{"id":6118,"date":"2022-11-15T18:49:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-15T18:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/?p=6118"},"modified":"2024-07-18T18:52:46","modified_gmt":"2024-07-18T18:52:46","slug":"friends-in-flight-cross-the-finish-line-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/2022\/Q4\/friends-in-flight-cross-the-finish-line-together","title":{"rendered":"Friends in flight cross the finish line together"},"content":{"rendered":"

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. —<\/p> \n

Among that sea of smiling photo-takers at the October 2022 commencement were Gabriele \u201cGabe\u201d Giusti of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Massimo Ruzza of northwest Pennsylvania, two brand-new Purdue Global alumni who were neither friends nor family this time a year ago. Now, they felt like both after meeting online as professional flight<\/a> students and quickly bonding over their mutual love of aviation, Italian heritage and efforts to complete the program together.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Although they had never met before attending their first Purdue Global class together in November 2021, Giusti and Ruzza had so much in common that a long-distance friendship was all but inevitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In their travels as U.S.-based commercial airline pilots \u2013 Giusti is a first officer with PSA Airlines<\/a>, and Ruzza is a captain with Republic Airways<\/a> \u2013 they rarely encounter other Italian-born pilots. Now, they were studying alongside one another in the same virtual college classroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their full story is available on the Persistent Pursuit website<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Media are welcome to share, post and publish these stories, photos and videos.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\n Media contact:<\/strong>\u00a0Matthew Oates, 765-586-7496 (cell);\u00a0oatesw@purdue.edu<\/a>; @mo_oates\u00a0 <\/p>\n <\/div>\n

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Note to journalists:<\/p>\n

\n Journalists interested in interviewing Gabriele \u201cGabe\u201d Giusti of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Massimo Ruzza of northwest Pennsylvania should contact Matthew Oates at\u00a0oatesw@purdue.edu<\/a>. <\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Among that sea of smiling photo-takers at the October 2022 commencement were Gabriele \u201cGabe\u201d Giusti of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Massimo Ruzza of northwest Pennsylvania, two brand-new Purdue Global alumni who were neither friends nor family<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"department":[],"source":[29],"purdue_today_topic":[],"coauthors":[10],"class_list":["post-6118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","source-purdue-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6118"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6119,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6118\/revisions\/6119"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6118"},{"taxonomy":"department","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/department?post=6118"},{"taxonomy":"source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/source?post=6118"},{"taxonomy":"purdue_today_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/purdue_today_topic?post=6118"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}