The Super Bowl has had a tradition for many years of military flyovers before the big game.
However, this year’s flyover was different: For the first time in Super Bowl history the crews were all women.
And two of the women have Alabama connections.
Navy Lt. Suzelle Thomas is from Birmingham. She graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 2018 and has 350 hours logged. Thomas flies a F-35C Lightning and was the Navy’s first woman to transition directly from a naval aviator to post-graduate flight training in the F-35C Lightning II.
Lt. Taylor Rudolph, a Navy flight surgeon, graduated from the University of Alabama. She has 50 hours of logged flight time. During the flyover, she was a crew member on an F/A-18F Super Hornet.
Female pilots make up about 15% of all pilots in the Navy today.
View the flyover here.
Austen Shipley is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News.
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