Airline Pilot and Author
Hello and Welcome Aboard!
My name is Meryl Getline. I’m 52 years old and live near Denver, Colorado,
with my Significant Other who's a retired Boeing 747 captain, a parrot
named Houdini and two ferrets named Petey and Charlie Chopper.
I started my pilot lessons in San Diego in a Cessna 172. Today I captain a
Boeing 777 for a major airline. I fly some trips within the United States, but
mostly I fly to Hawaii, Europe and Asia. During my career I’ve flown many
types of civilian and military aircraft (including helicopters). I’m type-rated
in the Cessna Citation, B-727, B-737, Airbus 319/320, DC-10 and B-777.
For years young women with mile-high dreams and eyes turned skyward
have flown planes in a professional capacity: as stewardesses. But I wasn’t
content to merely ride the plane; I wanted to fly it, too! When I decided, at
the age of twenty, that I was going to be an airline pilot, I didn’t know
there was no such thing as women airline pilots. In fact, I overcame
airsickness to go on to become the first female to ever get a DC-10 Type
(Captain) Rating before being hired as a pilot for a major airline in 1985.
So how did I get to be a captain for a major airline? Not easily! But difficult
challenges always makes for the best reading, and that’s why I wrote a
book called, The World At My Feet: The True (and Sometimes Hilarious)
Adventures of a Lady Airline Captain. In it I share the unlikely account of
my adventures from the time I was eleven years old and just had to fly,
through my travels to Austria, Israel, France, Russia, Iran, Mexico and
Alaska. What did I do when I discovered the Russian Red Army train I was
on was terminating in East Berlin at three in the morning, with no
transportation available over the border to West Berlin?
Read how the US Army had no idea what it was in for when I enlisted, how
a careless camel caused raised eyebrows at an important military
inspection, and why I was wearing green tennis shoes when everyone
around me was clad in spit-shined combat boots.
With The World At My Feet, readers will thrill to learn how I improvised
when I was stranded in Dallas, Texas, with four lady army buddies, and had
to get all of them, including myself, back for morning formation on base in
Alabama. Read how I once wound up outside the airplane I was flying solo,
hanging onto a wing 10,000 above the white-capped, freezing waters of
the Gulf of Alaska! You can listen to a radio interview I did after the guys
on the Goodyear Blimp played a most embarrassing joke on me!
I am still an active captain for a major airline today. I love being a pilot
because I am passionate about flying and can’t even imagine having a desk
job. Flying is fun, exciting, broadening because you get to see so much of
the world, and I like the feeling of being responsible for the safety and well
being of my passengers.
Often as I walk through airports in my uniform I am approached with
questions about myself, about airplanes, airlines, weather and all sorts of
subjects.USA Today features some of these questions and my answers
every Tuesday in a column called “Ask The Captain”. Go to USATODAY.com
and click on "Columnists" if you don’t see current “Ask The Captain”
column. And I have my own website: www.fromthecockpit.com!
If you'd like to see more pictures of me and my travels, please go to my
website to see my photo album.
Hello and Welcome Aboard!
My name is Meryl Getline. I’m 52 years old and live near Denver, Colorado,
with my Significant Other who's a retired Boeing 747 captain, a parrot
named Houdini and two ferrets named Petey and Charlie Chopper.
I started my pilot lessons in San Diego in a Cessna 172. Today I captain a
Boeing 777 for a major airline. I fly some trips within the United States, but
mostly I fly to Hawaii, Europe and Asia. During my career I’ve flown many
types of civilian and military aircraft (including helicopters). I’m type-rated
in the Cessna Citation, B-727, B-737, Airbus 319/320, DC-10 and B-777.
For years young women with mile-high dreams and eyes turned skyward
have flown planes in a professional capacity: as stewardesses. But I wasn’t
content to merely ride the plane; I wanted to fly it, too! When I decided, at
the age of twenty, that I was going to be an airline pilot, I didn’t know
there was no such thing as women airline pilots. In fact, I overcame
airsickness to go on to become the first female to ever get a DC-10 Type
(Captain) Rating before being hired as a pilot for a major airline in 1985.
So how did I get to be a captain for a major airline? Not easily! But difficult
challenges always makes for the best reading, and that’s why I wrote a
book called, The World At My Feet: The True (and Sometimes Hilarious)
Adventures of a Lady Airline Captain. In it I share the unlikely account of
my adventures from the time I was eleven years old and just had to fly,
through my travels to Austria, Israel, France, Russia, Iran, Mexico and
Alaska. What did I do when I discovered the Russian Red Army train I was
on was terminating in East Berlin at three in the morning, with no
transportation available over the border to West Berlin?
Read how the US Army had no idea what it was in for when I enlisted, how
a careless camel caused raised eyebrows at an important military
inspection, and why I was wearing green tennis shoes when everyone
around me was clad in spit-shined combat boots.
With The World At My Feet, readers will thrill to learn how I improvised
when I was stranded in Dallas, Texas, with four lady army buddies, and had
to get all of them, including myself, back for morning formation on base in
Alabama. Read how I once wound up outside the airplane I was flying solo,
hanging onto a wing 10,000 above the white-capped, freezing waters of
the Gulf of Alaska! You can listen to a radio interview I did after the guys
on the Goodyear Blimp played a most embarrassing joke on me!
I am still an active captain for a major airline today. I love being a pilot
because I am passionate about flying and can’t even imagine having a desk
job. Flying is fun, exciting, broadening because you get to see so much of
the world, and I like the feeling of being responsible for the safety and well
being of my passengers.
Often as I walk through airports in my uniform I am approached with
questions about myself, about airplanes, airlines, weather and all sorts of
subjects.USA Today features some of these questions and my answers
every Tuesday in a column called “Ask The Captain”. Go to USATODAY.com
and click on "Columnists" if you don’t see current “Ask The Captain”
column. And I have my own website: www.fromthecockpit.com!
If you'd like to see more pictures of me and my travels, please go to my
website to see my photo album.
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| Using aviation to entertain and educate girls about their limitless opportunities... |
| Using aviation to entertain and educate girls about their limitless opportunities... |
| Using aviation to entertain and educate girls about their limitless opportunities... |
TM
| Using aviation to entertain and educate girls about their limitless opportunities... |
| Using aviation to entertain and educate girls about their limitless opportunities... |
| Using aviation to entertain and educate girls about their limitless opportunities... |
TM
