London, 1968. Fifteen-year-old Barbara Harmer walked out of school for the last time with no qualifications, no university plans, and no clear path forward.She got a job cutting hair in a salon. It was respectable work. Steady income. A career many people would have been grateful for.But every time a plane flew overhead, Barbara looked up.She couldn’t have articulated it then—the pull toward the sky, the feeling that she was meant to be up there, not down here trimming bangs and doing perms. She just knew that cutting hair, however skilled she became at it, wasn’t going to be enough.At 20, she took her first step toward aviation: she applied to become a trainee air traffic controller at London Gatwick Airport. Not flying yet, but at least working around aircraft, being part of the world that fascinated her.She got the job. And while working at Gatwick, watching planes take off and land every day, the desire to be in the cockpit became impossible to ignore.But here’s the
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