Friday, June 17, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

FEMALE THUNDERBIRD: First in Flight

Western High School grad makes history

Proud parents Robert and Cathy Ellingwood talk about their daughter, U.S. Air Force Capt. Nicole Malachowski, at their Las Vegas home on Thursday. Malachowski was named the first female pilot to ever join the elite Thunderbirds unit at Nellis Air Force Base. Photo by John Locher.

A determined local woman who had dreamed of being a fighter pilot since she was a child made history Thursday when the U.S. Air Force announced that she would be the first female pilot to join the elite Thunderbirds demonstration squadron.

Capt. Nicole Malachowski, 30, a 1992 Western High School graduate, will join the unit at Nellis Air Force Base for training in November, Air Force officials said. She'll make her public debut in March.

"I have got chills going up and down my spine right now," said her mother, Cathy Ellingwood, when told the news Thursday afternoon.

Malachowski, who recently finished a four-month stint flying missions in Operation Iraqi Freedom, was on leave Thursday and unavailable for comment. Her parents said she was relaxing on a cruise in Russia with her husband, Air Force Maj. Paul Malachowski.

The Thunderbirds, an aerial demonstration team that first flew in 1953, performs in front of millions of people across the country every year. From March through November, the group is on the road more than 200 days. Its pilots are considered among the best in the world.

A similar U.S. Navy unit, the Blue Angels, has never had a female pilot.

That Malachowski made it onto the Thunderbirds wasn't that surprising to her parents.

"She's always been motivated," said her father, Robert Ellingwood. "When she makes up her mind, that's just it."

He offered several examples from her childhood in Santa Maria, Calif.

When she was just 8 years old, her 10-year-old brother, Josh, was a competitive runner who'd entered a 5K race. On the day of the race, Nicole announced that she, too, would race.

"I'm running," she said. "I can do it."

And she finished the race.

"It took her quite a while," her dad said, "but she did it."

A couple of years later, during career day in the sixth grade, all the students in her class had to announce what they wanted to be when they grew up.

"I'm gonna be a fighter pilot," Nicole told her class.

That's nice, said the teacher, a macho guy who liked to lift weights, but girls can't be fighter pilots.

She ignored that man, her dad said, and declared: "He can never say that to me."

As a young girl, when all her friends had posters of cute boys on their walls, Nicole had a poster featuring the cockpit of an airplane on the ceiling above her bed.

She'd lie awake at night studying the dials and switches. She soon decided that she would one day fly an F-15E Strike Eagle in the Air Force. At that time, women were not allowed to fly fighter planes.

That changed in 1993, the year after she graduated from high school. Female fighter pilots still are relatively rare, but they fly missions every day around the world. The Air Force has 568 female pilots, 71 of them flying fighter jets.

When Malachowski joins the Thunderbirds, she will have to train in the F-16 Falcon, the unit's plane of choice.

In high school, Nicole was a standout in the ROTC, her parents said. She became the highest ranked cadet in the nation, they said.

She took flight lessons at the North Las Vegas Airport and got her pilot's license before she graduated.

She started getting her application ready for the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., more than a year before she was allowed to submit it.

She had a problem later, when it came time to apply to be a fighter pilot. The Air Force's requirements state that fighter pilots must be at least 5 feet 4 inches tall. Nicole would be cutting it close.

She's 5 feet 4 1/4 inches tall on a good day.

So, just to be sure she'd make it, she got one of those devices that allows you to hang upside down from a door frame, and hung there for three nights in a row before her measurements were taken, hoping it might stretch her frame just a bit.

During training, she lasted the longest of anyone in the class in the machine that tests how much G-force a person can withstand. She didn't lose consciousness until she passed 9 Gs.

Her parents were quick to point out that Nicole is not just a tough girl.

She was runner-up for homecoming queen in high school, they said. And she's so pretty that, when she and her mom have a chance now and then to go out when Nicole is in town for Red Flag exercises at Nellis, men constantly approach Nicole.

When they do, her mom said, she makes them try to guess what she does for a living.

"I'll give you five guesses," she'll say. "If you don't get it right, you have to buy us both drinks."

"We could drink all night for free if we wanted to," her mom said.

Malachowski graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1996, fourth in her class, with a degree in business. She's studying for her master's degree in business administration now, her parents said.

Malachowski, whose call sign is "Fifi," is stationed at RAF Lakenheath in England.

The Ellingwoods said their daughter would be embarrassed by all the praise they heaped upon her during an interview Thursday. But, they said, it is well-deserved.

It was also a nice bit of news for them, especially Robert. Thursday was his 57th birthday.

"Best birthday present I ever had," he said.