How Not to Fly an Airplane

What would you do if you were mid-air and suddenly realized you were flying a plane without engine oil?

Pilot Shirley M. Phillips experienced that situation when she was a 23-year-old flight instructor, with passengers on board and smoke filling the cockpit as the engine began to shake apart.

She details what happened in her new memoir, “How Not To Fly An Airplane,” published in May 2025.

Phillips knew she wanted to be a pilot when she was 14 thanks to an introductory flight in a Cessna that her father gave her and her twin sister at their local airport.

Living in a small New England town where no one in her family had aviation experience, and at a time when only 2% of professional pilots were female, her decision to pursue aviation set her on an unexpected path from the moment she left the ground.

“How Not to Fly an Airplane is about learning to fly before you are old enough to drive a car, and teaching others when you are nearly always mistaken for being the pilot’s girlfriend, wife, or daughter. It’s about the many mistakes you can make in an airplane, and what it’s like to solve them, thousands of feet in the air or just a few feet above the trees,” according to officials with Apprentice House Press, which published the book.

Phillips also includes stories of finding a sense of identity as a twin, becoming the first pregnant pilot at an airline, and losing a friend and former student in an infamous plane crash.

Phillips, a resident of Nashua, New Hampshire, will be at the Aviation Museum of N.H. Nov. 13, 2025, at 7 p.m. for a presentation and book signing. Copies of “How Not to Fly an Airplane” will be available after the presentation for $20.99.

She is also a volunteer mentor at the Aviation Museum’s student plane-build program at Farmington High School, where she was once a student.

For more information: ApprenticeHouse.com, AviationMuseumofNH.org