It didn’t take long for Justin Phillipson to sell one of his three Formula 1 racing planes at the last Reno Air Races in 2023. He had barely hung a “For Sale” sign on #82—a relatively stock Cassutt—when Andy Mack bought it.
It took a little egging on by fiancée Leah Sanfillipo, but not too much.
The wonder is, when did Andy and Leah have time to prep their new race plane? Both are aerospace engineers with impressive experience. Andy came out of Purdue University and has worked for SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and now Impulse Space.
Andy’s current gig at Impulse is running a rocket motor test facility in the hinterlands behind the Mojave Spaceport. “I’m working on a FLOX–methane upper stage right now.”
As for Leah, we pried her away from resetting the silicone air baffling on the Cassutt long enough to snap her picture and highlight her résumé. It’s certainly better than ours: Embry-Riddle schooling, then “working on submarine weapons for Northrop,” followed by a stint testing RS-25 rocket motors for Aerojet Rocketdyne. Virgin Galactic followed—along with meeting Andy there—followed by Stratolaunch and now flight test for Universal Hydrogen. You could say Leah came by the tattoo of the space shuttle blasting off on her left arm naturally.
Thanks to their busy schedules, the Cassutt sat for a year after Andy purchased it. Plus, Andy had only 10 hours of tailwheel time. Luckily, he had also bought a Cessna 120—these kids—so he was able to gain tailwheel basics with it. Later, he took spin and upset recovery training in a Decathlon plus “a few hours in a Pitts S2C.”
When Andy “almost got those landings in the Pitts figured out,” he thought, “Okay, go to the Cassutt.”
Look for Andy, Leah, and Cheap Thrills at Roswell this September.
