SANFORD, Fla. — A Central Florida woman is paving the runway this Black History Month, as one of few Black female pilots in the United States.

Dana Rozier says her ultimate goal isn’t to fly as a career, but to show others like her that they can.

The student pilot sets her eyes on the nose, tail, wings, and cockpit of the plane.

She goes through her checklist, as she would anytime she gets ready to take off, and remembers what it felt like the first time she did.

“I was like ‘I’m in charge of this flying piece of metal and magic,' " Rozier says, then smiles.

 She calls flying her favorite form of “extreme social-distancing.”

 "When I’m actually in the airplane, I’m very preoccupied with everything that’s going around, like the traffic, talking to the ATC (air traffic control), pilot to pilot," Rozier says.

Rozier dreamed of becoming a pilot since she was young, but she says she felt a barrier because she’s Black.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics confirms the barrier is a big one.

“I didn’t even realize that there’s only 151 of us,” Rozier says. “That little, yeah. Because you have to remember that only 7% of pilots are women, 3% are black, and less than 1% are Black women. When they see me, they don’t expect that I’m the one flying the plane.”

Overcoming stereotypes is still a turbulent topic for Rozier.

“My main goal is to be able to diversify the aviation community because I still have yet to see another pilot that looks like me other than Addy," Rozier says.

“My family decided it would be best if I went to get a college degree instead of pursuing aviation," certified flight instructor Addy Opoku-Nsiah says. “They thought I’d have a better chance of succeeding because they’d never seen a Black woman pilot.”

Opoku-Nsiah agrees, there’s strength in numbers, even if it’s just one more.

“She knows exactly what I’m going through, I know exactly what she’s going through, and we just had each other’s back," Opoku-Nsiah says.

Rozier says she hopes, through becoming a pilot, to build an outreach program for Black communities, where she can take young Black children flying, and show them it is possible to become a pilot.

“I want to be that person where little Black boys and girls will be able to see me and be like ‘I can do that, I can fly an airplane.’ Because I never had that," Rozier says.