AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2013 - 112

PILOTS

FEARLESS FEMALE

LOGBOOK
TOTAL TIME: “I always put 10,000

plus. I don’t know exactly, but I
have a lot.”
FAVORITE AIRCRAFT: “I love all

airplanes—if it flies, it’s fun.”
AIRCRAFT OWNED:

Scottish Aviation Bulldog

Angela Masson
First female pilot type-rated in 747, 757, and 767
BY PHIL SCOT T

112 | AOPA PILOT May 2013

RYAN KETTERMAN

SHE JUST DIDN’T GET IT. After snagging her certificate at age 17 and setting a crosscountry record flying in the Powder Puff Derby, Angela Masson’s first job was
instructor for the Claire Walters Flight Academy in Santa Monica, California,
which had a contract to give Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine student pilots
their first 40 hours. While her students would go on to fly military jets, Masson
was stuck training them as a civilian, logging more than 1,000 hours in singleengine piston airplanes. “Then here comes an ex-student with an A–7,” she says.
“These guys knew how to fly because of me, and I was really upset that they were
going on to fly with the airlines and the astronauts.” Women, on the other hand,
could fly as civilian instructors or charter pilots so long as the aircraft had a piston engine and civilian markings, or they could be stewardesses. The good jobs,
the military flying jobs, were closed. So was the airliner cockpit door.
That led her, at 24, to write her Ph.D. dissertation, “Elements of Organizational
Discrimination: The Air Force Response to Women as Military Pilots.” After she
defended it, the dissertation was presented before Congress during hearings
on opening the military academies to women. American Airlines chief Robert
Crandall read it, and then things began to happen—at least for Masson.
“I got offered test-pilot school,” she says, “but I had just gotten married and
I turned it down. A couple months after that I was hired by American Airlines,
then NASA called me and, being the little brat at the time, I said if I’m not going
to pilot the shuttle I’m going to wait. Maybe I should have done it—they took [mission specialist] Sally Ride.”

Masson spent more that 30 years with
American, seven as a flight engineer, four as
co-pilot, and more than 20 years in the captain’s seat. “I was the second woman pilot
hired by American Airlines, the second captain, and the first chief pilot,” she says. “I
looked at every day as challenge. Weather,
mechanical, passengers—if you’re going to
have a problem it’ll be one of those.”
At 58, Masson retired as the airline’s
most senior female pilot; then, with 20 other
women, formed the International Society
of Women Airline Pilots. Elected president, she stepped down last year. She lives
in St. Augustine, Florida, and bought an old
Baptist church, where she keeps an aviation
library, trophies, and her eight world speed
records. She paints (her first show was in
Italy, at age 18) and invents, and on weekends
you can likely find her at the local airport.
“I have 26 logbooks full of flying,”
Masson says. “It’s almost repetition when
I look at the flights, but none of them are
the same. It’s always a wondrous adventure
of the sky, of the sun, stars, and the planets.
I never got tired of it.”
AOPA

AOPA Pilot Magazine - May 2013

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