Welcome to Females in Aviation, episode 19. We are here today to publicize examples of a regularly occurring aviation event of which many people may be unaware. Few folks may realize that unmanned passenger flights are now common practice. You may have even been a passenger on an unmanned flight.
If you're gasping in disbelief, stay tuned as I provide numerous eyewitness reports from actual crew members who witnessed these events. Flight attendants, please be glad. You'll know you're right yourself with the phone. Our first participant today is Debbie.
Debbie, go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us about the unmanned flight in which you participated. My name is Debbie, Donald and Clay. I am a Captain and Major Airline. I currently fly the Boeing 767, Gown to South and Central America.
And a few months back, I did purchase bait in an unmanned flight with my first officer, Ken. And this is some time around current, but we were both happy to participate. And we were getting ready for our flight, which we both died individually hundreds of times. And our mechanic comes up, checks on the plane, makes sure everything was okay before we left.
And when he saw both of us there, he was a little bit in shock like he'd never hit before. And he said, boy, do you think you both are going to be able to find your way down there? We both kind of laughed and said, well, we've done hundreds of times before. So I think we might be able to handle it.
And he could even without a man on board. And we both looked at each other and kind of laughed at it. I think so. But we don't need any help with that.
And that was just one funny story on one of our unmanned flight. And we didn't make it. And we made it back from both of us. Columbia.
Very good. Well, congratulations to both of you ladies and keep up the good work with your career. Hi, I'm Hannah Northern. I'm the first officer.
I'm a career designer at the United States. And I was lucky enough to have my first unmanned flight back in July of this year. My captain, Alex, also worked for Horizon and now an Alaska as a first officer. And our flight attendant, Veronica, and Kat were on the trip with us as well.
I love everything about this trip with these four girls or three girls in me. The two agents normally are looking for an older gentleman to get the paperwork to you. That being the captain. So all four of us walking up and taking charge of the plane, that's a maintenance vlog, doing the pre-flight.
It just got a lot more powerful than when I go up with a couple guys, maybe a male flight attendant or a male captain. So those unmanned flights were probably one of my favorite that I've done so far at Horizon. So did you get any unusual responses from any gate agents or passengers? Actually, one time we pulled up into, I think we were flying into buildings and we had a female ramper, flying us in.
We had a female ramper opening the door, taking all the bags off. The passengers were gone. We were kind of talking about how cool this is on Man Crew. And then the guy came up on the plane, it was a ramper, we were kind of bummed because he was messing with us.
All girls and then he had a bucket of cleaning supplies. He was our last cleaner. So we all thought that was pretty funny. Awesome.
And our next participant is American Airlines pilot Juliet Grant Lindber. The other female captain and I, we were going to go fly to Miami. So I said, well hey, I'm going to go down to the airplane and I'm right behind you. I'm in Miami.
Oh my. And I can say we're going to Miami. You're welcome to get on or you're welcome to go to Miami. I'm calling American and calling the mic.
Don't want to be no pilot. And you will lose that battle. Okay, folks. And just so you know, this phenomenon is not limited to airlines.
Coming up next, we have a Metaback pilot. Hi, my name's Nikki Roche. I'm a Metaback pilot for an anonymous company in Alaska. And recently we had an unmanned flight.
We flew into a rural, Alaska village. He said, a fellow man with an injured and a no-machine crash. But he was hurt pretty badly. And by the time we showed up, the medic on the ground had been pretty sedated.
He was in a very good mood. All three medics on the ground were females. I had a co-pilot with a female, had with my captain. The medic on board arc plane to the ambulance.
All seven of us and worrying of seven women. And he looked up and he smiled and he started giggling. And then one of the nurses said, what are you giggling about, sir? And he said, I've got my own little hair.
And that guy was laughing pretty hard. My club are not. And our next guy, witness to an unmanned flight, is another airline pilot. My name is Christina Hollis.
I'm 54 years old. I've been flying for over 30 years, 11 years with the Air Force and 24 years with Delta Airlines. I'm a captain on the 717. And recently I had the opportunity to fly a fort with a co-pilot named Laura.
And one of the legs, it was an all-female crew, three flight attendants, they were also female. I remember hearing the flight attendant making a PA, two capacitors that it was an unmanned flight. And there was a lot of laughter, there was a lot of clapping. And it was a really fun time.
And our next participant is a military debut. Okay, my name is Becky Chambers and I am each of one of the three currently named on reserve. I've been acting duty and in the National Guard in two different states and Washington, Tennessee. And I fly back.
Awesome. Okay, the first time that I ever flew was just a female pilot was one of my instructors in Comet Hill, from flying at least 58, out of Charlie. And that was in my school. And I didn't understand how, hopefully appreciate it, how uncommon that was until I got out in the radio army.
