department, a pilot for two corporations and night flights for Rockwell, before she built up enough flight
hours to get her interview for American Airlines.
Bass (front left) and her crew on the morning of
12 September 2001 after they had spent 28
hours on the plane (Beverley Bass/American
Airlines)In October 1976, 24-year-old Bass became the airline’s third female pilot, three years after Bonnie Tiburzi,
the first, and so soon after the second that they trained together. Three girls, among 4,000 pilots on
American’s seniority list. Unsurprisingly, they bonded quickly.
“We were interlopers. Whenever we were in terminals around the US, people would whisper about us, they
would stare us, smile at us, come up and talk to us. We were oddities, because most of the population back
then were very unaware that there was even such a thing as a female airline pilot. In their minds, airline
pilots were handsome tall men with great hair.”
But to her teachers, and the seven men in her training class with her, she was a treat. “They were so good to
me; I was the baby of the class because of my age – they were all 28, 29 – I was like their little sister. And
the instructors loved knowing that they had one of the new female pilots.”
We were oddities, because most of the population back then were very unaware that there was even such a
thing as a female airline pilot. In their minds, airline pilots were handsome tall men with great hair
Once she graduated and became first a flight engineer, then a co-pilot, it was a different story. “You have to
realise that in every cockpit we walked into, the men had never flown with a female aviator. Once, I walked
over to introduce myself to a captain, and he walked away from me. I was a brand new co-pilot – the only
female co-pilot at American Airlines – and the captain literally did not speak to me, did not even look at
me. The whole flight he looked out his left window.
The captain flew the first leg of the flight, and Bass as co-pilot should have flown the second. “I assumed he
wasn’t going to let me fly. I mean, he hasn’t spoken to me. But we landed on the runway and he opens up
his hands by the throttle – in other words, it’s your airplane. So I flew the next leg, and then he started
talking to me.
“I think he was just stunned to be in the cockpit with a female aviator. And once I flew, and he realised, oh
my gosh, she flies just like one of the guys, then I was OK; I was accepted into his world.”
Which is, in fact, exactly what she now advises young girls not to do: to try and “be one of the guys”. “I