Penny Hamilton

Penny Rafferty Hamilton (born February 18, 1948) is an American retired pilot, aviation educator, writer, and photographer. She is noted for her two-year study of women in aviation, the Teaching Women to Fly Research Project, which identified barriers to women training as pilots and presented 101 strategies to increase the participation of women in aviation. She also interests children in aviation, giving talks in schools and libraries as the character "Penny the Pilot". She and her husband jointly hold a World Aviation Speed Record set in 1991. In addition to writing for aviation magazines, she has published books on the history of Granby, Colorado, where she resided from 1989-2024. She was inducted into the Colorado Aviation Hall of Fame in 2011, the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 2014, and the Colorado Authors Hall of Fame in 2021.

Early life, education, and career Penny Rafferty was born on February 18, 1948, in Pennsylvania.

Hamilton worked as a professor of communications at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln while writing an advice column for the Sun Newspapers chain. One of their clients was the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.

With an estimated 6 percent of licensed pilots in the US being women (in the UK the figure is less than 9 percent), and was similarly honored with the Federal Aviation Administration's Central Region Aviation Education Champion Award. Hamilton identified ten barriers to women entering the field, including: lack of money, a perceived indifference to women students on the part of flight training schools, lack of continuity as flight instructors leave their jobs and new ones take over the class, communication difficulties between women and male flight instructors, lack of female role models, unfamiliarity with mechanical systems, lack of experience with reading maps, lack of female mentorship, and lack of emotional support from friends and family.

Hamilton was a co-founder of the Emily Warner Field Aviation Museum, which opened in July 2015 in the former Rocky Mountain Airways terminal in the Grand County Airport. From 2018-2024, she volunteered as the team leader at the museum on behalf of the Grand County Historical Association. In Idaho, she volunteers for several aviation organizations.

Writing

Hamilton is a frequent contributor to aviation magazines, and has written two flight instruction manuals for women pilots. She wrote the national aviation career and history book called "America's Amazing Airports" in 2019. Hamilton's book Inspiring Words for Sky and Space Women: Advice from Historic and Contemporary Trailblazers was published in 2020. Her book 101 Trailblazing Women of Air and Space: Aviators and Astronauts was published in 2021. She wrote Grand County for the "Images of America" series for Arcadia Publishing in 2023.

Memberships Hamilton was a member of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, for which she served as an Airport Support Network Volunteer from 1997-2022. She was previously a member of the Colorado Pilots Association, the Colorado Aviation Historical Society, the Spirit of Flight Center, the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum, the National and Colorado 99s, and Women in Aviation International.

Awards and honors In 1994, a new holding intersection in the US aeronautical system, located at an altitude of 15,500 feet above sea level and west of Corona Pass, Colorado, was named for her by the Federal Aviation Administration. In 2013, she was honored with the Columbia College Distinguished Alumni Award for "outstanding regional and national career recognition". In 2015, Hamilton was awarded the University of Nebraska Alumni Achievement Award. In 2019, she was named Grand County, Colorado, Citizen of the Year.

She was inducted into the Colorado Aviation Hall of Fame in 2011 and the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 2014. Hamilton is featured on the cover of the 2014 book Absent Aviators: Gender Issues in Aviation.

In 2018, she was featured in a 30-minute documentary segment of the inaugural edition of the Rocky Mountain PBS series Great Colorado Women, which profiles inductees into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame.

Personal life In 1971, she married William Alexander Hamilton, III (born 1935), a career military officer. The couple lived in Granby, Colorado, from 1989-2024.

In 2015, Hamilton was diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time, having survived a previous diagnosis in 2007.