Phoenix — An American Airways flight lately made historical past when, for the primary time within the service's 96-year existence, everybody concerned from the ramp to the gate to the cockpit and cabin had been all Black ladies.
The latest flight from Phoenix to Dallas celebrated the a hundredth anniversary of Bessie Coleman, the primary African American girl to earn a pilot's license.
Coleman needed to be taught to fly in France as a result of it wasn't an possibility within the U.S. She then grew to become a famend stunt pilot earlier than shedding her life in a aircraft crash in 1926.
Her nice niece, Gigi Coleman, was on the celebration flight.
"I feel she would've been actually amazed and in awe. I used to be in awe, and that is 2022," mentioned Gigi Coleman, who runs Bessie Coleman Aviation All-Stars, an after-school program aimed toward inspiring children, particularly younger individuals of colour, to take flight.
"My great-aunt obtained her license two years earlier than Amelia Earhart," she mentioned. "She wasn't within the historical past books. Nobody knew about her."
There are fewer than 150 Black ladies airline pilots within the U.S., based on Sisters of the Skies, a corporation of Black ladies airline pilots. American Airways 737 Captain Beth Powell is one among them.
"I've by no means had an all-Black feminine flight crew in my whole profession," Powell mentioned. "Illustration is so vital as we speak, as a result of if you see somebody in your self, it is attainable. 'I can do that, too.'"