Carlene Mendieta Biography

Inspired as a child by watching Piper Cub airplanes fly over neighboring sheepherders’ properties, Dr. Carlene Mendieta knew someday she would learn to fly. Born the daughter of immigrant Basque sheepherders on Jan. 18, 1954 in Winnemucca, Nev., Mendieta spent her youth tracing the lightweight airplanes through the northwestern Nevada skies as ranch owners surveyed their herds. These images still linger in Mendieta’s mind and take her back to an earlier era of aviation when taildragger* pilots were the norm.

While Mendieta maintained her romantic notions of aviation, her practical self drew her to pursue a career in dentistry. Mendieta graduated from the University of Nevada at Reno, and before long settled in Elko, Nevada where she worked with a dentist who flew a Super Cub – an airplane considered by the manufacturer as the epitome of Cub perfection. Mendieta became his first passenger, and for the next year, the two of them escaped to the airfield to fly whenever patients cancelled or an opportunity arose. In 1986, Mendieta completed her dental degree at the University of the Pacific, and in 1988, completed her postdoctoral at the University of California at San Francisco. Soon after, Mendieta started a private practice, and with a growing desire to be more than just a passenger and ongoing encouragement from her friends, Mendieta decided to learn to fly.

Mendieta began flying Piper Cubs off the grass airstrips of Schellville, Calif., in 1998. Surrounded by a community of thrill-seeking pilots who owned a variety of rare taildragger airplanes, Mendieta not only picked up on all the subtleties of piloting vintage aircraft, but quickly became a dedicated student of airplane mechanics, spending countless hours learning as much as possible about how airplanes work.

Mendieta soon purchased her first airplane, a 65 H.P. Piper Cub, and on Nov. 11, 1998, completed her first solo flight. Shortly after that, she flew solo in a friend’s Bucker Jungmeister – a rare, fully aerobatic, German-built trainer. Mendieta’s appetite for flying rare airplanes quickly escalated. In the following months, she flew solo other vintage airplanes including a Rose Parrakeet, Ryan STA, Monocoupe and Alexander Eaglerock Project.

Today, Mendieta owns three vintage airplanes and has a log book that includes flight time in a Ryan PT 20; Curtiss Wright 19R; Stearman; Fleet; and most recently, the Avro Avian. With just under 300 flight hours, Mendieta embarks on the re-creation of Amelia Earhart’s flight across the U.S. with approximately the same number of hours Amelia had when she set out on her record-setting flight in 1928.

Mendieta is a periodontist and currently lives in Sonoma, Calif. She is also a member of The Ninety-Nines – an organization of 6,500 women pilots that was founded by Earhart in 1929.

*The term "taildragger" refers to a particular type of aircraft where the landing gear consists of a main landing gear and a tail wheel at the rear of the aircraft.