TAMPA, Fla. — The Tampa Bay Aviation Association is holding its annual fundraiser called GALA, which stands for Girls Achieving Leadership in Aviation.

What You Need To Know

  • Tampa Bay Aviation Association is holding its annual fundraiser GALA at Peter O. Knight Airport

  • GALA stands for Girls Achieving Leadership in Aviation, and has been held since 2022 honoring female aviators of the past, present and future

  • They raise money that will go toward scholarships for young female aviators in the Bay area

  • Peggy Wagstaff, who was the first woman to win the U.S. national aerobatic championship, is this year’s keynote speaker

It’s an event to honor women in the flying industry.

During Women’s History Month, the group honors scholarship recipients who are young aviators looking to get into the cockpit professionally.

Additionally, the fundraiser celebrates female aviators of the past, present and future.

One of the future aviators is Qayla Bailey, an 18-year-old senior at Winter Haven High School.

When it comes to flying, she’s like a sponge, wanting to learn as much as possible, which would have seemed surprising if you talked with her a few years ago.

“At first, I was like, I don’t know about this,” Bailey said. “Maybe I’ll like it, maybe I won’t.”

When Bailey was 15, she went to a camp at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach.

She initially didn’t know if flying was for her — after all, she wanted to go into computer science.

But, when you talk with Bailey, there’s something about that first flight she went on that changed everything.

“It just lit something up in me I didn’t know was there,” she said. “I couldn’t stop smiling when I got in the air and I just saw the view.”

It wasn’t her first time in the air — she had been on commercial flights before, but the intimacy of being in the front of the plane while helping guide this piece of machinery lit a fire like nothing else before.

“Just, nothing compares to it,” Bailey said.

Ever since then, she’s now set on flying and becoming a commercial pilot.

She joined her school’s aero club, got a student pilot certificate through a local flight instructor and will be getting her aeronautics degree at Embry-Riddle.

It’s not an easy, or necessarily affordable journey, so Bailey has worked hard to earn several different scholarships to help pave her path to becoming a pilot.

“I’m closer to my dreams,” she said. “And it’s just such an exciting moment.”

One of those scholarships is from GALA.

It’s an honor Bailey doesn’t take lightly because she wants to continue blazing that trail for young women looking to become pilots.

“I want to be representation,” she said, “that’s what I want to be.”

And Bailey says, if you keep fighting for those goals, even the typical tasks to get there will make it all worth it.

The GALA takes place Friday night from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Peter O. Knight Airport on Davis Islands.

Peggy Wagstaff, who was the first woman to win the U.S. national aerobatic championship, is this year’s keynote speaker.