A mother and daughter team have gone viral on Twitter after the chancellor of one of the world’s largest aviation universities tweeted a photo of the pair piloting a Boeing together in a flight across the USA.
Captain Wendy Rexon and her daughter First Officer Kelly Rexon are not the only Rexon family members who have a love for flying. Kelly’s sister, Kate, is also a pilot, as is her father and grandfather.
However, the mother-daughter team is what captured the world’s attention.
The chancellor of Embry-Riddle University, Dr. John R. Watret, was on a cross-country flight from Los Angeles on the west coast of America to Atlanta in the east on 17 March 2019.
He overheard about the dynamic duo from a passenger on the plane who asked a flight attendant if her two children could peak into the cockpit.
When they returned to their seats, he could hear them chatting about the mother and daughter piloting the Boeing 757 flight.
‘I thought that was amazing. I was in awe,’ he said. ‘I asked if I could visit them, too.’
He tweeted a photo he took of them on arrival in Atlanta. Currently, his tweet has almost 20,000 retweets and 55,000 likes, along with nearly 800 comments.
‘The first officer had a great role model for becoming a pilot – her mother,’ Watret said. ‘It’s good for aviation and inspiring for all of us.’
He added in his tweet that the pair should provide inspiration for young women who dream of taking to the skies.
It is over a century since the first woman flew solo. BBC News reported at the end of last year that just over 5% of commercial pilots globally are women.
Each year, the South African Civil Aviation Authority releases statistics about the number of licensed pilots in South Africa.
In South Africa for the 2017/2018 period, there were only 390 female commercial pilots and nearly 3,000 male commercial pilots. Of students training to become pilots, 340 were female and 1,600 male. There were 571 female private pilots and 6,755 male private pilots.
Feature Image: John R. Watret/Twitter.
