“"She learned to fly in a Cessna 185 on floats. Then she became untouchable."”
Patty Wagstaff took her first lesson in 1979 in a Cessna 185 floatplane in Alaska, where she had moved to work in the bush. Her first charter flight ended in a crash—so she decided to fly herself. Within five years she was on the U.S. Aerobatic Team. In 1991, she became the first woman to win the U.S. National Aerobatic Championship, a title open to men and women together. She won it again in 1992 and 1993. Her Extra 260, the aircraft she flew to those victories, was retired to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in 1994, displayed between the Lindberghs and Amelia Earhart. Wagstaff was not merely a skilled performer; she was a systems-level pilot. She trained with the Russian aerobatic team, flew as a demo pilot for Raytheon’s T-6 Texan II, and later founded an upset-recovery and aerobatics school in St. Augustine, Florida. In 2004, she was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame—the aerobatic pilot’s highest honor.
Wagstaff’s competition routines were flown below 2,000 feet AGL—demonstrating that precision energy management and spatial awareness, not altitude, are the real safety margins.