By Chuck McGill

MountainEast.org

BRIDGEPORT, W.Va. — During this year’s Mountain East Conference Cross Country and Track & Field Championships, Point Park’s Cassondra O’Connor covered ground faster than most.

Her future, though, is breezing through the air.

Originally an accounting major, O’Connor’s interests have shifted to aviation, and she has started adding certifications and endorsements as she piles up running honors as a student-athlete at Point Park. In May, she posted a photo to social media standing beside a small aircraft celebrating her private pilot certification.

“Good thing you don’t need turn signals to be a pilot,” the caption read.

Indeed, O’Connor seems to be on a direct flight to her dreams, which she only realized since entering college.

The native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was one of the most decorated student-athletes in the Mountain East Conference in 2024-25. She placed second in the MEC Cross Country Championships, and was voted the league’s Runner of the Year and took home Freshman of the Year honors, too. During the indoor season, O’Connor placed sixth in the Mile, third in the 3000-meter run, and second in the 5,000-meter run — the latter two of which earned her All-MEC recognition. Finally, during the Outdoor season, O’Connor finished first in the 10,000-meter run and second in the 5,000-meter run — again earning All-MEC honors.

She trains and performs at a high level on hilly courses and flat tracks while logging credit hours in the classroom and real hours across blue skies. In fact, after a grueling freshman year where she balanced coursework at PPU and flight instruction at the Community College of Beaver County, Point Park launched an Aviation Management program, which streamlined her pursuit. 

“I took 22 credits in the spring semester of my freshman year on top of training for track, and I was also in pilot training,” she said. “It was a lot; it was a tough freshman year. And then they started the Aviation Management program at Point Park and now I’m enrolled in that.”

Now, she has left her business and accounting ambitions in the dust.

“I wasn’t sold on it,” she said. “I took a lot of business classes in high school, took some accounting courses and knew I was comfortable with it, so I was going to stick with it.”

And then, prior to beginning her time at Point Park, O’Connor was attending a friend’s high school graduation party and started talking to a pilot there. During the course of the conversation, she received an invitation to board a small aircraft at Allegheny County Airport, which is located about 10 miles southeast of downtown Pittsburgh in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania. As soon as the airplane gained altitude, she looked outside of the window and knew:

This is what she wanted to do for the rest of her life.

To get started, O’Connor needed to convince her parents. Then, they collectively started to research the best path forward. In December and January of O’Connor’s first year at Point Park, she started aviation training.

“I love it,” she said. “I wanted to go all in.”

To operate high-performance and complex aircraft with a private pilot certification, pilots need specific endorsements. A high-performance endorsement is required for aircraft with engines over 200 horsepower. A complex endorsement is needed for aircraft with retractable landing gear, controllable pitch propellers, and flaps. Both endorsements require training from a certified flight instructor.

Now, O’Connor is working through her instrument training. Even during the academic year and intense training weeks for cross country and track, she might fly three times per week at two hours per session. Ground training is on top of that.

“My goal right now is to go to the airlines commercially and then a long-, long-term goal would be to fly for FedEx,” O’Connor said. “That’s a dream job, but that’s after airlines.”

For now, she’ll settle for the precious hours she gets flying around the region. She enjoys picking an airport with a restaurant so she can land the plane, pick up a piece of pie, and then return to the skies. If O’Connor wanted, she could go to Florida and take a plane out on her own. She is allowed to take family with her on current flights for company, but the peace and tranquility of soaring above everyone else will do, too.

“There’s nothing better,” O’Connor said. “It’s not an everyday experience for most people; it’s such a freeing feeling and you’re up from the ground and nothing else matters. It’s an escape.”