The Thing About Aviation

A good work environment can make or break the grind of a day job. After spending a year writing for a wire service and two years at a weekly newspaper, I happily ditched the competitive newsroom to freelance from home. The years passed quickly as I found my niche writing feature stories. I bought a house and learned how to fly airplanes in my free time, noticing the camaraderie among flight students almost immediately. We talked about our mistakes and learned from each other. It was so different from the world of journalism, where writers are tight-lipped about their upcoming projects and rarely admit errors. 

My flight instructor Cathy suggested I think about becoming a professional pilot. I took it as a compliment, but never thought I’d actually do it. After achieving my private pilot license, I just wanted to go on long cross-country flights by myself. There was something about flying alone that I craved. 

On 9/11, I was supposed to do a solo flight, but ended up grounded for six weeks. My flight school was too close to San Francisco International Airport. With my wings clipped, I nearly lost my mind. I got an instrument rating because pilots with this training could fly four days after 9/11. After the twin towers fell, freelance writing dried up, so I started to think about what Cathy said. I checked the job ads in the local newspaper and worried about how I would pay my mortgage. 

Southwest Airlines needed flight attendants, so I got hired there. Everyone thought I was crazy, but I couldn’t afford more training if I didn’t want to fly for a living, so I considered the job a research project. I did not have anyone in my family who flew for the airlines, so I needed to find my tribe. I joined Women in Aviation International and started attending their conferences every year.

As a flight attendant, I quickly realized that nearly everyone I met wanted me to succeed as a professional pilot. I was cleaning an airplane between flights when I found out that I won a scholarship to pay for half my commercial rating. All my co-workers gathered around me for a group hug when they heard the news. I’m still in touch with the Ninety-Nine member who called me that day to tell me the great news. She is now a captain for Southwest.

As advice from the pilots rolled in, I learned about a single semester program that guaranteed a job interview at a regional airline. As a low-time pilot, I jumped on it. I met the program’s head honcho at a conference and got accepted into the program. Following the sage advice of a female chief pilot in Phoenix, I quit Southwest, took a hiatus from freelancing, and moved to New Mexico. As my cousin Suzanne so aptly said, “We regret the things we don’t do.” I had to try.

Seven months later, I got hired at a regional airline. I was so happy to have a flying job, but terrified when I got assigned the Dash-8. It was considered the hardest training program at the company. My classmates and I quickly formed a pack of seven. We studied together constantly and most of us made it through. At every turn, my new friends had my back. Training went by in a blur, but we stuck together, and encouraged each other when things got rough.

These days, the community of aviators seems small. I recently flew a two-day trip to Boston with a captain who taught at the training program I attended in New Mexico. When landing back in Seattle, I met a corporate pilot girlfriend who was overnighting nearby. We went for a hike and had dinner together. The next day, I bumped into one of my favorite first officers from the regional where I worked seventeen years ago. And on my way home, I sat across the aisle from a friend who recently retired from my current airline. We talked the whole flight. I was thrilled to hear that retirement was going so well. 

I think back to my private pilot days with such relief that someone planted a seed for me about this gem of a career. Everytime I meet a little girl on the airplane, I tell her that we need more female pilots. The responses are varied, but many of them get wide eyed imagining themselves in my position. One five year old quipped, “Okay, but I want to fix doggies too.”

On a sun kissed day,  I recently flew up the Gastineau Channel into Juneau, Alaska, and was reminded of those long cross country flights from years ago. A grin quickly spread across my face and I couldn’t think of a better place to work.