\u201cWelcome aboard,\u201d Shari Ritchkin \u201994 called into the public address system of an Airbus 320 en route to Atlanta. \u201cI\u2019m Captain Shari.\u201d With those words, she became the 20th female to command a Spirit Airlines plane. \u201cThere was definitely a sense of accomplishment,\u201d says Ritchkin. \u201cWhen you look at the statistics, there are only a few female pilots in the industry.\u201d What Ritchkin didn\u2019t know as she climbed above the clouds that day in January 2015 was all the forces at work to have had gotten her there.<\/p>\n
Ritchkin\u2019s journey to the cockpit was less than traditional. She always had an interest in flying but it wasn\u2019t until 2004 \u2014 when a friend invited her to join him during a lesson \u2014 that she began to see herself in the pilot\u2019s chair. The next day, Ritchkin signed up for her own classes and started training out of Monmouth Executive Airport. \u201cI loved it,\u201d Ritchkin says. \u201cIt was the best thing I\u2019d ever done.\u201d<\/p>\n
The more she flew, the more Ritchkin questioned her career as a teacher and administrator in the Toms River (New Jersey) School District. She started to spend her summers in Florida, where she would load and fly cargo to the Bahamas. During the school year, she would head down to Fort Lauderdale on Fridays to amass additional flying hours required to operate the planes by herself, then return to the Garden State on Sunday. Finally, after meeting all the requirements, Ritchkin committed to aviation full time.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy parents thought I was nuts when I decided to leave this great job as a school administrator,\u201d says Ritchkin. \u201cBut on my last day, I put my hands over my head and drove away. I was off to pursue my dream.\u201d She joined Spirit Airlines in 2012 as a first officer and then moved to the left-side captain\u2019s chair three years later.<\/p>\n
In 2019, Ritchkin learned her love of flying may have been in her genes. Her friend, Christine Girtain \u201994, helped Ritchkin complete her family history through an at-home DNA test. Ritchkin was adopted when she was three days old and never knew her biological family. \u201cChristine called me and said, \u2018Shari, you\u2019ll never believe what I found.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The results linked Ritchkin to a sister, Tammy Holloway-Servedio. \u201cWe first texted each other on December 24,\u201d says Ritchkin. In a plot twist fit for the movies, her sister was also a pilot and senior manager of airport operations for United Airlines at Los Angeles International Airport. \u201cIt was the best present. I got a sister for Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n
The siblings picked up as if they had always known each other. Holloway-Servedio shared details about the rest of the family (including that their biological parents had died) and invited Ritchkin to West Coast family parties to meet aunts, uncles, and cousins. \u201cMost of these people didn\u2019t know about me,\u201d Ritchkin says. \u201cBut it was so normal. It was as if we were always a part of each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
And though she never met her biological mother \u2014 a 30-year human resources professional for an airline union \u2014 Ritchkin feels her presence through the relationship with her sister. \u201cDid my mother telepathically help me get into this career and learn all this? Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Picture: Spirit Airlines<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A dream, determination, and a little bit of destiny are all it took to get Shari Ritchkin\u2019s flying career off the ground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":327,"featured_media":12159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-corner"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/327"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12158"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12407,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12158\/revisions\/12407"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}