A red-and-yellow CallAir slips gracefully down to the winter-brown grass, a 200-foot yellow rope streaming behind it. Touching down and rolling out, the CallAir taxies to the end of the strip and is deftly maneuvered into position for its next flight.
Its sole mission is towing gliders aloft from Chilhowee Gliderport in Benton, Tennessee, and its pilot is 23-year-old Karlee Jordan of Roswell, Georgia.
Shutting the engine down, she diligently records the flight time and glider release altitude in the flight log while sitting in the cockpit. After she exits the plane, she begins sharing how, as a first-generation pilot in her family, she become so passionate about aviation.
“I remember my first commercial flight when I was about 5 and being so excited and looking out the window the entire time,” she says. “I always loved flying and being at the airport, and then my senior year of high school my cousin took me up for a flight in his 172 and I was absolutely hooked. My mom told me I had a smile on my face the entire time. It’s been airplanes from then on!”
Flight Training
Ambitious from the beginning, Karlee didn’t let the cost of flight training deter her. By the age of 14, she was already nurturing a positive work ethic and started saving money from her babysitting jobs. That, along with other funding, helped pay for her flying lessons.
“I was blessed to receive the 2022 Triple Tree Aerodrome ACE Scholarship, which was primarily designated to help pay for flight training up to my solo,” she says, noting she also won the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association’s 2022 Dudley & Delores Malone Memorial Scholarship, which helped fund the majority of her training for her private pilot certificate.
She soloed in a Cessna 172 in July 2022 and successfully passed her private check ride that November.
As a newly-minted pilot, her first passenger was her mother. She also took her godfather up for a flight. In fact, he has been so inspired by Karlee that he got back into flight training after a long hiatus, and soloed not long after she did.
Next came her instrument rating, which she obtained with Middle Georgia State University’s Part 141 school in Eastman, Georgia.
“I paid for that mostly myself, along with some student loans, and my parents pitched in a little,” she says. “In May 2024, I finished my commercial and also graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautics from Liberty University at Lynchburg, Virginia.”
“Earning my certificates and ratings at various locations gave me a wide variety of fresh perspectives on different flight schools, training styles, Part 141, and Part 61,” she notes.
Soaring
Karlee heard about Chilhowee Gliderport from a friend who suggested she get her glider rating. She started flying gliders with Sarah Arnold, owner/operator of the gliderport and a world gliding champion, in the summer of 2023.
“I was already in love with powered flying and then I fell in love with gliders as well,” she says. “I was still working on my instrument rating then, so during the week I’d be down at Middle Georgia flying, and on the weekends I’d come up and fly at Chilhowee.”
She earned her private glider add-on rating in November 2023, noting that she learned firsthand that a particularly valuable aspect of flying gliders is honing one’s stick-and-rudder skills.
“It definitely hurts my heart to see people flying with their feet flat on the floor and not on the rudder pedals,” she says. “The rudder is such a powerful tool and it is under appreciated. People take it for granted, and you can get away with that flying something like a 172. But when you get in a glider or a tailwheel airplane, you learn very quickly that your rudder is your best friend — use it!”
Towing
Karlee had flown a Piper J-3 Cub to earn her tailwheel endorsement, and while she was working on her glider rating, she mentioned to Sarah that she’d like to fly the towplane as well.
In October 2024, Sarah gave her the chance, sending her the towplane and tow pilot manuals to prepare her for her towplane checkout.
The initial phase of learning to fly the towplane was in Sarah’s Piper Vagabond. Karlee hadn’t previously flown a short-coupled Vagabond, so she was in for a treat.
“Flying anything with Sarah is great, so I knew it wouldn’t be too difficult,” she says. “Sarah let me fly it around and get used to it, and then we did steep turns and she showed me a couple of simulated tows. We just pretended the Vagabond was a towplane with a long rope attached, and did all the standard towing procedures in it. Then we did some landings, until Sarah determined I was proficient enough to learn to fly the real towplane.”
Karlee hadn’t flown a single-place airplane, and found it a little nerve wracking to make the transition to the Pawnee and, later, the CallAir.
“I’d always had someone go with me. My preferred way to learn is to sit and watch a person fly their airplane and then do my best to imitate that,” she explains. “But Sarah walked me through the preflight and told me about all the airplane’s little quirks. Then I got in and flew it for a little while, doing a couple of landings and simulated tows, and trying a slip up at altitude.”
Her first towing experience was towing Sarah aloft in a Schweizer 2-33 glider.
“It’s interesting to feel the glider on the tail of the towplane,” Karlee describes. “You have to fly intuitively and sense what the glider is doing behind you and be ready to make any necessary corrections. It’s a challenging experience!”
The Dream
Karlee’s ultimate goal is to become an airline pilot. Being a native of Georgia, her dream is to fly for Atlanta-based Delta Airlines.
To that end, she continues working several different jobs. She works as a nanny during the week, babysits on weeknights, and then tows gliders on the weekends at Chilhowee.
“I also have a job with Triple Tree Aerodrome as Aviation Operations Coordinator. That is a really special place as well, and I’m so grateful to have been a part of their scholarship program,” she shares. “I’m working on my CFI right now and hopefully my multi-engine rating will be after that. Slowly but surely, I’m chipping away at the ratings and building time.”
“Flying is so much fun — there’s not anything that I would rather be doing!”
The GA Community
Karlee feels that meeting people is the best part of being involved in the general aviation community.
“Flying sailplanes is one of the coolest things, and the wide variety of airplanes you see at airports is super awesome,” she says. “But it’s the people who make it even better.”
“Airplane people are the best people,” she continues. “I’m probably a little biased, because I do love airplanes, but I think it’s just the coolest community of people, and everyone’s got a different story. There’s just so much to be learned, and you never know who’s going to be at the airport. You never know who you might run into, or have a conversation with, that could lead to something later on in life. There’s always something to learn from people at the airport!”
