Kansas City pilot and associate professor Mujahid Abdulrahim and several of his students flew over Kansas City on Friday in an unusual effort to get people participating in the upcoming elections.
They flew a path that, when viewed on the flight tracking website FlightAware.com, spells out the message “VOTE.”
The trip is a continuation of efforts Abdulrahim began four years ago for the 2020 presidential elections to encourage voter engagement in a nonpartisan manner.
“We believe it is very important that American citizens participate in the democratic process,” said Abdulrahimj, who teaches aircraft design, flight test engineering and flight control systems at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. “We are airplane people, and this is our love language.”
In addition to encouraging people to vote, Abdulrahim has used this process, called flight plan skywriting, for other projects. Earlier this year, he paid tribute to the Kansas City Chiefs before the Super Bowl. One flight replicated the tight jersey number of Chiefs’ Travis Kelce, 87, surrounded by a heart as a nod to Kelce and superstar singer Taylor Swift.
During the last flight, Abdulrahim had Mayor Quinton Lucas write “Vote.” The handwritten message was then digitized and the flight was planned around it.
“So what you see is essentially the 20-mile-wide handwriting of Mayor Quinton Lucas,” Abdulrahim said.
Abdulrahim usually uses his plane to write to the sky. But this time, because he had students with him, he borrowed a plane from ATD Flight Systems at Wheeler Downtown Airport. Two of the students are taking his aircraft design class this semester. The other was his teaching assistant, who had been on several other flights.
The flight took off from the Downtown Airport shortly after 10 a.m. and landed back at the airport about an hour and 10 minutes later. The flight path took them over Northland in Kansas City.
The weather was perfect on Friday, although the wind was a bit difficult at the altitude they were flying. Abdulrahim said if you look closely and criticize his flying, there are instances where they overshot the curve. He said the air traffic controllers at Kansas City International Airport and the Downtown Airport tower were great to work with during the flight.
Three more flights are in the works, one of which is tentatively scheduled for Monday. For that they have the handwritten message from US Representative Emanuel Cleaver. The two other flights, which are yet to be confirmed, will take place later next week and on the day before the election. Abdulrahim declined to reveal the names of the other local leaders involved.
Abdulrahim isn’t sure anyone should be encouraged to vote at this point, but he believes this plea for voter engagement is essential enough to justify the message.
“If there is anything we are fighting against, it is only voter apathy,” Abdulrahim said. “That’s our only opponent.”
