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Ninety-Nines activities

FORTY-EIGHT women pilots belong to the Indiana Dunes Chapter of Ninety-Nines Inc., which meets monthly in various Michiana area places and sponsors flying competitions and aerospace education and safety seminars.

     Among safety education programs it offers regularly are "flying companion seminars," which instruct non-flyers how to take the controls of an airplane and land it in an emergency. The next such seminar is scheduled for 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. April 19 in Hundley's Restaurant, Valparaiso.
     Officers of the chapter are Diana Austin of Valparaiso, chairman; Dr. Phyllis Webb, Grand Rapids, vice chairman; Audrey Karp, Crown Point, secretary; and Joy Black, Gary, treasurer. Struts and Strobes, the chapter newsletter, is issued monthly. 

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New local Ninety-Nines member Nano Farabaugh holds commercial license. 
Ninety-Nines emblem pin
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and air races should not be compared with the safety of ordinary air transportation. "You might as well compare automobile racing with safe driving," she wrote.

     BY THE OUTBREAK of World War II, Oakes notes, air travel had become commonplace. With the novelty gone from private flying, manufacturers and aircraft sales companies no longer needed to hire women as demonstration pilots and saleswomen.
     "By making aviation tamer and more acceptable," Oakes says, "women had, ironically, closed several doors to paths they had previously followed toward fame in aviation."
     In 1930, only about 200, or 1 percent, of licensed American pilots were women. Though the number of female pilots today has increased to more than 44,000 (including 275 who are commercial pilots), they are still a tiny minority-6 percent-of all pilots. Now as then, however, some of the most distinguished pilots are women.
     For instance, Brooke Knapp, a 40-year-old pilot from Los Angeles, holds the world's record for the fastest around-the-world flight (average speed, 512.85 mph).
     Hazel Jones, a pilot for more than 40 years and the current president of the Ninety-Nines, believes the future of women in commercial aviation is bright:
     "Most airline pilots were in the military, and a great many of the Korean War-era male pilots are now retiring from commercial work. As more women get military pilot training, they'll be stepping into those vacan-

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cies. The number of airlines also has been growing rapidly since the industry was deregulated, creating more opportunities for the woman pilot."
     Whatever the future may hold, it was the determined women aviators of the 1930s who helped pave the way. 

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In the early 1930s, German-born Thea Rasche, a charter member of the Ninety-Nines, wryly summed up the spirit of that decade's women aviators:
     "Flying is far more thrilling than love for a man, and far less dangerous."

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in 1961 Jacqueline Cochran posed with her Northrop T-38 after setting eight major speed records.