Mayetta Behringer became hooked on flying as a young girl when her father took her up in an airplane.
“It was an open cockpit and it was wonderful – I never came down from that flight,” Ms Behringer said.
She earned her pilot license in 1945 – at a time when few women flew – and later became a commercial pilot and then a full-time flight instructor, even training in a military jet to break the sound barrier in 1961.
Sadly six years ago, Ms Behringer decided she didn’t have the strength to pilot on her own and retired from flying.
But for her 100th birthday last month, her fellow female pilots chipped in to help the centenarian get back in the cockpit, co-piloting a light plane over San Jose where she lives.
“I can’t imagine sitting on the ground all my life,” she joked, adding, “That’s an impossibility.”
We can’t see her staying grounded either.
Check out a report on Mayetta’s flight here.
