By Barbara A. Schmitz
Kathrin Kaiser isn’t sure why she loves flying. But growing up in East Germany with its barbed wire and secret police, she felt like she was a prisoner at times since she wasn’t allowed to travel until the Berlin Wall came down in late 1989.
“Now that the border is open and I can travel, I feel sometimes that the world is not large enough for me,” said Kathrin, who flew from Germany to AirVenture in 2024 for the second time in her Grumman AA-5 Traveler.
Kathrin first became interested in aviation after taking a sightseeing flight. “I decided to become a pilot during this flight, and the next step was to sell my horse as I needed money for the license and training. Luckily, I work for the government as a civil servant so the bank would give me a loan.”
Since earning her pilot license four years ago, she’s flown to 42 countries over four continents and has logged 1,200 flight hours.
“My first trip was to North Cape (in northern Norway). And when I got back, I decided I wanted to do long journeys.”
She spent 20 hours preparing for her first flight to the United States. She earned additional licenses and took survival training, in case she had to ditch in the water. She saved money, a little each month, and she had difficulty finding insurance as her airplane was old, a single-engine, and she was still fresh in aviation and a woman, she said.
Her first trip included some surprises. The biggest one occurred flying over the Atlantic, she said, since she had to fly at only 200-300 feet altitude at times and could see whales.
She also ran into some dangers. Once, she saw a mirage over an ice cap and became disoriented. Between Greenland and Canada, she was surrounded by rocky ice clouds, making travel treacherous.
The single mother of two boys, ages 10 and 16, decided to write a book, Halfway Around the World in 40 Days, about her travels. She worked on it at night once the kids were asleep and had it self-published in both German and English in 2023.
“In the book, I don’t talk about the technical flying stuff,” Kathrin said. “I talk about emotions, weather, spots where I landed, and the people I met. I write about my fears, my happiness, and some very personal stuff.”
Her 2024 trip to America was much easier as she had already done the planning and preparation. To save money, she flew from friend to friend so she didn’t have to pay for accommodations. She departed Germany on June 21, and 39 hours later, was in North America. She entered America in New Hampshire, flew the Hudson, and circled Lady Liberty in New York. She even stopped at Grumman Fleet Support in Texas and “learned a lot” about how to maintain her airplane.
Her next plan is to fly around the world. “I can’t do that at the moment because of the political situation in the world,” Kathrin said. And she’ll need to get her engine overhauled as well before she makes that flight, she added.
So why does she fly? In her book, she explained: “Flying is a skill, but the decisions made during such a journey transform a person. This expedition made me feel more alive than ever before ….”