As a youngster, Donovan Boone eagerly anticipated visits to his grandmother’s apartment building in Brooklyn. From her balcony in the structure that towered more than 15 stories, Boone had the perfect vantage point to watch aircraft arrive and depart John F. Kennedy Airport just one borough over in Queens. “I lived in Brownsville, Brooklyn, but I had a grandmother who…
Sheraaz Rasool is a London-based First Officer on the Boeing 787. As a long-haul pilot, he spends his days and nights crisscrossing continents, moving passengers from cities around the world to and from London Heathrow. He’s the son of a working-class Asian Muslim family from Birmingham. Like many pilots, Rasool was captivated by flight from…
Freddie Green is an Air Traffic Manager in Miami, Florida. As an Air Traffic Manager, he leads a team that serves many Air Traffic Control (ATC) operations in and out of Miami, including Center, Approach/Departure TRACON, and Tower. He’s also the National President of the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees (NBCFAE), where he…
Patty Wagstaff is a competition aerobatic pilot, U.S. National Aerobatic Champion, and 6-time consecutive “First Lady of Aerobatics”. Today, she owns and operates an aerobatic and upset recovery training (UPRT) flight school in St. Augustine, Florida. Wagstaff grew up in Japan, the daughter of a Japan Air Lines pilot, and didn’t consider a flying career…
As a child of immigrants, Claudia Zapata-Cardone’s journey to becoming an Airbus 319/320 Captain is a remarkable story of grit, passion, and her parents’ steadfast belief in the American Dream. She is living proof that becoming a commercial pilot can be achieved, regardless of one’s socio-economic background, race, and gender. Captain Zapata-Cardone credits her father,…
While it took Georgia Louise Henderson a while to land on aviation, she always knew that she wanted to work with her hands. As a young girl, the Aircraft Maintenance Engineer (AME) apprentice and private pilot student from Scone, a town in the Upper Hunter Shire in the Hunter region of New South Wales (NSW),…
Leslie Irby always had big dreams for herself. From a young age she believed she would compete at the Olympic level in swimming, fencing or judo, always planning to make a wave in the sports world – until she fell in love with aviation. At 16, Irby’s parents, who had always set an example for…
Bessie Coleman (January 26, 1892 – April 30, 1926) was an early American civil aviator. She was the first African-American woman and first Native-American to hold a pilot license. She earned her pilot license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale on June 15, 1921, and was the first black person to earn an international pilot’s license….
At the Café Copoule in Paris in the spring of 1916, three American soldiers of the French Foreign Legion were commiserating with a fourth who was convalescing from a shrapnel wound. Jeff Dickson, a white Mississippian, asked Eugene Bullard, his injured black comrade in arms from Georgia, “Gene, suppose they find you’re too lame for…
South African businesswoman Siza Mzimela made history this past September after the launch of her domestic airline, Fly Blue Crane. She is the first Black woman to own and operate her own airline. Sizakele Petunia Mzimela is an airline industry veteran and no stranger to the executive level. She was the CEO for South African Express Airways…