Two Purdue pilot teams complete this year’s Air Race Classic

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The Purdue University entries in this year’s Air Race Classic finished the competition Friday (June 23), landing in Santa Fe Municipal Airport, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The Boilermakers Flying Club, piloted by Nicoletta Fala and co-pilot Chloé de Perre, took off from Plainview, Texas, on the third leg of their 2,652-mile, cross-country race and landed at the airport with an overall time of 3 days, 2 hours, 12 minutes.

Fellow racers, pilot Mary McCarty and co-pilot Alyssa Harvey, flying Classic Racer 8, landed in the afternoon with a time of 3 days, 6 hours, 15 minutes for the journey.

More than 100 women in 52 planes are participating in this year’s race which began Tuesday (June 20) in Frederick, Maryland. Pilots flew as far as northern Minnesota before heading south and west to the finish line.

Final results were not immediately available. Several planes were still in the sky mid-Friday afternoon.

 McCarty, a senior from Wilmington, Ohio, and Harvey, a junior from Crown Point, Indiana, are representing Purdue, keeping with a 20-year tradition for the university. Both are in the Professional Flight program at Purdue.

Fala, a native of Cyprus and a doctorate student in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and her co-pilot de Perre, a chemist in the Department of Agronomy and native of France, are representing the on-campus group Purdue Pilots, Inc. The team was sponsored by the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

It is the first time in more than a decade that two pilot teams from Purdue University have flown in the race.

For more details on the Purdue teams, go to http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2017/Q2/two-purdue-teams-to-compete-in-the-annual-air-race-classic.html 

Writer: Brian L. Huchel, 765-494-2084, bhuchel@purdue.edu

Note to Journalists: Broadcast-quality B-roll and photos from prior to the race are available at https://goo.gl/7DGzy4 and https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxdPFMVWz-l2QkRuc09NOFR4SXc. Footage was shot by Purdue Marketing and Media and the College of Engineering.