“On my first flight, my instructor quite foolishly said to me, ‘Daphne, you’ll never be a pilot.' That was all the encouragement I needed.”

Flash forward forty years, and the 80-year-old professor is flying humanitarian missions to Central Africa with Air Solidarité, a Paris-based volunteer organization, to deliver medical and school supplies. In October 2004, when co-pilot and friend Adele Fogle was unable to join her, Schiff flew 3,000 kilometres in a single-engine airplane, covering the south-to-north half of the annual mission, from Boganda to Burkina Faso.

Schiff, who teaches a course called “Science of Flight” in Glendon College’s Department of Multidisciplinary Studies, has even landed planes on campus to help students grasp the principles she’s teaching – “show and tell,” as she calls it.

“I thought it would be great to have a real aircraft for the students to touch and examine. So I made a habit, once a year, of flying a (Cessna) 172 in from Buttonville Airport and landing it in a field near Murray Ross Parkway. The field was about 2,000 feet long – just enough room.”

In her class at York, she’s happy to see a mix of students, including many young women – who haven’t traditionally been encouraged to take an interest in aviation. It wasn’t easy for Schiff, who obtained her commercial license in the 1970s and despite applying at major airlines, found herself piloting for Purolator.

“You still hear stories nowadays about passengers who get on board an airplane and they’re shocked to see a woman pilot,” Schiff says.

"Attitudes back then were much worse.”

She credits much of her success to the feminine camaraderie she found in the “Flying 99s,” a women's aero-racing organization founded by Amelia Earhart in the 1930s to provide racing opportunities for women who, until then, could instruct but not compete. It was there she met Fogle.

"We loved racing. It was pure joy," said Schiff. "But it was time to be useful, to do something humanitarian". She and Fogle joined Air Solidarité in 1998.

This year's mission provides assistance with setting up eight new health-care centres in Burkina Faso, the creation of village organizations for active land management, support for agricultural groups with breeding stock, and establishing literacy and micro-enterprise programs in Cameroon. It will also assist with the development of a Rehabilitation and Prosthetic Centre in Bogande and paramedical education in Mali.

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For further information, please contact:

Melissa Hughes, Media Relations, York University, 416-736-2100 x22097/ mehughes@yorku.ca