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Classic Aero-TV: Able Flight's Leslie Irby-Air Is Only Place Free of Prejudice

From 2019 (YouTube Version): Able Flight Welcomes New Pilots At AirVenture

After seven weeks of intensive flight training and ground school, seven 2019 Able Flight scholarship recipients are now licensed pilots. Six trained at Purdue University and one at The Ohio State University, and they were honored at Able Flight’s annual Wings Pinning Ceremony at EAA AirVenture 2019.

Among them is Leslie Irby, who lives in Georgia and was paralyzed in an auto accident in 2013. She told Aero-News that was inspired to learn to fly after learning the story of Bessie Coleman, who was the first woman of African-American descent, and the first of Native American descent, to hold a pilot license. Coleman achieved her international pilot license in 1921.

Leslie began flying at the age of 16 through a program in Atlanta called Aviation Career Enrichment. After the accident, she thought her dream of becoming a pilot was dashed, but Able Flight helped her realize that dream. This is her story.

Aero-TV is a production of the Internationally syndicated Aero-News Network. Seen worldwide by hundreds of thousands of aviators and aviation adherents, ANN's Aero-TV has produced over 5000 aviation and feature programs, including well over 1700 episodes of our daily aviation news program, AIRBORNE UNLIMITED, currently hosted by Sophie Hurlock. Now in its third decade of operation, parent company Aero-News Network, has the most aggressive and intensive editorial profile of any aviation news organization and has published over 450,000 news and feature stories since its inception -- having pioneered the online 24/7 aviation new-media model that so many have emulated.

©2019 Aero-News Network, Inc., ALL Rights Reserved

FMI: www.aero-news.netwww.youtube.com/aerotvnetworkwww.ableflight.org

 


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