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Beverley Bass was the first female captain hired by American Airlines and is perhaps best known for her quick decision making on September 11th, 2001, when she quickly responded and diverted her flight after receiving word of the attacks on the World Trade Center.
Bass grew up riding horses in Fort Myers, Florida. When she was 9 or 10, she saw a handwritten sign offering plane rides for a penny a pound. She began collecting the three quarters it would take to get on a flight. However, her Aunt Ginger, who was watching her at the time had no intention of sending a young child up on such a cheap flight. Within a few years though, Bass had told her passion to her Aunt Ginger, who would take her to watch planes take off from the airport.
Source: Mark Graham
“The pilots seemed like gods to me,” Bass said in an interview with Texas Christian University. “But for years my father said no to flying lessons because he thought I’d lose interest in the quarter horses we raised, and he was convinced the horses were what would keep me away from boys and drugs.”
When she went off to college, she set out with one goal – to get a degree. She knew she’d need one to be hired by an airline, she took Spanish and interior design. But all the while, flying remained her obsession.
Her parents finally gave in and arranged lessons with the man who had offered those plane rides for a penny a pound.
“I came home after my first flying lesson and told my parents that this was what I was going to do for the rest of my life,” Bass said in an interview with her alma mater.
She arranged her class schedule so she could spend evenings at her flying lessons. After graduation, she spent her days racking up flight hours doing various odd assignments. Until she got the call from American Airlines. At just 24, she was hired as the company’s third female pilot and became the first to make captain.
On Sept. 11, 2001, Bass was flying from Paris to Dallas when she learned that terrorists had attacked the World Trade Center in New York City. The federal government closed U.S. airspace.
As she cruised along at 39,000 feet with a first-time co-pilot, Bass was told little else beyond where she needed to land.
“It was the hardest PA I ever had to make,” she said of addressing the passengers over the loudspeaker that fateful Tuesday morning. “I didn’t want to lie, but I had to protect the flight attendants because I didn’t want to cause havoc for them.”
Bass told passengers that “there was a crisis in the U.S. and that we would be landing in Gander, Newfoundland, Canada, and that I would get back to them with more once we were on the ground.”
Her passengers and crew were stuck in Canada for some time, they had to find local stores and pharmacies to meet their needs because they could not access luggage.
She refused to let the terrorist attack muster up enough fear to stop her from living her dream. She said at the time that she’d always love to fly, despite the changing atmosphere following the attacks.
More recently, Bass has been in the news for being the inspiration for “Come From Away” on Broadway.
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Re: Woman of the Week – Beverley Bass