And there were so few of us at the time that the fly with just another female was very, very current. Even if they were just the two pilots, getting the two crew chief to also be women was a big, so impossible. So then I moved to Washington Guard and one of our instructors pilot there was the one. So that was my next experience.
And she, one of the main things, almost positive experiences, she's now the young man, she's one officer for the state of Washington, female ever. So just very incredibly. And the next time several years down the road was in the Tennessee Guard, and we actually had a female crew chief. So I thought I'd meet her and I would have been at the same time that we'd become the bait side of the black box.
And we actually ended up rounding up another female pilot and we had an all female crew. It was the very first time I've only done it one time and we had two female pilots and a female crew chief. So we had so much fun. So we were calling it the bait pod.
Okay, that's a fitting title. Thank you Becky. And next we have another eyewitness report from an airline operation. I'm Natalie and for eight half years I've been a officer of a client with Captain named Susan.
We were part of the gate and you're boarding and this middle-aged gentleman gets on the airplane and I was getting a doctor door. He sees me in the flight attendant and he says, oh, it's a small plane. We've got two ladies in the back. And my friend attendant says, oh, no, this is our pilot's our first officer.
And he kind of looks at me and he goes, oh, we got a wall. Yeah, yeah, I guess unfortunately. I don't know what you're reacting. He goes, I don't know how I feel about that.
And my flight attendant says, well, if you have a problem with it, don't stick your head up front because he looks up in the cockpit. He comes back and he goes, oh, I'm not okay with this. This isn't cool. And I started laughing because that's a joke because he kind of was not rounding but not smiling.
I'm very sarcastic to him as person. So I'm thinking he should be sarcastic. So I started laughing and he's like, no, I'm not kidding. He said, I'm not okay with this.
This is not okay. He goes, I'm okay with one one out there. But two, and he just kind of wait and stands and goes, I don't want to be up there. Wow.
And my flight attendant, before I could say she goes, are you being serious? And he said, yeah, I'm being serious. He goes, I don't want to be on the dirt. Being brand new today, I kind of didn't know what dumb about it.
So the captain came out and said, you know, I'd be more than happy to help you with your luggage. I'm going to make you do anything you don't want to do because she ended up hearing comments and she came out. She went and got us back and got the baby's in. She's like, thanks for flying Delta.
I mean, to this day, we've been friends for years and we actually about a week ago. I had lunch with her and we were laughing about it. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not the airplane.
And I was allowed to insecure passenger to exit prior to take off. Oh, that's amazing. That's quite a story. I'm so glad you shared it.
Well, you know, I just, on the flip side of that, I had one woman, this older woman, like she was, I'd say maybe 80s or 90s and she was waiting for her wheelchair and she was saying, first, I came back to use the bathroom. She was a female as well and we were both named Natalie. You know, your wheelchair is on the way to call them. But the other way after, you were pilot.
She was two pointing to me and this woman just went up and saying, oh, wow. She was like, oh, I'm not a realtor. She said, I can't wait to get home until my granddaughter. She goes, my granddaughter is never going to believe this.
This is just so loud. As a dress, please clear that to allow the delightful and delighted old lady wheelchair to blind commercially for 27 years, but then with the United Airlines from 18 years now. And in all of my years of blind, if you meet 20 years, to get off the no crew, I have the flesh, my feathers to rock on a four day trip. She was the first officer and off the no flight attendant.
They would find the pictures, mechanic pictures. They all thought it was really cool. A flight attendant, flight attendant, flight attendant, flight, pictures of all the no crew. And then when we were three or four different, first, turn up to us and we'd take pictures either of us or with us because it was chiefing pilot standing on the curb.
Oh, that's right. We were happy and we were smartly. I can also share one other thing which people might kind of find in my team versus that. I always brief my crew.
I applied to 757 here at United and I was applied to 10 in my previous life. And so I'd actually work every position on the 757 fleet on the half-gallon captain. Wow, that's awesome. Attention passengers.
The captain at the VICUS of 30 wins ahead. Be sure your seatbelts are securely fastened. Okay, Tammy, go ahead and share your unmanned flight experience with us. Okay, this is Tammy.
Wait a second. I am going to tell you one funny story and one not so great story regarding women's crews. The current job that I have that I have that you pilot and captain is a female. And obviously I am as well.
This is my 30 cold. And we fly five elite for a while. We had a lot of our local airport and which is the initials of the owner. And when we pulled into one of our small town airboards, when we got out, the ground crews are the two women that have the content they have to owe you out there for women.
I guess it was a big deal for them. That's a pretty funny one that we kind of tackle about every now and then. It's kind of our joke amongst us. Right.
And today that was going for Connor. I actually had a female check airman and she was ridiculously tough to deal with. And that was a quite huge story being part of an all-female crew. Okay, so that's the first one I've had where the negative that involves the other crew member as opposed to the comments that you sometimes get from passengers or ground crew or whatever.
