expect about 300 attendees.

Things are bigger in Texas, as the saying goes, and so is the North Texas Chapter’s event which will welcome 3,000 attendees on September 21 to the Frontiers of Flight Museum at Dallas’s Love Field.

“Events like these require an army of volunteers, and we give a shout out to them as well as to sponsors, speakers, corporate members, the role models who show up in their uniforms, or with their mechanics’ tools, the venues, and other aviation groups that work with us to make Girls in Aviation Day the overwhelming success that it is,” says WAI Outreach Director Molly Martin. 

The majority of girls who attend a Girls in Aviation Day event are currently under-represented in the aviation community. Many come to Girls in Aviation Day via their connection with a Girl Scout troop or involvement with Girls, Inc. What is stressed at every event are hands-on, fun activities that represent the variety of aviation careers– pilots in all aspects of aviation as well as mechanics, air traffic controllers, engineers, technicians, and many other aviation careers. 

“Although we love the power of these huge Girls in Aviation Day events, the power of Girls in Aviation Day comes not in the numbers, but from the connection between the girls and the adult role models when girls get to see people who look like them, look like their mothers, look like their aunts doing things, and holding jobs they had never imagined themselves doing,” adds Martin. “Our desire to share our passion for our aviation vocations and avocations is what unites WAI members.” 

In all, WAI estimates 20,000 girls will take part in a Girls in Aviation Day 2019. That figure represents exponential growth from the first events in 2015 when just under 4,000 girls participated worldwide. 

A two-minute video on Girls in Aviation Day may be viewed [http://bit.ly/GIAD2019SaveTheDate]