When Emily Hanrahan bought her first ticket to fly on an airplane—a Douglas DC-3 flown by Frontier Airlines from Denver to Gunnison, Colorado—she thought she might be interested in becoming a stewardess. It was 1959, after all. After a second trip aloft, her flight back to Denver—invited up to the cockpit by the pilots on that empty flight—she knew she wanted to fly up front. “I went forward into the cockpit, and I was just floored at what I saw,” she said in a 2009 interview. “It just grabbed me; we were just coming over the mountains.” When she asked if a “girl” could take lessons, the affirmative answer took her to Clinton Aviation, at Stapleton Airport, where she would eventually become a flight instructor, and a pilot examiner.
Emily Warner Marked Many Airline Pilot Firsts
Key Takeaways:
- Emily Hanrahan Howell Warner, inspired to fly in 1959, accumulated over 7,000 flight hours and became a flight instructor and examiner before her airline career.
- In 1973, she made history by becoming the first woman to fly jets permanently for a U.S. airline (Frontier Airlines) and the first American woman to achieve the rank of captain for a scheduled U.S. airline.
- Warner also became the first woman invited to join the Air Line Pilots Association, recognizing her role in validating the efforts of previous female aviation pioneers.
- Her trailblazing career is celebrated with her uniform displayed in the National Air & Space Museum and inductions into multiple prestigious Halls of Fame.
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