Share Your Sling Story
11 Feb 2026
“When Linda Sollars, WAI 372, was in high school in the 1980s, she told the career counselor that she wanted to be a professional pilot. “The high school counselor told me I couldn’t do that because I was a girl,” Linda remembers, who today is an Airbus A320 captain for a major airline.
The information wasn’t correct, Linda says, because in 1973 Bonnie Tiburzi, WAI 18, became the first woman to fly for a U.S. airline and that same year, the United States Navy allowed women to train as pilots.
Instead of a career in flying, Linda went to college for a career in finance. It was practical, she notes, and when you have a practical career, there are jobs that pay you well enough to survive and do what you want to do on the side. Then one day, fate intervened.”
-Meg Godlewski (Aviation For Women)
