Women In Aviation International Extends Best Wishes To Air Race Classic Teams

The field is set for the 40th Air Race Classic (ARC), the annual all-women cross-country airplane race. Fifty-five teams, consisting of 130 women pilots from around the country will take off Tuesday, June 21, 2016.

Women in Aviation International (WAI) extends best wishes to the 71 teams of women pilots competing in this year’s Air Race Classic. The 40th annual Air Race Classic begins and ends at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University – beginning at the Prescott, Arizona, campus on June 21, 2016, and ending on June 24, 2016, at the Daytona Beach campus. The race course extends across 12 states and 2,716 miles, with women from all walks of life, from ages 17 to 90, racing this year.

"My best advice for the race teams is to fly safe and have fun,” says WAI President Dr. Peggy Chabrian, and a WAI press release. “We’ll be following all the teams with interest.” As for who will win this year’s Air Race Classic, Dr. Chabrian has studied the roster of race teams and has a prediction. She says, “I predict that the winner of this year’s Air Race Classic will be a dedicated, proficient team of amazing women pilots.”

The Air Race Classic is the epicenter of women’s air racing. They come from a wide variety of backgrounds including students, teachers, doctors, airline pilots, business owners, professionals and air traffic controllers. Race teams, consisting of at least two women pilots, must fly VFR during daylight hours only and are given four days to make flybys at each en route timing point and then land at the terminus. The race route changes each year, approximately 2,400 statute miles in length, with eight or nine timing points.

The oldest race of its kind in the nation, the ARC traces its roots to the 1929 Women's Air Derby, in which Amelia Earhart and 19 other daring female pilots raced from Santa Monica, CA, to Cleveland, OH. That contest, aka the Powder Puff Derby, marked the beginning of women's air racing in the United States.

FMI: www.airraceclassic.org/  www.wai.org/