A trailblazer who was an Air Force pilot for more than seven years and then quit as a T38 instructor to raise her children has returned to the cockpit after a 24-year hiatus, alongside her husband, a commercial jet pilot. Her reentry into the world of flying has left her “grinning ear to ear.”
Mom-of-four Tamaron Nicklas, 58, of Dallas, Texas, graduated Air Force Academy in 1986 as a member of the seventh class ever allowing women to enlist. When she gave up her career to raise a family, she assumed she would never fly again, so stepping into the cockpit of a Southwest Airlines aircraft with her husband, Larry, was a dream come true.
Tamaron told The Epoch Times: “Truly, both he and I looked at each other and said, ‘You know, I think I need to pinch myself. This is actually happening.’ I didn’t know if we should tell the passengers, but he was immediately so proud and announced, ‘This is my wife’s first flight at Southwest Airlines.’ Then one of the flight attendants also made some announcement, and everybody in the back ... rousing applause!”
Tamaron’s father was an Air Force pilot for over 30 years, and the family lived all around the world. Tamaron went to high school in England and Belgium and loved the experience so much that she wanted to become a pilot. She thus decided to join the Air Force herself.
She met Larry, who was a year senior to her, at Air Force Academy through a mutual friend, and the pair fell in love. Prohibited from marrying while enrolled at the academy, they got engaged before Larry’s graduation and tied the knot after Tamaron’s, in June of 1986.
Larry attended pilot training in Texas while Tamaron trained at Vance Air Force Base in Enid, Oklahoma. Tamaron recalled seeing Larry only on the weekends for the first six months of their marriage as they each had to attend separate trainings.
“Pre-cellphones ... it was hard,” she said. “We pretty much got to see each other once a month for almost a year and a half. It was a challenging time, but we got through it, and we’ve been married 36 years.”
Tamaron was the only female in her section at Vance. Over 7 1/2 years in the Air Force, she flew KC 135s, then returned to Vance as a T38 instructor. At this time, Larry was securely employed as a pilot for Southwest Airlines, giving Tamaron the freedom to reassess her priorities after their third child was born.
She then decided to give up life in the skies to raise her family.
As a full-time mom, nobody in her new life knew that she was a pilot. The more time elapsed, the less she believed she could ever go back. But then when her youngest child left for college, she heard of a woman from an earlier graduating class at the Air Force Academy who had returned to flying after a long hiatus.
“It’s never too late,” Tamaron said, recalling a serendipitous experience. “Actually ... I opened a dark chocolate bar, and on the inside, the wrapper said, ‘You’re never too old and it’s never too late.’ It really inspired me ... I felt like God was talking to me through a chocolate bar!
“My husband was very excited for me. He said, ‘You can go fly, you don’t have to do it as a job. Just go fly,’ but I wanted to have a purpose.”
Tamaron went to a local Air Force flight school in Pueblo, Colorado, and shared her background with them. She told them that she hadn’t flown in a really long time. They immediately offered her a job as an instructor.
She worked in Pueblo for two years. When her daughter started a family, she and Larry relocated to Dallas to be closer, and Tamaron set her sights on commercial airlines. She worked for a regional airline for 2 1/2 years to update her skills.
“That was really challenging,” she said. “Training, new technology; when I had stopped flying 20-plus years prior, we didn’t have all the computerized cockpits and the GPS systems. Everything was different, so it was a pretty steep learning curve for me.”
Two of Tamaron and Larry’s three sons are F16 pilots in the Air Force, and so is one of their wives. They were all excited for Tamaron’s triumphant return to the cockpit. When she began flying for Southwest Airlines, she reached her ultimate goal.
“When I got hired it was just so unreal, after all this time when I thought I'd walked away from flying forever,” she said. “My husband’s an instructor at Southwest, he’s check airman so he gets to check rides and checks out new pilots, so we were able to do my first eight flights together. That was a really, really fun experience.”
The first officer and mom-of-four is now inspiring women everywhere.
“A couple of women have reached out to me ... one woman is in my exact same shoes,” she said. “She hasn’t flown in 20 years, she was an Air Force pilot ... wondering if she could get back into it, and just felt really inspired seeing my story.”
Tamaron urges others to chase their dreams, no matter their age.
“If there’s a dream out there ... don’t be afraid to try and take that first step,” she said. “Just give it a shot. Fortunately, it worked out for me, and it can work out for many people.”
