Katherine ‘Kat’ Hodge - Chairman

Kat started flying gliders when she left school and four years later, by the time she'd finished an arts degree at University College London (where she ran the college gliding club) she was set on flying for a living.

GAPAN awarded her the Breitling PPL scholarship in 1999 which she completed at East Midlands Flying School that summer.

A stint of towing at Booker Gliding Centre the following season built Kat's hours up giving her the necessary requirements to apply for an Instructor Sponsorship with Cabair and KLMuk. Owing to restructuring in the airline there were no jobs awaiting the sponsored cadets at the end of their two years of instructing, which Kat spent at Elstree Aerodrome.

However on completing her IR and MCC at Cranfield she found herself employed by Flybe flying the Dash 8 Q400 and based in Exeter. She was also the liaison pilot for the Flybe Mentored Airline Pilot Scheme (MAPS) at Flight Training Europe in Jerez.
A job change and a move to London followed and after the merger of her former company First Choice Airways with Thomsonfly, Kat now flies the 757 and 767 fleet. She enjoys a mix of short, medium and long haul flying based at Gatwick going to the Caribbean, most destinations around the Med as well as Africa and India.

Kat is one of the founder members of GYM and has recently obtained her Freedom of London and become a liveryman. She looks forward to meeting other young members at GYM events and is always keen to hear of your ideas for GYM.
We asked Kat about her most memorable flight to-date... “My first long-haul flight to the Caribbean on the 767-300 was a fantastic experience,” she says, “spotting ships down below during the Atlantic crossing and then as we came closer to landfall again, seeing the Florida coastline and the Keys laid out in front of me, complete with thunderstorms all lined up in a row.”