LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Defying the odds; that's the goal one visually impaired woman, turned pilot, has had for years.
Kaiya Armstrong, 21, is legally blind, and landed at Bowman Field in Louisville Monday afternoon, proving that no obstacle is too great to overcome.
She, and her co-pilot who can see, flew from Arizona to Louisville, with a few stops in between, as part of 'Flight for Sight' - the first program of its kind with Arizona-based company, Foundation for Blind Children.
Armstrong was chosen from a competitive pool of contestants and went through intensive training for nearly a year.
“I told my mom, I have to do this, I have to prove to myself and to everybody else, that if this is possible, we don't have limits,” Armstrong said. “We can do anything.”
Armstrong said at first, her drive wasn’t because she had a passion for piloting; it was because she wanted break barriers by soaring to new heights.
Though it was hard, Armstrong said she held on to what her mother taught her when she first started losing her vision at 14 years old.
“She was determined,” she said. “She wouldn't let me say that I couldn't do something just because I couldn't see to do it. So, when we wanted to go out mini golfing as a family, we all went, including me. As most people can imagine, it didn't turn out very well, but we had a lot of fun doing it.”
Co-pilot Tyler Sinclair said though he trained Armstrong, he learned a valuable less in return.
“Now we see that there are no limits, only limits that you put on yourself,” he said.
Spencer Churchill, assistant director of transition and itinerant services with Foundation for Blind Children, said stories like hers makes his job worthwhile.
“To say ‘I flew a plane 2500 miles across the country’ is something that nobody can ever take away from Kaiya,” he said. “And it proves that vision loss is a diagnosis, not a disability.”
A diagnosis that has never defined Armstrong, and she said it never will.
“If you have an impossible dream, don't say it's impossible,” she said. “It's just in the works. The world is going to try and put limits on what you can do. As a community, as anybody that is visually impaired or blind, it is our job and responsibility to push back on those limits.”
Armstrong will visit the Kentucky School for the Blind and the American Printing House for the Blind Tuesday; she'll finish her journey in Washington D.C. Wednesday, where she'll stay for World Sight Day.
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