Congratulations Madeline Patterson

My interest in aviation stems from my family’s love for travel. I took my first commercial flight when I was two and a half to be a flower girl at my Aunt’s Hawaiian wedding. For several years my family made it a priority to take a family vacation, usually to Disneyland or to Florida to visit my great grandmother and I began to fall in love with the SeaTac airport. My sister and I would call dibs on the bed closest to the window at a nearby hotel and we would watch the air traffic come and go. Growing up, I didn’t consider aviation as a career. I joined the Civil Air Patrol when I was 12 and set my sights on the Coast Guard Academy.

In the summer of 2016, my grandfather said he had an airplane and proposed I begin flight training at Port Angeles Airport. I took my first flight July 25, 2016, and through several ups and downs, starts and stops, and three CFIs, exactly four years later, on July 25 2020, I passed my PPL check ride. Along the way I decided to postpone my plans to join the Coast Guard because I knew that flight school wasn’t a guarantee for me, and I was hopelessly in love with flying and didn’t want to do anything else. I decided in November 2019 I wanted to go to the University of North Dakota for a Bachelor of Aeronautical Sciences in Commercial Aviation. After applying and being accepted into the program as a sophomore transfer student, I met with my new (and amazing) CFI Keith to make plans to finish my PPL before August.

I have no harrowing tales or life stories to add to this biography, as I have many more years to gather nuggets of wisdom. I write this brief biography on Highway 200 traveling through the Montana wilderness enroute to Grand Forks, North Dakota. I will remain the membership chair, as long as it’s possible through digital connectivity, and will continue to represent Chapter 430 all the way out here in the Northern Plains.