While some people are drawn to flying from their earliest days, others discover their passion in adulthood.
Stephanie Goetz falls into the latter category. Now a professional business aviation pilot, Goetz was in the midst of a successful career as a broadcast journalist when a field reporting trip landed her behind flight controls for the first time.
It would prove to be an inflection point for both her life and career.
“I remember pushing the power up for the first time, getting take-off speed and pulling back on the controls, lifting off for the very first time,” Goetz recalls. “And I just thought to myself, ‘Where has this been all of my life?’”
While she describes that inaugural flight aboard a single-engined Piper Archer turboprop as “intoxicating”, Goetz did not think of flying as even a viable hobby, let alone a career, given her commitment to being a television news presenter.
“Aviation was never on my radar,” she says.
But five years after that first sortie she decided to pursue a private pilot’s licence. In that time Goetz had left the news desk to start a consultancy training business executives for media appearances and public speaking engagements – a practise she still operates today.
“It was something that I didn’t know I could do, until I actually was thrown into the left seat and got to fly the plane,” she says. “I’m really grateful that someone introduced me to it. Otherwise I never probably would have been a pilot.”
Although years later Goetz now holds an ATP pilot’s licence with five jet-type ratings and flies professionally for a private charter service, she did not necessarily envision flying as a career, even after obtaining her private licence.
Meanwhile, she pursued instrument and multi-engine ratings, more to expand the boundaries of flying as a hobby, rather than for professional opportunity. But exposure to career pilots in the airline and business aviation sectors eventually put her on that track.
“It wasn’t until I got through the jet-type rating that I really wanted to do this as a career,” Goetz recalls.
Her first flying job was operating a Cessna Citation CJ3 with a private charter firm out of Las Vegas, Nevada. After spending some time grinding out a 10 days on, five days off schedule, Goetz moved to her current position at a larger charter firm, piloting the Bombardier Global 5000, 5500 and 6000 types.
GLOBAL REACH
“Whether it’s 12h or 2h or 20min, it’s flying all over the world, and that has been phenomenal,” she says.
While many prospective commercial pilots look to the airlines for career opportunities, Goetz says she prefers the more personal feel of business aviation, where the crew are regularly working with the same clients or perhaps even for a single owner.
“You’re flying one to five, or at most, maybe 13 or 14 people on the jets I fly now,” she says. “For those in business aviation that fly an owner… all over the world, they start to become friends, acquaintances, and, in some cases, kind of an extended family.”
Business aviation also offers a greater diversity of routes and destinations, Goetz says, than standard airline operations with passenger jets like the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320.
“We can get into airfields in the Global that are 5,000ft [1,520m] long,” she notes. “That gives you access to more parts of the world and more remote parts of the world. That is what I really particularly was drawn to.”
While commercial airline pilots typically fly the same routes many times over, Goetz says she never knows what her next assignment will be, a reality she describes as “exhilarating”.
“It’s like opening up a little Christmas present, opening up my brief that the night before.”
That unpredictability keeps Goetz and her colleagues sharp, constantly challenging their aviation skills with unfamiliar approaches and environments.
When not at work, Goetz still finds her way into a cockpit. She recently began flying for a US-based breast cancer awareness non-profit organisation called The Pink Jet.
As part of that team, Goetz and several other aviators fly an Aero Vodochody L-39 Albatros jet trainer, outfitted in iconic hot pink livery, with the goal of increasing awareness about the disease and raising funds to support treatment research.
The eye-catching aircraft made its global debut at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s 2024 AirVenture show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin in July.
COLOURFUL CAREER
While the distinctive jet has proven to be a hit with crowds of all types, Goetz says the L-39’s bright pink visage has been particularly appealing to young girls during its public appearances.
“They could run by a dozen other really cool military or other jets and not even look at them,” Goetz recalls of The Pink Jet’s appearance at Oshkosh. “They just see The Pink Jet.”
She thinks part of the aircraft’s appeal to young women is that it blows away the notion that a skilled pilot must choose between being a professional aviator and embracing traditionally feminine traits.
“Those things can live together in harmony as a pilot,” Goetz says. “You don’t suddenly have to not enjoy the sequins, and the bright colours and fashion, just because you’re a pilot.”
