Wally Funk flew bush planes in Alaska, was oldest woman to travel to space

By SUZANNE DOWNING

July 10, 2026 – When most Americans remember Wally Funk, they think of the pioneering pilot who waited six decades for her chance to fly to space.

Alaskans have another reason to remember her. Most don’t.

Long before she became the oldest woman ever to travel into space aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket in 2021, Funk spent time flying Alaska’s backcountry in one of the state’s most iconic aircraft: a De Havilland Beaver on floats.

Funk, who died July 8 at age 87 in Grapevine, Texas, built an aviation career that broke barrier after barrier. Along the way, she developed a love for Alaska, where she flew bush operations, viewed brown bears, fished for salmon, and transported hunters into remote country.

Her biography published by the international women pilots organization, The Ninety-Nines, mentions that after years of aviation seminars around the country, she would head north to Alaska for “bush flying, salmon fishing, and bear watching,” adding another chapter to a remarkable flying career that already spanned nearly every corner of aviation.

For Alaskans, bush flying is a unique badge of honor.

Flying a Beaver on floats into remote lakes and rivers requires precision, judgment, and respect for weather that can change in minutes. It is the kind of flying that has defined Alaska’s aviation history for generations.

It was a challenge appealed to Funk, who wanted to fly to new frontiers, ultimately space.

By then, she had already accumulated thousands of flight hours and held ratings for landplanes, multi-engine aircraft, seaplanes, instruments, and flight instruction. Alaska’s wilderness simply offered another frontier.

Her career was filled with firsts.

Born in New Mexico in 1939, Funk earned her pilot’s license before most women were even welcomed into professional aviation. She became the first female civilian flight instructor at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, the first woman to graduate from the FAA’s General Aviation Operations Inspector Academy, the first female FAA inspector, and later the first female air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board.

She investigated hundreds of aircraft accidents during an 11-year career with the NTSB before retiring to devote herself to flight instruction, aviation safety, and mentoring thousands of new pilots.

Yet the accomplishment that defined much of her life was one she was denied.

In 1961, at just 21 years old, Funk was selected for the privately funded “Women in Space” testing program that later became known as the Mercury 13. The women underwent many of the same grueling physical and psychological tests given to NASA’s Mercury astronauts.

Funk excelled, reportedly outperforming several of the male Mercury astronauts in portions of the testing and establishing a sensory deprivation endurance record by remaining in an isolation tank for more than ten hours without hallucinating.

But despite passing every challenge, neither she nor the other women were allowed to continue because NASA required military test pilot experience—a qualification unavailable to women at the time.

For the next 60 years, she waited.

NASA eventually opened astronaut opportunities to women, but by then she no longer met the agency’s qualifications. She continued flying, instructing, racing airplanes, and advocating for aviation safety while never giving up on the dream of reaching space.

That dream finally came true on July 20, 2021, when Jeff Bezos personally invited Funk to join him aboard Blue Origin’s first crewed New Shepard flight. At 82 years old, she became the oldest person ever to fly into space, a record later surpassed by actor William Shatner. She remains the oldest woman ever to travel beyond Earth’s atmosphere.

Perhaps fittingly for someone who spent a lifetime embracing adventure, Funk never slowed down.

She logged more than 18,600 flight hours and continued instructing pilots well into her later years.

While national headlines focused on rockets, Mercury 13, and Blue Origin, Alaskans can remember that one of aviation’s greatest pioneers also experienced the state the way many legendary pilots have—at the controls of a floatplane, skimming across remote lakes, watching bears along salmon streams, and embracing the freedom that only Alaska’s backcountry can offer.

For a woman who spent her life searching for new horizons, Alaska was one of them.