photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

Lawrence native Tammy Willits, pictured with her plane Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023, at Lawrence Regional Airport, has had her pilot's license for about 10 years, but her love of flying has been lifelong. She hopes to get more women interested in aviation.

Lawrence native Tammy Willits first took over the controls of a small airplane while on a flight with her father sometime around sixth grade. Decades later, her love for aviation hasn’t diminished in the slightest.

“I loved flying from the first moment that I did it with him,” she told the Journal-World recently, and she has been keen to inspire that love in others, particularly women, who represent a small percentage of licensed pilots.

As her day job, Willits co-owns a pharmacy business serving Northeast Kansas’ elderly population, a field she has worked in since graduating from college. But even a busy job in health care can’t keep her away from the sky for long; she has structured her work schedule so that she starts her weekends on Fridays, giving her enough time for a trip.

Willits now spends plenty of time at — or more often flying to or from — Lawrence Regional Airport. Her plane, a four-seat Cessna 400, is housed in a hangar there, and she has logged roughly 1,000 hours as “pilot in command” in the decade since getting a pilot’s license of her own.

“Pilot in command” simply means the person who is actually controlling the plane vs. a pilot who may be aboard working the radios or providing navigation information; the latter does not get to log the hours.

“If I’m not up in the air at least every two weeks, I get cranky,” Willits joked. “… But definitely, I shoot for at least once a week to get up in the air. I may not go somewhere other than up, but that’s the plan.”

photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

Lawrence native Tammy Willits sits in her Cessna 400, which is housed in a hangar at Lawrence Regional Airport, on Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023.

Those flight hours have taken her and her husband as far north as the Canadian border, to Washington, D.C., and Savannah, Georgia, and down south to Arlington, Texas. They’ve also flown to visit their adult son, who lives in Los Angeles and works for SpaceX.

One particularly memorable trip started with her husband noting early in the day that the Kansas City Royals played the Minnesota Twins in Minneapolis later that evening and ended with the pair flying north to see the game in person.

“We came out to the airport, we got in the airplane and we were in the Minnesota Twins’ stadium by 6 that evening, and it was awesome,” Willits said. “Just the feeling of freedom to say, ‘Yup, we can go anywhere we want, anytime we want, weather permitting’ and just jump in the plane and go.”

The differences between a smaller plane and commercial planes are many, but one of the more noticeable ones is how it feels to ride in smaller aircrafts. They’re much more affected by the weather, she said, which can often mean a flight has to be called off for safety.

A blustery day can feel very turbulent, Willits said, but how an unseasoned pilot reacts to that is generally a tell for whether they’ll love flying. For Willits, navigating turbulence was fun even when she was learning to fly. She recalled that during her first flying lesson, which took place on an especially windy day, she actually hit her head on the roof of the airplane.

“I started cracking up, and the instructor said, ‘OK, you’re going to be fine,'” Willits said.

Flight times also differ since smaller aircraft have a lower top speed, but Willits said the process of catching a commercial flight tends to become a similar all-day affair when you factor in a commute to the airport and the time it takes to get on board.

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Willits’ father had gotten a private pilot’s license when she was a child, and, to her delight, he’d fly her around in his small plane.

Getting to have that experience so young is a favor that Willits has returned many times. She estimates that she’s taken well over 50 folks who aren’t pilots on flights and supervised them as they’ve taken the controls, and at least half of them were kids. That’s possible because anyone at any age can fly a smaller plane — often referred to as “general aviation aircraft” — as long as there’s a licensed pilot in the cockpit to take control if needed.

At age 16, folks can fly solo if they have a student pilot certificate, under Federal Aviation Administration rules.

photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

The interior of Willits’ Cessna 400 is pictured Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023, at Lawrence Regional Airport

Willits also partners with a couple of the Northeast Kansas nursing homes that her pharmaceutical company serves, Brookside Retirement Community in Overbrook and Wellsville Manor, to take residents up for flights. Some of those residents were former pilots, including a veteran who was a navigator in World War II. Though he had dementia, Willits said, he quickly asked what heading — the compass direction in which an aircraft’s nose points during a flight — and altitude he should navigate to when offered the controls.

“This is a dementia patient who can’t navigate in his day-to-day life, but you put him up in the airplane, and it was all back like that,” Willits said. “And he nailed it. He held the altitude steady, he held the heading.”

It all comes from a desire to share aviation with as many people as possible, Willits said. On top of her company partnering with nursing homes, she also partners with the Girl Scouts of Northeast Kansas and Northwest Missouri to offer aviation-related STEM programs. Though the troops don’t get to fly a plane, they do get to sit in the cockpit after learning a related lesson. Willits is also involved with Lawrence Parks and Recreation’s youth aviation camp and Angel Flight, a nonprofit that arranges free air transportation for any legitimate, charitable or medically related need.

But Willits said she especially hoped that through all these efforts that she could get more women interested in aviation. There are photos of folks who have taken solo flights or gotten their pilot’s licenses at Lawrence Regional Airport hanging on the walls in the pilot’s lounge in the terminal building, but not many of those photos are of women. Willits is hoping to change that and show that aviation isn’t just a “man’s world.”

“This is very indicative of women in aviation,” Willits said. “We represent about 6% of licensed pilots.”

According to pilotinstitute.com, the number of female commercial pilots is only slightly higher, at about 8%.

Willits is a member of the Northeast Kansas chapter of the International Organization of Women Pilots. Also known as the Ninety-Nines, the organization was formed to promote and provide support to women in aviation — its first president was even famed pilot Amelia Earhart, a Kansas native.

Willits’ chapter meets at Lawrence’s airport, and it’s not restricted exclusively to pilots; anyone who has an interest in aviation is welcome to join as a “Friend of the Ninety-Nines.” Willits said she’d encourage folks who might be interested in applying to visit the Ninety-Nines website to learn more.