Interviewed on January 12 and 13, 2021
The interview describes the life and career of Captain Prudence Hostetter, a flight instructor at Somerset Air Services in the early 1980s who was hired by American Airlines in 1985, where she worked as a flight engineer, copilot, and captain until her retirement in 2007; early life in New Jersey, family life, and early interest in mechanical work and aviation; previous work in banking; her aviation education, earning her ratings and licenses, concurrent work with Somerset Air Services in New Jersey; phases of the hiring process at American, physical tests, written examinations, and simulator flights; experiences as the only woman in that group, incident of sexism she experienced during the hiring process; describes in detail experiences during the training process at Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), pressure she felt to succeed, and relationships with her classmates, including the other woman in the group; advancement to flight engineer on the Boeing 727 based in New York City; help and training she received from the older pilots at the New York base during her probationary year; international routes from LaGuardia to the Caribbean, Bermuda, and Canada as well as the domestic flights; advancing to copilot’s seat on a 727 with detailed description of her check flight in Texas; reasons for and impact of cockpit resource management (CRM) with examples of the benefits of that system; reflections on the female pilots before her at American, her place in that company; pay scales at American; expansion and contraction of the airline during the late 1980s and 1990s; advancement to copilot on McDonnell-Douglas DC-10 and captain on Douglas DC-9 and Boeing 757/767; anecdotes about individual flights, including opening a runway at DFW, waterspout over Bermuda, flying into Haiti after the departure of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, and ferrying a damaged airplane to one of the maintenance bases; her reaction to the events of September 11, 2001, changes to the aviation industry that followed; her family life, her marriage to another captain, and the benefits of that relationship; her role in a public service announcement promoting diversity in the workplace; efforts to encourage more girls and young women to pursue STEM careers; lack of sexism she experienced at American; role of seniority in her career, the bidding process for flights, the pay scale, the impact of American’s acquisitions of other airlines; thoughts about the Allied Pilots Association; cultural differences between personnel from the different airlines; impact of flight on her health and the precautions she took including sleep management; meeting two members of the WASPS (Women Air Service Pilots), encounter in Moscow with female Soviet aviators from World War II; reasons for retirement.
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