Would the story of one pilot make a difference in the way the world regards the flight deck? Over the decades, Captain Theresa Claiborne has been behind the scenes in molding the image of who is to be at the controls of the most complicated aircrafts in the world, whether they are military tankers or intercontinental airliners. She has more than forty years in business and only recently, with the help of a viral TikTok video has a new generation learned the breadth of her accomplishments.
Claiborne grew up in Sacramento in military family and her career to the cockpit started in 1981 when she was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S Air Force. The service at the time only took in ten women in a year into pilot training which was increased to thirty. She was the first Black woman pilot in the Air Force after she earned her wings on the Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker. “They were testing out women to see if we could handle it not that we hadn’t already done that in 1942 with the WASPs,” who had demonstrated their ability to do so in World War II. The KC-135 as she was to say was “a beautiful airplane one of the most gorgeous airplanes. A Boeing through and through.”
The first part of her childhood was characterized by the necessity to make it again and again. Prejudice was a running thread through it; at meetings of leaders I heard commanders speak to “gentlemen” even when I was the only woman present. Mention of the uncertainty about her height she was 5’2″ was answered by suppressed determination and ability. If you don’t give them a reason to think we can’t cut the mustard, then they’d have to look deep to find it, she said. The Tuskegee Airmen chapter of Sacramento took her in as theirs and provided her with support grounded in their own experience in shattering of barriers.
Seven years active and thirteen years in Air Force Reserves, Claiborne made the move to commercial aviation in 1990 to United Airlines, where he became a Boeing 727 flight engineer. She was among the few black women pilots at the company. She piloted almost all the major Boeing passenger planes in the 737, 747, 757, 767 and lastly the 787 Dreamliner with a total flight time of over 23,000 hours and carried millions of passengers on board the Asian airspace. Her favorite plane was always the Boeing 747: “I would fly with my fingers,” she said, of how fine it was to trim the huge plane.
Her career was being developed in a set-up of harsh industry demographics. Based on federal data, over 90 percent of all aircraft pilots are white men with less than 7 percent being women and an even smaller percentage of women of color. In a nonprofit that Claiborne founded herself, Sisters of the Skies, it is noted that less than 150 Black women in the U.S. are licensed to have an airline transport, commercial, military, or certified flight instructor license. The organization of which she is a co-founder (founded in 2017) provides mentorship, scholarships, and exposure to aviation careers among young women of color. Aspiring pilots are always reminded by her of the truth of the matter, which is: “If you can see it, you can be it,”
Such advocacy is necessitated by the fact that research indicates that there are entrenched biases. In a study conducted by Embry-Ridle, the participants chose white males in their pilot positions by a large majority of the respondents and the African descendancy group of people were mostly given lower paying service jobs. Its focus on the Expanding the talent pipeline remains key to meeting the demand for new aviation professionals, and Dr. Stephen Rice mentioned that Boeing estimated the necessity of 649,000 new pilots required worldwide throughout the next 20 years.
Large air companies are starting to react. In 2022, United opened its Aviate Academy, and aims to employ 5,000 new pilots by 2030 (at least half women or people of color). The program subsidizes the cost of the certification of the private pilots and collaborates with organizations such as the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals and the Latino Pilots Association to expand access. Alaska Airlines has joined forces with Sisters of the Skies to hire additional Black female pilots and Delta and American Airlines have established similar diversity-oriented programs.
In May 2024, a roundtrip flight with Newark and Lisbon was the last flight by Claiborne and it was a legacy flight. The cabin was filled with mentors, family and Sisters of the Skies. When the plane took off, a young junior ROTC student standing in the terminal jumped into attention and saluted her, she returned the salutation and was moved to tears by the scene. “You can be what you want to be,”, she said to herself. Her return to Newark was impeccable a perfect landing the perfect ending to a career that had been made of accuracy, endurance and silent, relentless breaking down of barriers within the system.
By her tale the frontiers of would-be fliers are extended. With the industry still struggling to find a way to represent, the path of Claiborne is an example that competency, hard work, and mentorship can land future pilots in the skies where race and gender are no longer barriers to success.
