Jessica Cox - The ONLY Pilot Without Arms

There are a few who say nothing is impossible if we want to achieve. Oxford and Cambridge are seriously considering to remove the words CAN'T and IMPOSSIBLE from their dictionary.

Jessica Cox, 25, a girl born without arms, stands inside an aircraft. The girl from Tucson, Arizona got the Sport Pilot certificate lately and became the first pilot licensed to fly using only her feet.

Jessica Cox of Tucson was born without arms, but that has only stopped her from doing one thing: using the word "can't."

Her latest flight into the seemingly impossible is becoming the first pilot licensed to fly using only her feet.

With one foot manning the controls and the other delicately guiding the steering column, Cox, 25, soared to achieve a Sport Pilot certificate. Her certificate qualifies her to fly a light-sport aircraft to altitudes of 10,000 feet.

Parrish Traweek runs PC Aircraft Maintenance and Flight Services and has trained many pilots, some of whom he says, didn't even come close to Cox's abilities. "She's a good pilot. She's rock solid," said Parrish Traweek, 42, the flying instructor at San Manuel's Ray Blair Airport.

"When she came up here driving a car," Traweek recalled, "I knew she'd have no problem flying a plane."

Doctors never learned why she was born without arms, but she figured out early on that she didn't want to use prosthetic devices.

"Success is not something to wait for;
it is something to work for."

The Grand Canyon Skywalk

THE GRAND CANYON SKYWALK is a tourist attraction along the Colorado River on the edge of the Grand Canyon (Grand Canyon West) in the U.S. state of Arizona. It was funded by the Hualapai Indian tribe in partnership with Chinese-American businessman David Jin and was built by the French company Saint-Gobain.

The horseshoe-shaped glass walkway stands at a 3,600 feet (1,100 m) height above the floor of the canyon, a height exceeding those of the world's tallest skyscrapers. The Skywalk is not directly above the main canyon, Granite Gorge, which contains the Colorado River. Instead it extends over a side canyon and affords a view into the main canyon. USGS topographic maps show the elevation at the Skywalk's location as 4,770 ft (1,450 m) and the elevation of the Colorado River in the base of the canyon as 1,160 ft (350 m), and they show that the height of the exactly vertical drop directly under the skywalk is between 500 ft (150 m) and 800 ft (240 m).

Construction began in March 2004. It was rolled onto the edge of the canyon on March 7, 2007, after passing several days of testing to replicate weather, strength, and endurance conditions of its final destination. The structure was built to withstand up to 100 mph (160 km/h) winds and a magnitude 8 earthquake. Tuned mass dampers were used to minimize vibration from wind and pedestrians. Visitors are provided with shoe covers to protect them from slipping and to prevent the glass floor from being scratched.