Cabrini University includes many students with a large variety of backgrounds, interests, and hobbies. Recently, Kylie Ennis, a senior marketing major from Hockessin, Del. and member of the golf team, passed her written exam to become a pilot.
After studying all winter break, she finally completed and passed the test on the first try.
Ennis grew up around pilots and after observing their lives, she knew flying was for her. Ennis said, “The option I’m doing is, you get a four-year bachelor’s degree in anything and then you do training.”
She said she was inspired by her neighbors’ aviation journeys. “My two neighbors were pilots, and one of them had a real estate degree. Airlines don’t care what degree you have. It’s just to show you can do a four-year commitment, you have an education, and you are smart, and then you go ahead and do training on the side.”
Communication crisis
Ennis did her first solo flight when she was about 15 years old. But, becoming a pilot comes along with accepting dangers.
Ennis recalled her first (and hopefully last) scare. She said, “One time I went up alone and it was considered an emergency because I lost all my communications and no one could hear me. I could hear them, but they couldn’t hear me. I fly out of Brandywine, which is a non-towered airport so there’s not an air trafficking controller. So, communication is very important.”
Flying, she said, is a team effort. “You’re relying on everyone else who’s flying around the airport to communicate with you. But when my communications system completely went and nobody could hear me, that’s more dangerous. Someone could have hit me or not known I was there, which was super scary.” Happily, she’s since flown alone without incident.
Dreaming beyond desks
Ennis was super fascinated when she saw her neighbors coming in and out of their houses in uniform. They told her all about the amazing places they had the ability to travel and seeing the world really stuck out to her, along with the airport atmosphere.
“I was always enamored with airports when I was little,” Ennis said. “The first time I went on a plane I loved it. I still love the hustle and bustle atmosphere there and the hot and fast-paced anxiety. My mom thought I would grow out of it, but I never did.”
Ennis also wanted a different life than her parents when it came to her career. “I also knew I didn’t want to do a desk job.” Ennis said, “It just doesn’t seem desirable to me. I want to travel and see the world and not have a 9-to-5 job and not have my own cubicle. It seems so boring to me.”
Women in aviation
In the field of aviation, there are far fewer women than men. Only 5% of airline pilots are women. “I’ve only ever met one female pilot and that was my neighbor,” Ennis said “All the mentors I have now are males, except for my neighbor who has helped me start all of this, which I really appreciate. Aviation has some of the lowest numbers of females than anything else.”
Ennis’ passion for aviation does not go unseen. Junior golf teammate and computer science major Ashley Ea said “Some days on the golf course, if she sees a plane flying above, she pulls out her phone and goes on some kind of app that tells her all the details of the plane, like its destination, departure location, and the model of the aircraft.”
Ennis looks to defy the odds. She needs a total of 2,500 hours of flying logged. With 69.2 hours logged so far, she is off to a great start. Many more hours in the air are to come following graduation.
