The sky literally is the limit for former Taupo student Casey Glynn.
The 20-year-old pilot, who grew up in Taupo and attended Hilltop School, Taupo Intermediate and Napier Girls' High School, was named the top student in her course at the Massey University School of Aviation's wings ceremony last week, which is held to mark the completion of the students' licences and ratings requirements.
She is only the fourth woman to win the Outstanding Student Award in the male-dominated course, which has been running for 25 years. It is given to the student who has demonstrated overall excellence in all aspects of the programme. She was also awarded the Fieldair Engineering Ltd Aviation Systems Award, presented to the student who has achieved specific excellence in the field of aviation systems.
In 2013, Casey also won the School of Aviation's Craig Merryweather Memorial Scholarship, awarded to the student who demonstrated application and endeavour to succeed.
Casey is now doing her third year of study to complete her Bachelor of Aviation _ Air Transport Pilot degree and is studying as a flight instructor.
She decided to study to become a pilot after deciding that she wanted a practical career.
She says although studying aviation means an emphasis on physics and maths, she did well at sciences at school and enjoys being able to apply those concepts to practical situations.
"Everything we learn is something we have to use."
When she was a young girl Casey did some flying with her father Owen in his microlight, but a career in aviation seemed unlikely because she had terrible motion sickness.
"I could barely go 10 minutes down the road in a car, let alone go in an airplane. "I think I just grew out of it."
Which is just as well, because Casey's now doing aerobatics as part of her flight instructor's course _ she can do barrel rolls and loop the loop in a special aerobatics plane.
"That's definitely one of the more fun aspects of our instructor's course training and something a bit different to what we were doing for our commercial licence."
The degree combines Civil Aviation Authority and university papers, and is half theory and half practical. Casey was one of only two women in her class of 20 but says that made no difference.
"It's just sort of one of those things that a lot of people do wonder what it's like but it's not an issue unless you make a big issue out of it. "You just kind of slot in and get treated as an equal. We had a really good cohort, a lot of great people in that class."
As for being named top student, Casey says it was "a bit of a surprise" and not something she had really had time to wonder about.
"Our course is really busy and really full-on so the whole time you're just working to do the best that you can and that [award] just sort of came out of it."