Williamsburg woman earns scholarship for pilot classes

MARENGO — Kelsi Cox, a commercial instrument flight instructor from Williamsburg, recently received an Airline Transport Pilot-Certification Training Program scholarship from Iowa Business Aviation Association and International Flight Safety training for advanced simulator training.

“They’re going to pay for some of my ATP training,” said Cox.

Airline transport pilot is the highest level of pilot certification in the United States and is required for operating large commercial aircraft. The Airline Transport Pilot Certification Training Program is a mandatory course that must be completed before taking the ATP knowledge test.

Pilots must pass the ATP knowledge test, which assesses their understanding of aviation regulations, procedures and technical knowledge, and must complete a practical flight test with an FAA examiner to earn the ATP certificate.

“I’ve been a pilot since 2017. That’s when I got my private (license),” said Cox. She’s been a flight instructor since February of 2019.

It’s not an easy business because of insurance costs, said Cox. Most of her instruction is given in the students’ planes, she said. That way the student has the burden of providing the insurance.

Cox owns a little red and white, two-seater Bellanca Decathalon. “I bought it from Dennis Oliver,” she said.

Oliver, her neighbor, introduced her to flying when she was in high school.

Cox likes the inverted fuel and oil systems in the Decathalon. “You can fly upside down and the engine won’t quit,” she said. And she does like to fly upside-down sometimes.

Flying wasn’t Cox’s first career choice. “It was just something that came by surprise,” she said. “I wanted to be a veterinarian.”

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Animals are a big part of her life. Cox and her husband, Colin, have llamas, alpacas, sheep, goats, horses, cows. They live a couple of miles north of Oliver and helped him construct a live Nativity with animals from both farms in December 2023.

Cox grew up in South Amana and graduated from Williamsburg High School. She graduated from Iowa State University in Ames with a bachelor’s degree in animal science.

While in graduate school, writing a thesis for a master’s degree in biomedical sciences, she was taking flying lessons.

She earned her license from Hap’s Air Service at the Ames Municipal Airport, she said.

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Cox did some instrument training in Cedar Rapids and got her commercial license in Iowa City. She received advanced ground training in Waterloo.

The Airline Transport Pilot-Certification Training Program scholarship will pay for weeklong classroom training, Cox said. She’ll still have to do some flying to be licensed for airliners, but she’s hoping she can finish all the training in a year.

She’d like to find a job as a private pilot somewhere in Iowa. Many private pilots fly two or three days a week, Cox said.

Meanwhile, Cox flies her little plane. She keeps it in Oliver’s hanger and takes off from his property. His runway is about 4,000 feet, said Cox, but the Decathalon doesn’t need that much room.

“It’s fun,” said Cox. “You can take off pretty fast.” The plane is built for aerobatics.

Oliver bought the plane new in 1975, he said. The Decathalon is built for stresses between +6g and -4g, said Oliver. “This is built stronger than commercial planes.”

“I did do mild aerobatics, Oliver said.” But now that he’s older, he’s ready to leave the aerobatics to younger people.

“Kelsi’s young and more vigorous,” said Oliver. “It’s just kind of a good feeling to mentor kids like that.”

Cox is a natural, said Oliver. He’d take her up in the plane, show her how to do something, and she’d follow his example.

“She would do it much better than I demonstrated,” Oliver said.

Cox’s son, Lee, now 3, is getting excited about aviation, said Cox. She took him up in the plane and showed him the landscape from the air.

“He just loved it,” Cox said. Now he often says, “Mom, let’s go for an airplane ride.”