Winners of the Air Race Classic ‘Skybound Scotts’ find friendship through flying

This year’s Air Race Classic, a historical all-female flight competition, landed in a new city: Spokane.

The 2,426-mile route spanned nine states, starting at the H. L. Sonny Callahan Airport in Fairhope, Alabama, on June 17 and finishing on June 20 at Felts Field.

The competition’s winners? Lauren Scott and Rebecca Carroll of the “Skybound Scotts,” two pilots a part of the Las Vegas 99s.

This international organization of licensed women pilots began with a group of pilots in 1929, Scott’s aunt being one of the founding members.

She has a long history of aviation in her family. Her brother and daughters are pilots and her mom is a flight attendant. In fact, her daughter was originally supposed to fly with her; however, she had to back out due to scheduling conflicts.

Rebecca Carroll, who signed up to be a backup pilot for the Air Race Classic, stepped up. She’s raced the past four consecutive years, and for two years prior to this she’s joined teams last minute to fill empty positions.

“I ended up saying yes and moving everything around just so I can join Lauren on this race, and it was a good thing I did,” Carroll said. “What a year to say yes to.”

Before the race, the two women had only known each other in passing. But by the Friday they landed, the 50-year-old and 26-year-old were closer than ever.

“Even though I really wanted to race with my daughter, I feel like I have a new daughter, too,” Scott said.

In between flights they took turns booking hotels, accidentally leading them one night to a “honeymoon suite” complete with a jacuzzi, then another night to a hotel with a water park. Though they were exhausted from a day of flying and didn’t pack swimsuits – a heavy suitcase can slow the plane down – the pair took to the park at 9:30 p.m. in their clothes.

The winners of the Air Race Classic are not always the people who first reach the finish line.

Instead, each team’s plane is equipped with a unique handicap limiting their speed. This evens the playing field for slower and faster planes to compete equally. Instead of racing each other, they’re racing themselves, and the team that beats its handicap by the largest margin wins.

The Skybound Scotts took their time on the last day, letting each other sleep in and getting ice cream before taking off to Spokane.

They landed with the latter half of competitors Friday. Instead of being focused on if they might have won, though they had a “good feeling” they might’ve, the pilots were jubilant just to have had the experience with one another.

“We just laughed the whole time,” Scott said. “We were just having a blast and just happy to be there.”

The winners of the college division of the Air Race Classic was the University of North Dakota’s “Frozen Force”, consisting of Helena Lind, Charlotte Fuller and Caroline Kelley.

“I want younger women especially to look at this and say that is something I want to do,” Scott said. “Learning how to fly a plane is not easy, but there’s so many rewards that come from being a pilot.”