This pilot is leading ‘first-of-its-kind’ Super Bowl flyover. Meet Capt. Sarah Kociuba
The world will be watching on Super Bowl Sunday when a trio of bombers going nearly 300 mph fly over at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa in a pregame tradition unlike any other.
Air Force Capt. Sarah Kociuba, a pilot stationed in Missouri, will be leading the way in a B-2 Spirit in a first-of-its-kind tri-state bomber flyover for Super Bowl LV.
Kociuba will take off from Whiteman Air Force Base and join two other bombers, one from South Dakota and another from North Dakota, and meet up over the Gulf of Mexico outside of Tampa airspace, Fox 4 reported.
The trio will then conduct a “trifecta” of sorts during the national anthem performance, the Kansas City Star said.
“Supporting this event is a tremendous honor for our command and the U.S. Air Force,” Gen. Tim Ray, commander of the Air Force Global Strike Command said in a news release. “We look forward to this opportunity to showcase the reliability, flexibility and precision of our bomber fleet to the nation during this exciting event.”
Kociuba’s background is just as impressive as her skills among the clouds.
According to Fox 13, she’s a B-2 instructor pilot and has flown more than 90 combat missions. Kociuba was born in Cleveland and her parents took her at the age of 11 to see the B-2 bomber to an exhibition flight, She Can STEM reported.
Even though she took an interest in aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart as a child, Kociuba received a STEM scholarship that took her to the University of Dayton with dreams of becoming a doctor. At 18, she joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps, where her passion for flying shifted her focus to becoming a pilot.
“It is very exciting, I am very humbled,” the pilot told Fox 13 about being apart of the historic flyover. “We are certainly doing our prep for it.”
Kociuba told Fox 13 that a great deal of planning went into this particular mission in order to make sure the three aviators coordinate and excuse the flyover over properly.
“We’ve been working for weeks making this plan very precise, so that we can execute it,” she said. “So we’ll all brief together, and plan together, and make this rejoin happen.”
The other aircrafts participating in the flyover will be a B-1B Lancer from Ellsworth Air Force Base and a B-52 Stratofortress from Minot Air Force Base, the Star said.
This story was originally published February 3, 2021 at 1:53 PM with the headline "This pilot is leading ‘first-of-its-kind’ Super Bowl flyover. Meet Capt. Sarah Kociuba."