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Meryl
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.
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.
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.
TM
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