‘VOTE’: Pilot’s flight traces message in skies over Kansas City in mayor’s handwriting

Kansas City area pilot and associate professor Mujahid Abdulrahim and several of his students took to the sky Friday over Kansas City in an unusual attempt to get people to participate in the upcoming election.

They flew a path that, when viewed on the flight tracking website FlightAware.com , spells out the message “VOTE.”

The trip is continuing efforts that Abdulrahim started four years ago for the 2020 presidential election to encourage voter engagement in a non-partisan way.

“We feel that it’s really important for American citizens to participate in the democratic process,” said Abdulrahim, who teaches aircraft design, flight-test engineering and control systems at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. “We’re airplane people, and this is our love language.”

In addition to encouraging people to get out and vote, Abdulrahim has used this process, called flight plan skywriting, for other projects. Earlier this year, he did tributes to honor the Kansas City Chiefs before the Super Bowl. One flight replicated Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce’s jersey number, 87, surrounded by a heart as a nod to Kelce and superstar singer Taylor Swift.

In the latest 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 typically uses his plane to do the skywriting. 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 various 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 Kansas City’s Northland.

The weather was perfect on Friday, although winds at the altitude they were flying were a little difficult. Abdulrahim said that if you look carefully and criticize his flying, there are instances where they overshot the turn. He said the air traffic controllers at Kansas City International Airport and the Downtown Airport tower were wonderful to work with during the flight.

Three more flights are in the works, with one tentatively planned for Monday. For that, they have U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s handwritten message. The two other flights, which are still in the process of being confirmed, will take place later next week and on the day before the election. Abdulrahim didn’t want to disclose the names of the other local leaders involved.

Abdulrahim is not positive anyone needs to be encouraged to vote at this point, but he feels this voter engagement advocacy is essential enough to warrant the message.

“If anything that we’re struggling against is just voter apathy,” Abdulrahim said. “That’s our only opponent.”