The Sky Is The Limit
From country airstrips to international runways
When Flori Meyer first took the controls of an airplane on a solo flight, she called it a "stunt" her three older brothers pulled. Armed with pillows and a box, they propped her up and set her on a course to solo her first plane - a Piper Super Cub.
She'd been in the cockpit plenty of times, but this was the first time that she took off and made a successful landing all on her own. She left the airplane remembering one thing. She laughs and says, "I remember wanting to fly again," she says with a laugh. "At the time, they thought it was a world record."
It was a record, many thought, because at the time, Flori was just nine years old.
"I don't tell a lot of people that. People seriously think you are lying. I was just a stupid little kid - a country bumpkin," she says.
If you know the Blain name, Flori's maiden name, you know that it is synonymous with flying in the Billings area. Her father, Gerhart, taught dozens of "kids" to fly, and many went on to become successful pilots. "It's kind of our family legacy," Flori says.
Today, you'll find this 40-something mother of four in the cockpit of a Boeing 777, copiloting trips to exotic places for Continental Airlines. While she routinely makes the trek to Mumbai, India, cities like Narita, Japan, Tel Aviv, Dehli or Hong Kong are often on her travel radar.
While she's been flying commercially for 22 years, it hasn't been until recently that she's started to see more women in the cockpit. When she started her career, she remembers reading a statistic that 1% of all pilots were women. Today, that number has grown to roughly 6% in the United States. She nods and says, "I'm one of the few." When asked if she ever shares the cockpit with another woman, she says, "It's rare, but I do."
Right now, there are only 22 "triple sevens" on Continental's fleet. That means, Flori is part of an elite group piloting one of the largest planes in the skies today. At the controls, it's her job to fly close to 300 people overseas to different destinations.
While she has the training to serve as Captain, she admits, "I choose to stay a copilot because I am more senior as a copilot and I can get these choice trips. Because of my kids and my lifestyle, I need that." She adds, "I can leave Billings on Friday morning, get to New York that afternoon, and fly out to Mumbai that night."
After flying across the ocean and the picturesque Himalayas, she's back in Billings on Monday around noon with 31 hours of flight time under her belt. She only needs two of these trips each month to fly a so-called full schedule.
Married to an American Airlines pilot, Flori and her husband, Dan, often juggle flight schedules to take care of their family. Dan flies both 757 and 767s, but Flori laughs when she says, "Oh, let's say he flies 767s. For pilots, the bigger the airplane, the better!"
Even though women are a rare breed in aviation, Flori is quick to point out she's never experienced any kind of discrimination. Sure, she says, there have been times she's been mistaken for a flight attendant, "But I feel like it's less and less as the years go on," she says. She then shares a story about one of her flights when she had to land a jet in a gusty crosswind. "I made a really beautiful crosswind landing, and I had one guy jokingly pat me on the shoulder and say, 'Not bad for a girl!'"
Cruising high in the sky several times a month, Flori often thinks back to the days when she was a kid flying airplanes in a field. "I remember when I was in 8th grade, I wrote down on a piece of paper that I wanted to fly for Northwest. But I don't think you realize as a kid what that entails," she says.
After earning her "wings," Flori admits she really doesn't know when she'll hand them up for good.
The past five years flying the triple seven have been the best five years of my career," she says. "I love it."
