She’s still in Oklahoma for now, but soon Annalisa Sanfilippo will be returning to California, her home state, to join the Air Force National Guard.
She graduated in May of 2020 and was commissioned into the Air Force at about the same time. “Most people, when they commission out of Air Force ROTC, they join the Air Force on active duty, it’s their full-time job. I actually got a reserve slot to go to the Air Force reserve and go to pilot training, so it would be like a full-time gig while I went through all my training, but down the line, it would become a part-time gig and I would just be in the Air Force reserve.”
In June 2020, she began sending out applications to find out where her home base would be. Of hundreds of applicants and about 10 interviews, she was chosen to join the 144th Fighter Wing.
She was supposed to start pilot training in October of 2020, but the switch from Air Force Reserve to National Guard pushed back her training start date by about a year, and suddenly Sanfilippo was faced with a span of open time she had not accounted for. She filled the space with a job at the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District working as an air quality specialist, where she used her degree in meteorology to do what she describes as “forensic meteorology work,” determining the sources of air pollution.
Currently, she’s on military leave from her air quality specialist position, one she plans to return to. The position is located in Fresno, California, as is the 144th Fighter Wing, and while she doesn’t know how her time will be split in the future, the possibility of continuing the position is there. For now, she’s full-time in the military, viewing clouds from up above, and has just finished her pilot training. When she returns to the 144th Fighter Wing, she’ll make history as the Wing’s first female fighter pilot.
While her degree in meteorology was by no means a requirement for the path she’s chosen, she considers it an asset. “Before we take off we brief, and one of the biggest things we look at is the weather. We have to know the winds for being able to take off and land. We need to know what kind of weather we’re going to run into for the airplane.” She says that being able to look at a model and have her own understanding of upcoming weather outside of what Air Force meteorologists share with the pilots is an extra tool. In fact, in training, where other students struggled with their instruction on weather, Sanfilippo was able to relax and help her friends “while they’re trying to figure out what the heck is turbulence.”
While she’s loved her time in Oklahoma and the state itself, she is excited to be closer to family, and to be part of the 144th Fighter Wing. “It’s protecting the West Coast, protecting the State of California,” she said. “I feel lucky to be able to do that, to give back to the place that I call home.”
Sanfilippo is part of a small percentage of licensed pilots who are women, but she says that percentage is growing every day. Before her career is over, she says, she’d like for the gender distinction to disappear. “I’d love to be able to just hear pilots.”
By Kathryn Gebauer
Article Published: Thursday, March 30, 2023
