More than 90 female pilots competed in the 2025 Air Race Classic

SPOKANE — The Air Race Classic, the annual all-women cross-country air race held each June, concluded on Friday, 20 June. 

Forty teams flying in a wide variety of small general aviation airplanes signed up to compete in the 2,425 statute mile race that stretched this year from H.L. Sonny Callahan Airport in Fairhope, Alabama to historic Felts Field in Spokane, Washington. The pilots participating in this year’s race ranged in age from 18 to mid-70s.

The race route changes each year. But every year each of the teams (Competition Class or Intercollegiate Class) must have at least two women pilots, fly using visual flight rules (VFR) during daylight hours only, and complete the route in four days with fly-bys at set timing points at general aviation airports along the way. 

The Felts Field Sky Queens — Team 1 — welcoming other teams at the end of the race. Image: Harriet Baskas

Because there are different makes and models of airplanes competing, each team flies a handicap flight and is assigned a handicap for their plane. Each plane’s speed is then recorded at the start and finish of each leg and the team in each class that can beat its handicap by the best margin wins.

Image: Harriet Baskas

Elizabeth Menozzi and her co-pilot Sammy-Rai Brain didn’t know each other before this year’s race but joined forces to fly Menozzi’s Cessna Skyhawk 172C as Team 38 — Penguin Power.

“The race challenges you as a pilot, no matter how much or how little experience you have,” said Brain, who has been working full time as a pilot instructor since 2023. 

And while the duo found themselves racing against a competitive group of women who were circumspect about their personal race strategy, “everybody was also very friendly and supportive of each other,” said Menozzi, who is still fairly new to flying. “That was refreshing because there aren’t a lot of women pilots at the airport that I fly out of,” she said.

Team 38 — Penguin Power — Elizabeth Menozzi Sammy-Rai Brain at the end of the race. Image: Harriet Baskas

Prizes are awarded in a wide variety of categories, including the highest scoring Competition Class team, the highest scoring Intercollegiate Class team, Safety, Flying Family and more. 

For the 2025 race, the highest scoring Competition Class team was the ‘Skybound Scotts’ (Team 41) from Las Vegas. ‘Freakin’ Awesome,’ (Team 12), took second place and ‘Is This Heaven?’ (Team 16), placed third.

The highest scoring Intercollegiate Class team was ‘Frozen Force’ (Team 22) from the University of North Dakota, with the ‘Liberty Belles 1,’ from Virginia’s Liberty University, and the ‘War Eagle Women — Orange,’ from Alabama’s Auburn University, placing second and third, respectively.  

The full list of 2025 winners will be posted here.  

Team 14 — the Sky Waggin Chicks — at the start of the 2025 Air Race Classic. Image: Air Race Classic

History of the Air Race Classic 

The Air Race Classic traces its roots and inspiration to 1929.

Women were already getting pilots licenses and breaking flying records, but when it came to participating in air races, Air Race Classics president Donna Harris says women were told, “Thank-you, but no.” 

Undeterred, Amelia Earhart, Pancho Barnes, Louis Thaden and 17 other women aviators signed on to fly in the first Women’s Air Derby in 1928, racing more than 2,700 miles from Santa Monica, California to Cleveland, Ohio with overnight stops in eight cities along the way. (The Ninety-Nines, an organization for women pilots, was created soon after, taking its name from the number of charter members).

The race continued through the 1930s, was on hold during World War II and then was reconstituted in 1947 as the All Women’s Transcontinental Air Race. It was more commonly known as the Powder Puff Derby, a term humorist Will Rogers first used for it in 1929.

The event became the Air Race Classic in 1977 and is now the longest-running all-female airplane race in the world. 

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Featured image credited to Harriet Baskas

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