CFI creates one-of-a-kind gifts for her students who solo

For CFI Pat Arnott, her students are special to her.

“You get to know them quite well when you’re just one on one with them in the cockpit,” said the Paducah, Kentucky, CFI.

It was her first student to solo who inspired Arnott to do something special for him, leading her to create a solo mat commemorating that auspicious occasion. 

“He was thrilled,” she says. “Every time he hears somebody else getting one, he says, ‘Well, I still have mine.’”

The solo mats marry her twin passions: Flying and quilting. She’s been sewing her entire life, making everything from quilts to shopping bags and, now, the solo mats.

Arnott estimates she’s made about 15 of the solo mats, each customized to the pilot who solos.

When she cuts the student’s shirt tail after they solo, she asks them if she can have the whole shirt to create the mat.

“I say, ‘Okay, I’ve already ruined your shirt. Can I have the rest of it?” Most of them do not know about the tradition about cutting the shirt tail, but most of them are so excited about soloing, they don’t care. They’ll sacrifice a shirt for being able to solo.”

It takes about two to three hours to create the solo mats. The basic shape is the wings and body of the airplane, then she adds individual designs based on who the student is, she says.

“I have a number of soldiers, so theirs come out, red, white, and blue,” she reports.

If her student has their own airplane, the colors in the mat are the same colors as their airplane. The mat also includes the student’s name, the N number of the plane, and the date of the solo.

When she presents the mats to her students, the reaction is always different, she says.

Some immediately say they are going to have it framed and hang it somewhere special. One student said “my wife will really like this,” she reports.

Most of her students are familiar with quilts — big and small — as quilting is very big in Paducah, Kentucky.

“We’re near the National Quilt Museum and we have National Quilt Week,” she says. “So often my students will say ‘Oh my grandmother used to quilt,’ and it becomes quite a conversation piece,” she says.

She encourages her students to use the mats. 

“I always tell them, ‘Put it on your table, use it like a table mat, it looks so much better if you spill tomato sauce on it,’” she says. “It’s definitely designed to be used.”

Now back flying since the coronavirus restrictions have been lessened, Arnott says she did quite a bit of sewing during the shelter-in-place restrictions. Being able to enjoy her second passion helped lessen the pain of not flying for so long, she notes.

“Yeah, I missed it,” she says.

And her students have benefitted from her sewing in more ways than one. Now she makes masks for them to wear during lessons.

“While we’re flying during this time period, I do wear a mask in the cockpit,” she says. “If they don’t have one, I give them one.”

First Solo Traditions

Cutting the student’s shirt tail after their first solo is a long-held tradition in American aviation.

It is a sign of the instructor’s new confidence in her student after the successful completion of the first solo flight.

In the days of tandem trainers, the student sat in the front seat, with the instructor sitting behind. As there were often no radios in the early days of aviation, the instructor would tug on the student pilot’s shirt tail to get his attention, and then yell in his ear.

A successful first solo flight is an indication that the student can fly without the instructor, so there is no longer a need for the shirt tail, and it is cut off by the proud instructor, and sometimes displayed on the wall of the flight school as a trophy.

That tradition seems much better than the one in British Commonwealth countries, where the student pilot is soaked with a bucket — or buckets — of water after the first solo.