ATLANTA, Ga. (CBS46)- On February 12, 2009, First Officer Stephanie Grant had not been scheduled to fly the Delta Connection flight from Atlanta to Nashville. She was on call that day when she learned the original first officer for the flight became sick.
“Our
scheduling department gave me a call and told me what gate to show up
at, and that all the passengers were already boarded and the other
flight members were already there,” Grant said.
When Grant stepped in the cockpit alongside pilot
Rochelle Jones, she and flight attendants Diana Galloway and Robin
Rogers quickly realized something was unique.
“It was not until we
actually closed up the doors and Robin and I looked at each other like,
it’s all female,” said retired flight attendant Diana Galloway. “We are
used to flying with all women, but when we saw that we were ‘sistas’
you know. We were joking like this is the sister, the soul sister
flight,” Galloway added.
Galloway says it wasn’t until they landed in Nashville that it began to set in how special the trip was.
“We realized wow, this is was amazing. This was something special,” Galloway told CBS46 reporter Hayley Mason.
The
women cleared the plane and took pictures together. That day, the four
women became the first all-African-American female flight crew to fly a
commercial plane in the United States. It’s a flight that would not have
happened if not for a sick call.
“I believe that it was just
God’s divine intervention at that time to place us together on that
particular day in the month of February,” Galloway said.
Monday
afternoon, the women received proclamations from the City of Atlanta
commemorating ten years since that history-making flight. The women say
neither of them have flown with an all-Black, all-female flight crew
since that day.
She believes their flight has helped inspire other crews to create those firsts for their respective airlines.
“We’ve
created some awareness because there’s less than 150 women that fly
commercially and in the military in this country,” Grant told CBS46.
Grant
who graduated Hampton University with a degree in psychology, grew up
around an air field. “The bug hit me as a child, I just didn’t know how
to navigate from point a to point b,” she said.
At a family
reunion, she met an older cousin, Herman Samuels, who inspired her to
pursue flight school. Grant says Samuels was a member of the first
all-black male flight crew.
“He took out the time to say ‘hey, it doesn’t matter what
you’ve been doing or how old you are, if this is a dream of yours, you
can obtain it.’” Grant said.
She says she served in the military and subsequently used the GI Bill to help pay for flight school.
The woman who met as a fluke are now close friends who talk often and meet up for lunch each year.
“I’ve
fallen in love with each one of these women, each one of their
personalities individually,” said flight attendant Robin Rogers. “I love
them like my sisters,” she added.
The women also work to inspire other young women toward careers in aviation.
“There
are some glass ceilings that are still needing to be broken,” Grant
said. “We are excited about the work that we are doing. We are out and
we are encouraging and mentoring other young girls of color that they
too can become a pilot because we need more.”
The crew is hosting a 10th anniversary scholarship gala on February 16th at The Gathering Spot to benefit women of color who are in flight school.
For more information, visit: https://www.sistersoftheskies.org/event
