How Not to Fly an Airplane: A Female Pilot’s Journey, a memoir by Shirley Phillips, hits shelves on May 20th, 2025.
From former pilot and first-time author Shirley Phillips comes a thrilling memoir about life in the air, single motherhood, and never giving up, even when your dreams seem impossible. Join Shirley as she shares her experience and answers all those questions you didn’t know you had – why are there so few female pilots? What is it like to be on a plane when the engine suddenly gives out? What are pilots really thinking during those long flights? Is it possible to pursue a career, chase your dreams, and be a single parent? Filled with anecdotes – from her childhood in a small town, to being her airline’s first pregnant pilot, to becoming a single mother to two girls, to her own battle with chronic illness – Shirley pens a compelling picture that speaks to mothers, daughters, sisters, and any woman who dares to fly.
“Truly an inspirational story of courage and perseverance against all odds” said Laurie L. Gordy, PhD, Higher Education Administrator.
‘How Not to Fly an Airplane‘ is an exhilarating book… filled with white-knuckle moments and twists and turns” said Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Professor of History.
How Not to Fly an Airplane: A Female Pilot’s Journey is available wherever books are sold.
Description:
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 to Not 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 let’s 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 to Not 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.
About the author:
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, Ravens Perch, and Chicken Soup for the Soul: Lessons Learned from My Cat, among other publications. More information can be found at her website at shirleymphillips.com.
About Apprentice House:
Apprentice House is the nation’s first and largest entirely student-managed book publisher. Students at Loyola University Maryland are responsible for every aspect of the publishing process, from acquisitions to design and publication of every book. Our mission is, first and foremost, to educate students about the book publishing process. As a program within the Communication Department at Loyola University Maryland, it is driven by student work conducted in four courses: Introduction to Book Publishing, Manuscript Acquisitions and Development, Book Design and Production, and Book Marketing and Promotion.
