This summer was meant to be when Anh-Thu Nguyen’s years of planning finally came to fruition.
Six years in the making, the experienced pilot and South Florida flight instructor set out on Wednesday morning from Indiana on the second leg of a solo flight around the world. She had every intent of becoming the first Vietnamese woman to do it.
“This year is the year. This is the summer. And I’m really gonna do it,” Nguyen said in a video on her Instagram on June 5. “And I want to do this to empower you. I want to empower you, empower all women, all over the world, to follow your goals and your dreams.”
She posted her last video update from inside her plane on Instagram Wednesday, letting her thousands of followers know she had completed the first leg of her trip a few days earlier and was preparing to fly from Indiana to Pennsylvania.
The Lancair IVP airplane took off from Indy South Greenwood Airport shortly before 11 a.m. and crashed shortly afterward near Greenwood, Indiana, the National Transportation Safety Board said.
The plane crashed under unknown circumstances southeast of the airport while in the initial climb phase of flight, according to a preliminary report from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Firefighters found the wreckage directly behind a Circle K gas station near a busy intersection, the Greenwood Fire Department said in a news release. Nguyen, 44, of Miami, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Nguyen leaves a legacy of inspiring women and girls to break into the male-dominated industries of aerospace and aviation, having been the founder of the nonprofit Asian Women in Aerospace and Aviation and the chief pilot of Dragon Flight Training Academy, based at North Perry Airport in Pembroke Pines, which she opened and operated with her husband.
“Her life stories are inspirational and have taught me and other women around her to dare to dream the impossible even when things are difficult. She’s truly my heroine and quite simply a living legend in my eyes,” a mentee who helped organize a GoFundMe to help with costs of the solo mission wrote on the fundraiser page.
Through her flight school, Nguyen wanted to give aspiring pilots the opportunities she didn’t have when she was starting out, her longtime friend and pilot Adam Jackson said in a statement given to the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Friday.
“She was the most determined person I have ever met, nothing was going to stop her doing what she wanted,” he wrote.
Her story started with “humble beginnings,” her nonprofit said in a statement after her death. She emigrated from Tuy-Hoa, Vietnam, to the United States when she was 12 years old.
“Growing up in a village with no electricity and running water, flying high was simply and realistically just a big dream, and dream big she did,” her bio on the nonprofit’s website says.
Despite some flight instructors having “actively discouraged and readily disqualified her” at points in her life, she became an award-winning pilot and instructor with thousands of hours of experience, her bios on her nonprofit and flight school’s websites said. She was recognized by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association as a distinguished flight instructor in 2023 and 2017.
“Regardless of her many achievements, Anh-Thu’s presence at airports in 2021 is surprisingly still a source of confusion and a huge shock to many including airport security personnel, who on many occasions, have denied her entry through the gate,” her bio on her nonprofit’s website says. “On a daily basis, she constantly has to explain herself and convince people that she’s a pilot.”
Jackson saw Nguyen’s determination soon after meeting her in 2011. Both were working toward earning their instrument ratings, and Nguyen was doing so on a budget, he said in his statement, so she slept in the flight school’s RV at the airport.
Once Jackson earned his instructor rating a few years later, Nguyen, then earning her commercial license, was his first student, he said. Later, while in flight school to earn her Boeing type rating, she called Jackson daily to help him through a difficult divorce. They last talked on Monday morning, when Nguyen told him how excited she was for the trip.
“She was one of my closest friends and she proved it time and time again while I had my struggles in my personal life and grew in my aviation career,” he wrote. “There isn’t anyone else like her.”
Roger Le, a Vietnamese pilot from Texas, met Nguyen while volunteering for her organization at the SUN ’n FUN aerospace exposition in 2022. Since they met, Nguyen talked often of her plans for the around-the-world trip, he said. It had been delayed numerous times over the years, from the war in Ukraine to getting maintenance done on the plane.
After stopping in Pennsylvania, Nguyen’s flight path was planned for Canada, then Iceland, Le said.
Le described her as a “very headstrong” person with a can-do attitude and someone who overcame a difficult background. She “wanted other girls and women to have an easier path,” he said, than the one she had to take to reach her goals in life.
“She’d be willing to give you the shirt off her back if that was going to help,” he said. “I’d say that she was very kind, compassionate but also wanted to build you up as an individual.”
Kim Hess knew Nguyen outside of the aviation world. After meeting her in their Miami Beach neighborhood, they grew to be friends. Nguyen taught her how to make bánh mì, enjoyed many a sunrise swim with her at the beach and were “always just in the moment” when they spent time together, she said.
“What struck me most about her was her ability to bring people together, to create community,” Hess said.
Hess said while in a moment of grief on Thursday, she felt as if her friend was sending her a message.
“The words that came to me was — be bigger, be bolder and be brighter,” she said. “Because that’s what she was. She lived big, she lived bold and she lived bright. It was kind of like I was given permission to live like she did.”
Angie DiMichele can be reached at adimichele@sunsentinel.com.