Capt. Jacquelyn S. Parker is the Air Force's first woman test pilot, and the 28-year-old flier has her eye on the space shuttle.
"The work and the flying was as hard and challenging as everyone said it would be," Parker said. "Now, I'm looking forward to putting it to use testing airplanes and hopefully, someday, fly the space shuttle."Parker was one of 25 navigators, pilots and flight engineers who graduated last weekend from the Air Force Test Pilot School, which runs a rigorous program to train personnel to test experimental, research and prototype aircraft.
The test pilot school is located about 60 miles north of Los Angeles at the Mojave Desert air base where the space shuttle lands and where Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 in 1947.
Parker goes to the 4950th Test Group, Aeronautical Systems Division, based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
Parker served as a C-141 transport aircraft pilot with the 76th Military Airlift Squadron based at Charleston Air Force Base, S.C., before entering the Test Pilot School in July 1988.