Central Oregon chapter of ‘The Ninety-Nines’ women pilots tour Redmond Airport control tower

REDMOND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- Women pilots who belong to Central Oregon's chapter of The Ninety-Nines got a chance to tour the Redmond Airport control tower on Saturday.

The Ninety-Nines are an international organization of women pilots, originally founded by Amelia Earhart in 1929. The chapter's headquarters are at the Madras Municipal Airport.

The Ninety-Nines describe themselves as "an energetic group of student and licensed pilots excited to share our enthusiasm with others," according to their website.

NewsChannel 21 talked with the chapter's chairman, Lorraine Martinelli, on Saturday about touring the tower.

"We're coming from Burns, Sisters, Prineville and Madras, ands we're congregating to go do a tour of the Redmond airport tower," Martinelli said.

"We've built it up (The Ninety-Nines) from a chapter that was starting to just lose memberships, and so we started, and our goal is to come up with a scholarship fund to promote aviation."

The Ninety-Nines have a race coming up in August that will see the pilots race from Santa Monica, California to the chapter's headquarters in Madras.