Retired Army Blackhawk helicopter pilot Kodey Bogart is on a mission to introduce aviation — specifically helicopters — to young children.
That’s why her new book series, Helo Girls, is aimed at readers between the ages of 4 and 8.
“We need to introduce aviation to people when they are very young,” Kodey said while at her booth at the 2025 SUN ’n FUN Aerospace Expo.
“I go to many events like this and I hear all the time how ‘we need pilots and we need mechanics’ and we do. We always need to be refilling our population. However, they go to high schools and colleges to talk to students, which is great, and I’m glad they do it, but I believe we need to plant the seed way younger.”
Kodey hopes her books will fill a need she had as a mother.
“I have a daughter who’s now 14, but when she was young, I tried to find books that were helicopter books,” she recalls. “I found a couple. Some of them were from the 1960s, and just featured a dog who heard the noise of a helicopter, so they weren’t relevant. That was a frustration. I tried to find books that were accurate to what we really do in the helicopter world and I couldn’t find those.”
So she decided to write them herself.
Her first book was about a firefighting pilot, while the second is about a law enforcement pilot.
“The third book should be out early next year, and it will be about an air ambulance pilot,” she says. “I have roughly 20 or so titles planned in the series, because there are so many things that helicopters can do. Book four is actually going to be about agricultural flying.”
“My 7-year-old son is all in on being a jet pilot,” Kodey adds. “He knows that is what he wants to do. He can find himself in the industry, even if it’s not as a pilot. He knows that the opportunity is there.”
Kodey’s Story
That is so different from Kodey’s experience.
“For me, I had no idea about aviation growing up,” she says.
“I ended up joining the military at 17. I was in the military for a couple of years, and then I went on a morale flight in an aircraft. A morale flight is something fun to do for the soldiers in the unit. Just take them up once or twice in an aircraft,” she says with a grin. “I probably went up six times that day. That’s the moment that I knew this is what I want to do.”
Though she wanted to fly, she couldn’t because of her eyesight. Disappointed, she switched jobs into human resources on active duty for the Florida National Guard at the state’s headquarters.
A friend in the state aviation office who knew she wanted to fly told her about a research study for people in the Army and Navy to have refractive surgery — either Lasik or Photorefractive Keratectomy (PRK).
She applied to the study and was accepted. She had her PRK surgery in early 2004.
After that she went gung ho on becoming a pilot.
“I did all my flight aptitude tests, my flight physicals, and I went in front of the flight board and was accepted into the flight program,” she says.
She learned to fly in a Bell 206 before moving up to the UH-60 Blackhawk. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, she flew medevac operations and was awarded two Air Medals and the Sikorsky Rescue Award.
“I love the Blackhawk,” she says. “It’s the aircraft I went to combat in and I was able to help a lot of people, so that’s close to my heart.”
After retiring from the Army, Kodey flew for the sheriff’s office in Volusia County, Florida.
While earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, she started her own business. As the CEO of KB Solutions, she consults with businesses on aviation safety management systems (SMS) as a Certified International Safety Manager. In 2022, Kodey received the National Business Aviation Association’s Dr. Tony Kern Professionalism in Aviation Award.
She’s currently working on her doctorate and yearns to fly the Airbus 135.
Meanwhile she continues working on the next book in the series, which is expected to be published in early 2026.
For more information: HeloGirls.com
