SoarAbility puts people with disability in command of a real aircraft — hand controls, full authority, silent flight over the golden wheatbelt of Western Australia.
Why we exist
For most of a century, the cockpit was built around one kind of body. SoarAbility exists for everyone the sport left standing on the ground: you don’t come here for a joyride in the back seat. You come here to fly.
The experience
A launch at full climb — sixty seconds from ground to silence.
A paved apron right at the hangar, accessible restrooms, and no queue. Meet your instructor, look over the aircraft, take your time.
Transfer yourself, or use the custom-built hoist. Nobody hurries you. You settle into the front seat — the pilot’s seat.
The ASK21Mi launches itself: onboard engine, folding propeller, steerable nose wheel. We taxi out under our own power onto a runway built in wartime — wide enough for bombers.
The hangar shrinks. The wheatbelt unrolls to the horizon in gold and ochre. At height, the engine stops and the propeller folds away behind you.
This is the moment people write to us about. No engine. Just air over the wings, and the country below moving slowly past.
Your hand on the stick. Rudder on a hand controller if you need it — full authority, not a token turn. Find a thermal and the sky lifts you higher.
Back on the long runway, propeller still folded, wings level. The first question almost everyone asks: when can I come back?
The machines
A Schleicher ASK 21 under launch — the type SoarAbility flies. Photo: MKFI, public domain.
A self-launching two-seat motor glider with a 17-metre wingspan, built of glass and carbon fibre. Docile enough to learn in, capable of cross-country flight, high-altitude soaring and aerobatics.
Ours is unlike any other in the country: hand-operated rudder controls in both cockpits, dual controls throughout, and a steerable nose wheel that makes it independent on the ground.
A Stemme S10 climbing out — SoarAbility’s second type. Photo: NASA/Green Flight Challenge, public domain.
A high-performance motor glider with something rare in soaring: side-by-side seating. Pilot and passenger share one wide cockpit — no intercom needed, no talking to the back of a headrest.
A complete factory-built ASK21Mi front cockpit — real stick, real hand controls, real instruments — mounted in an air-conditioned trailer with a wheelchair ramp and overhead lifting gantry.
It travels to schools, events and communities across WA, and it is the gentlest possible first step: test the controls, feel the cockpit, fly the wheatbelt on screen — before you ever leave the ground.
Cunderdin Airfield, two hours east of Perth. Try the simulator, watch the launches from the apron, and stay for a wheatbelt sunset. An interesting day out — no booking needed to visit.
SoarAbility is privately funded — no grants, no gala dinners, no overheads. There are four ways to put someone in the sky: