Most of us take the gift of vision for granted, and find it hard to imagine life without it. Going blind is a terrifying thought for many people, especially pilots. But for 21-yr old Kaiya Armstrong it’s just another challenge, and she’s piloting a plane cross-country this week to inspire others in their own struggles.
Armstrong is flying a Cessna from Phoenix, Ariz. to Washington, DC as part of an event called Flight for Sight. It’s a “challenge event” by the Foundation for Blind Children (FBC) to raise awareness around vision loss, and inspire everyone to believe in themselves, whether they are blind or not.
“We do a lot of these challenge events to give our kids a chance to prove to the world they can do anything,” said FBC CEO Marc Ashton.
Other FBC students have sailed the Caribbean, summited Mt. Kilimanjaro, and rafted the Grand Canyon.
Training to fly blind
She’s spent the last several months attending ground school and in-air flight training to prepare for her mission, using the same devices and tools as a sighted pilot, albeit differently, to accommodate her needs.
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Most students learning to fly a use a map of the cockpit to study the layout of a plane’s instruments and gauges at home. Armstrong’s map was transcribed in Braille, so she could memorize the layout of the cockpit same as any student pilot.
She identifies levers and buttons in the cockpit by touch. The handles are textured differently to help discern one similar handle from another. On takeoff, the sound or pitch of the plane tells her how high or low she’s flying.
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And since she can’t see her compass, she’s learned to maintain direction by timing her turns. If, for example, she turns at 3 degrees per second, then she knows when she’s turned 180 degrees. And she’s been able to get it nearly spot on in training.
She also trained with a handsfree headset that magnifies near and far vision called Patriot Viewpoint. For Kaiya’s training it let her see the cockpit and better understand the layout. It even allowed her to see her mom’s face for the first time in years.
Kaiya also logged training time in a FAA certified Cessna simulator at Aerial Engagement in Scottsdale.
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Armstrong lost her vision as a young teenager due to an autoimmune disease. She has no peripheral vision and can only see a couple inches in front of her. So she can’t see the plane’s instrument panel, but she says can see her favorite thing about flying; the earth’s colors below.
“This very last time we went, we flew over a little lake. I remember thinking how blue the water was,” she said after a recent training flight.
Co-pilot guide is flying along, with minimal assistance
Tyler Sinclair, a CFI from Leopard Aviation, is her guide flying along with her. He describes what is happening outside of the plane, relays the instrument readings and other key markers and gives her cues, but it’s her at the controls doing the taxing, takeoff, flying and landing.
“While Kaiya is piloting, I just help her navigate, helping her just keep the plane level,” Sinclair said. “She’s actually really good at it, I just give her some small verbal cues, but she does most of the flying herself.”
Kaiya and Tyler took off on their cross-country flight Oct 7, and have since traveled through Colorado Springs and Kansas City. They’ll stop again in Louisville, before pushing on to arrive in DC on Oct 13 for World Sight Day.
“The biggest message I want everyone – both sighted and blind – to take away from this is that the only limits we have are the ones we’ve given ourselves,” says Kaiya. “I want everybody to stop limiting themselves.”