Delta pilots First Officer Dawn Cook and Capt. Stephanie Johnson ended Black History Month and brought in Women’s History Month on the right foot—or should we say the right flight—when they made history for Delta. The women became the first African-American women to make up the cockpit crew on one of Delta’s “mainline” flights.
According to Delta, the women were at the helm of an Airbus A320 flying from Detroit to Las Vegas on Feb. 26. Cook commemorated the flight by posting a photo on Facebook. And this wasn’t Johnson’s first time making history. She’s also Delta’s first African-American female captain.
Johnson said that with the encouragement of a physics teacher in high school, she followed her dreams of flying.
“There were no pilots in my life growing up, and I think I’m the first person in my family to graduate from college,” Johnson said on Delta’s website in February. “But for as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated with airplanes and would think, ‘What a great thing it would be to know how to fly.’”
Cook and Johnson give new meaning to the words “fly girls.”