Thunder Over Louisville features UPS plane with all-female crew
Thunder Over Louisville spectators likely never see the faces of the pilots flying the planes nor the crew supporting them.
But there is something noteworthy about the UPS Boeing 757 scheduled to fly in Saturday’s airshow. It will be flown and supported by a team of women who work for UPS – a team that includes two pilots, an observer in the cockpit, one aircraft maintenance supervisor and two aircraft maintenance technicians.
"To get this group of females together to collaborate on a project like this is phenomenal,” said Stella Burton, an aircraft maintenance technician who has worked with UPS for more than a decade.
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Mike Mangeot, the company's strategic communications director, said UPS has been looking for a way to feature women in aviation in all aspects – from mechanics on the ground to pilots – in the airshow.
Those pilots include Capt. Frances Perryman, whose been with UPS for more than 30 years, and Capt. Deborah Donnelly-McLay, a 20-year veteran of the company based in Miami who will be in the plane’s cockpit.
Donnelly-McLay said her mother, her son, 14, and daughter, 16, are coming to Louisville for the occasion.
For Louisville-based Perryman, the event is a way to show young women and girls that flying planes and having careers in a traditionally male-dominated field is something that they can do.
“The problem is getting girls interested and to stay interested,” she said.
Staying interested wasn't a problem for Perryman in part because she had a supportive family, including her father, and a lot of support among the male pilots at UPS, she said.
Her path, she said, comes out of a “silly story” stemming from the long and torturous trips her family would make – with her two brothers and three dogs from the east to the west side of Texas – to see her grandmother. Perryman could never fall asleep. Then her father took her that distance on an airplane, she said, and she knew what she wanted to do when she grew up.
But it wasn’t until college while studying computer science in Colorado that she found a flying club, got a discounted flying lesson and “marched myself out to the little, local airport” to take the first steps to become a pilot. It has made her, as she describes, the “luckiest person in the whole world."
Those who work on the plane have equal amounts of passion for their work, including Burton, who said out of nearly 400 mechanics who work in Louisville, only eight are women.
She also became interested in mechanics and airplanes as a child.
For her, it came via her father who was an aircraft mechanic and in the Air Force Reserve. He would take her and her brother to the base with him sometimes. In his shop, she worked around him building model airplanes.
When she decided to pursue a career in aviation, she didn’t listen to anyone who would discourage her.
“I tell people I’m that ant with a rubber tree plant,” she said.
Lornna Ruble, who was an aircraft maintenance supervisor for years before moving into her new position in labor relations four months ago, said she began fixing cars before someone suggested she consider aeronautics.
“I love taking things apart and putting them back together,” she said.
Several of the women also are members of the nonprofit organization Women in Aviation International, which encourages women to pursue carriers in aviation, or have gotten involved in efforts through UPS to encourage young women to pursue aviation careers.
“I just wish everyone could be encouraged to get into this field,” Ruble said. “Everybody can do it, and not just guys.”
The Kentucky Derby Festival will announce the schedule for the Thunder Over Louisville air show Friday, which the Courier-Journal will publish online and in Saturday’s newspaper.
Reach reporter Elizabeth Kramer at 502-582-4682 and ekramer@courier-journal.com. Follow her on Twitter @arts_bureau and on Facebook at Elizabeth Kramer - Arts Writer.
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