Publication Date: May 20, 2025
Shirley M. Phillips knew she wanted to be a pilot when she was fourteen years old, thanks to an introductory flight in a Cessna that her father gave her and her twin sister at their local airport. Living in a small New England town where no one in her family had aviation experience, and at a time when only two percent of professional pilots were female, her decision to pursue aviation from the moment she left the ground set her on an unexpected path.
How Not to Fly an Airplane is about learning to fly before you are old enough to drive a car, and teaching others when you are nearly always mistaken for being the pilot’s girlfriend, wife, or daughter. It’s about the many mistakes you can make in an airplane, and what it’s like to solve them, thousands of feet in the air or just a few feet above the trees. It’s about finding a sense of identity as a twin, becoming the first pregnant pilot at an airline, and losing a friend and former student in an infamous plane crash.
What happens when a student pilot freezes on the flight controls just a few hundred feet in the air? How do you deal with a flight instructor who takes out a runway light during a botched landing and then lets go of the stick? What’s it like to have an engine failure when your airplane only has one engine? Told through Phillips’s wide-ranging experience in over four decades of flying, How Not to Fly an Airplane is a memoir for anyone who has ever wondered what it’s like to fly, and inspiration for anyone who has felt compelled to do something nobody thought they could do.
With her memoir about life as a female pilot, author Shirley M. Phillips shines a spotlight on a career that has traditionally been locked away in a cockpit.
How Not to Fly an Airplane combines the author’s experiences with humor as she reflects on breaking barriers during a time when men traditionally served as pilots, while women supported them in a stewardess role.
Her reflections are organized by mini themes, which makes the content easy to digest while on the go. She highlights the good, the bad, and the downright terrifying. Can you imagine teaching your father how to fly?
Aside from her career as a pilot and flight instructor, the author also reveals her personal challenges, such as her daughter’s medical struggles. All these things serve as the underpinning for an interesting memoir.
How Not to Fly an Airplane offers a glimpse into a woman’s battle as a pioneering female pilot.
Shirley M. Phillips lives in southern New Hampshire so close to an airport she can critique all the landing approaches from her deck. She shares her home and keyboard with her cat, Amina. Her writing has been published in The Atlantic, Dr. T.J. Eckleburg Review, RavensPerch, and Chicken Soup for the Soul: Lessons Learned from My Cat, among other publications.
