[556] MTSU pilots await June 18-21 all-women Air Race Classic

MURFREESBORO — MTSU aerospace products Alison Taylor of Murfreesboro and Alexis Hutchinson of Nashville soon will be on the ride of their relatively young lives.

Taylor, 20, a May graduate of MTSU, and current student Hutchinson will be flying from Pasco, Wash., to Fayetteville, Ark., participating in the 37^th annual Air Race Classic. They will fly in Taylor’s Piper Cherokee 140D in the event held during daylight hours.

The aerospace professional pilot grad and student are one of 47 teams racing in the event, which ends Friday, June 21. After the race, they plan to fly to Kitty Hawk, N.C., site of the Wright brothers’ historic first flight, before returning home.

The Air Race Classic is the longest running all-women pilots transcontinental air race. The teams will have stops in Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado and Oklahoma before finishing the 2,450-mile competition in Fayetteville.

“All the flight training I’ve done now so far is in a controlled environment,” Hutchinson said, making reference to her experience in the cockpit in MTSU classes. “So this air race is about real-world environment. Anything can happen. It’s really going to test our pilot skills as to if we can handle it, whatever situation happens.”

Taylor said there is no shortcut for experience.

“The biggest thing is the experience, 65 hours of logged time,” she said. “If you put a monetary value on it, it’s about $10,000 (each). … We’re getting that 65 hours of experience to help us get the job that we’re looking for.

“Also, we’re getting the experience that we’ve never had to deal with. So we’re going to have to sharpen our skills with cross-country flight planning. We’re going to have to really understand aircraft performance. And it’s really going to push us as pilots as well as the plane in seeing what all we can get out of it.”

Hutchinson enrolled at MTSU planning to study animal biology. In 2011 and “bored” with her choice of study, she was “walking somewhere on campus.”

“I looked up and saw a Diamond (aircraft flying overhead),” she said, not realizing it was part of the university’s fleet of planes. “I said to myself, ‘I’m going to be a pilot.’ This was my mid-college crisis. I didn’t want to do that (study animal biology). I’m too spontaneous. I didn’t even know MTSU had a flight school. It was fate, and it all worked out for me.”

Race crews will face challenging decisions and conditions to complete the perfect cross-county flight as they seek the best winds and weather in their quest to make the top 10 and earn awards.

Taylor and Hutchinson are raising funds to pay for their fuel to fly and other expenses. To date, they have raised more than $2,200 People who want to contribute can go to gofundme.com/air-raiders-race. MTSU aerospace agreed to pay for their lodging.