News/Press Releases

By Emily Cochrane
ecochrane@MiamiHerald.com

For more than 20 hours, Sandy Gonzalez and Odanys Velazquez flew.

As one of 53 teams competing in the 39th annual Air Race Classic last week, the two women flew more than 2,500 miles across the eastern half of the country in their 1966 Piper Cherokee plane, finishing the final leg in first place and the entire race in 28th place.

"We were first-timers and we beat a lot more experienced people," Velazquez, 21, said. "So it was like 'Yeah, we did something great.'"

It was the first time the two women, who had met as pilots on the Miami Dade College Flight Team, had flown outside of Florida and encountered different elevation and short runways. After their departure from Fredericksburg, Virginia, on June 22, they flew nine legs through nine states and landed in Fairhope, Alabama, on June 25.