A turbulent endeavour to raise up the names of women aviators.

I hate mornings like Brooklyn hates the Beckham family chat. To me they are like meetings that should have been emails – painful, unnecessary, made more tolerable with mimosas.

It was in this cheerful frame of mind on an early morning Uber to Auckland Airport that I noticed something off. Drive out there and almost every road is named after a man. Ray Emery. George Bolt. Cyril Kay. Fred Ladd. Andrew McKee. All impressive. All historically significant. But also: all men. And our aviation history is packed with women who flew just as high.

Where’s Gladys Sandford, the first licensed woman pilot in Aotearoa?

Where’s Jane Winstone, who flew solo at 17 – an age when I was obsessing if Ross and Rachel really were going to make it stick this time.

Where’s Jan Everest, Air New Zealand’s first female captain?

Angela Swann-Cronin, the first Māori woman to qualify as an RNZAF pilot?

Jaine Vincent, the first female chief air traffic controller?

The international airport is officially called the Jean Batten Terminal, even if hardly anyone knows it. But the surrounding streets remain a boys’ club.

So I decided to try to change that. And as a result, I have now spoken to so many branches of Auckland’s transport ecosystem that I should qualify for an engineering degree.

The Māngere-Ōtāhuhu Local Board 

AKA the Board district in which the Airport resides. AKA the decision makers for approving road names within their area. Or so I thought. 

They thanked me for the email and forwarded it instead to Auckland Transport, telling me AT would “advise the Local Board on next steps.” Thus began a goose chase longer than the wait for City Rail Link.

Helpfulness: 4/10. 

Auckland Transport

AT told me they have very little influence over the names of the roads near the airport. In fact, they advised, the roads are NZTA’s responsibility. 

Channelling their inner nihilistic penguin meme they warned that renaming existing roads would face “considerable pushback” because of cost to the airport, impact on businesses, and navigational confusion.

Their advice? Write to NZTA directly, because any new naming opportunities would come from future expansion rather than retroactive change.

Helpfulness: 5/10. 

NZTA 

In the ultimate bureaucratic plot twist, NZTA said the roads I was asking about aren’t theirs either – they sit within the airport company’s boundary.

They logged my query and passed it to their contractor, whose silence was more damning than the reviews of Melania.

Oh NZTA, how I miss your Waka Kotahi days when we were all paddling “one canoe” with a shared purpose of bettering Aotearoa’s transport.

Helpfulness: 2/10. 

Auckland Airport

They told me they already try to reflect the local area when naming new roads but will “also consider female aviators when naming future roads”.

This sounded to me a bit like I might consider a sunrise HIIT class on the weekend if by sunrise you mean 10am and by HIIT you mean bottomless brunch.

A lovely sentiment, and conveniently non-specific-future-oriented. No commitment to updating anything. Just the gentle corporate hum of possibility.

Helpfulness: 5/10. 

Ground control to Aotearoa’s bureaucracy: women exist

Turns out the only thing harder than learning to fly a plane in the 1920s is getting a road named after the woman who did it.

Fast forward 100 years and it’s time to stop pretending aviation was invented, operated and maintained exclusively by dudes with bomber jackets and good PR. 

If the powers that be can name streets after a pork product and prime ministers who held office for about 11 minutes, surely we can manage one for a woman who literally took to the skies when everyone said she couldn’t. 

At this point, refusing to do it feels less like an oversight and more like turbulence we should’ve cleared decades ago.