And I'm sure that you encounter people like that in any gender. Absolutely. I mean, I've had a few, you know, male captains that I've flown with a grager. If our female crew is not that I could get this kind of girl.
Yeah, well, you did that well. Thank you so much for sharing. My name is Sondra Bockman and I work for French Airlines. And I've been very fortunate to be a part of a few unmanned flights.
But I think my favorite story is one of two little girls who came on board with their parents. And of course, the moms always look out, but they always just kind of look expecting to see men, I think. And they were very, very surprised to see two women. And we love kids.
You know, and especially women, we have that nurturing nature. So we invited them up onto the flight deck to check the pictures and everything and email the pictures to the parents and everybody was happy. After the flight, an older woman came up and she just said, thank you so much. And it's so wonderful to see this generational product from women not being able to drive, to drive in, to not being able to fly, to fly in, to now be incredibly, completely unmanned flight on French Airlines.
Okay, our next eyewitness to an unmanned flight is from the beautiful state of Hawaii. Go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us your story. Hi, Karen. Thank you for having me on your program today.
My name is Suzanne Peters. I'm a captain on the Airbus H3-3 for a major airline. My unmanned story has happened on the Northwest Airlines DC10 flight and it was April 21, 1997. It was the first all female international flight on DC10 for the Northwest Airlines.
It was in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Northwest Airlines flight to the Pacific. And the flight was from Honolulu International Airport in Honolulu, Hawaii to Osaka, Kansai Airport in Osaka, Japan. We had Captain Sharon Finch on board and second officer Eva Akata. And we flew a flight to pad a lot of media coverage from the Japan hand of the flight because this was the first time that there was a three female in the cockpit.
And the excitement was that there was a woman at, was a male. That was nice of you to have that token man on board. Dude of me. That's funny.
Oh, that's great. Oh, that's neat. That's really cool. And great.
Hopefully you're correct and the trend is going in the right direction. There are days when I wonder some of the interviews. Well, I think a few of that is just to encourage women and girls, but they can... Right, very well put.
A number of the ladies who have participated in this episode have tried to express what it has meant to them to be part of an all female flight crew. And many have done so quite nicely. But most have agreed when reading what the following lady wrote about it, that she has captured the experience in a unique and beautiful way that resonates with us all. Hi, my name is Summer Martell and I'm a Quilter pilot flying out of Going Field Seattle.
I'm a captain on the Falcon 2000 and a Gulfstream 100. And recently when I was flying on Alaska Airlines at the passenger down to Mexico to pick up one of our company airplanes. I was struck to see that our crew was all female and I was so inspired that I wrote this piece and posted it online. And this is why I wrote, the man sitting in the aisle seat of Alaska Air 137 next to me and CTAC exclaimed, We have a lady captain.
I trained a feet of cockpit and sure enough, I saw them in his shoulders under Eblet's four stripes and long, off her hair. What a thrill. A few minutes later, my lady copilot too. Wow.
After a quick assessment of the flight crew, he looked a little goggle-eyed. So I went ahead and told him that I was also a captain. He looked absolutely thrilled. I had never ridden behind an all-ady jet crew.
As a 737 taxi to Oso smoothly to runway 1-6 right, I woke up and peeped it in, very present, and I'm loud and finding the blue sky on top. So confidently operating this hurtling map system, that's where we brought it to my sister of the Scottish of Relevant numbers, and I couldn't have known only to aviators in which we tell the same story. The first time we knew that the sky was where we yearned to be, our first time flying all along with no one but ourselves to get flight exam and with head full of knowledge, handling hearts and dry mouths, home mounts and money, tedious studying, fly out the flight, then accruing hours that we diligently injured by the tents into our pilot logbook. We do not have to explain to one another the unerring trajectory we followed, that the sky which were our heart yearned to be, and that there was no arguing with the sky's mitten heart.
Regators, no matter their gender, race, air the bond, joys with a five-foot grant, why share the legacy of followed paths of women who go cultural to the side of bonds to be in the sky, and the queen cockman, the women of the Russian night witches, male and pilots and countless others. So when we fly, number less than step stir, we know one another beat. Summer, thank you so much. I've got goosebumps just listening to that.
It was just amazing. And as we spoke earlier, so many women on Facebook where you posted that have just the comments have been unbelievable, you just touched us all and managed to encapsulate our feelings in a way that many of us couldn't do for ourselves. So I thank you so much for sharing. This is your flight attendant, and thank you so much for flying with us today.
And thank you as well to Ms. Casey Grant, our acting flight attendant, who is the author of an amazing book called Stars in the Sky, A History of the First African-American Flight Attendants. You can find it at Amazon, Kindle and Barnes & Noble. Sound effects courtesy of Aclivity and Shady Day at freesound.org.