By Jannette J. Witmyer
Special to The AFRO
Ret. Lt. Cmdr. Brenda E. Robinson, the U.S. Navy’s first African-American female pilot, has always had a fascination with airplanes. She can still remember her excitement as a child, watching as planes landed and passengers disembarked, during trips to Philadelphia International Airport with her parents. The experience was much different then.
“There was no TSA. You’d go into the gate, and sit there at the gate, and wait for the airplane to pull up, and they pull the stairs up to the airplane. And you know, these fabulous people walked down the stairs off the airplane, having come in from somewhere. And that was just amazing,” she recalls. “I didn’t care how I was going to do it. I wanted to get up in that airplane.”
Her interest never waned, and in high school, she was accepted into an aviation career study program, which introduced her to jobs that she had no idea existed. When she discovered air traffic controllers during an airport field trip, she decided that was the career she wanted and chose Dowling College to pursue her degree. She became the first Black woman to graduate from the college with a degree in aeronautics.
While in college, the aviation enthusiast also started flying and earned her private pilot’s license. When the military visited Dowling’s campus to brief aviation students about considering a military career, Robinson had no interest in the event and no intention to attend. But the Dean sent one of her fellow students to get her, and the rest is history.
While the other branches of the military didn’t seem ready for women pilots within their ranks, the Navy had a plan.
“I chose the Navy because they had the most compelling option,” Robinson told the AFRO. “They said, ‘If you can get through basic training you are pipelined straight into the flight program.’”
To qualify for one of the 10 slots open to women each year, she needed a four-year-college science degree and some flight background. With a B.S. degree in aeronautics and a full-fledged pilot’s license, she was over-qualified. She was offered a slot.
Robinson describes basic training as “brutal,” but she got through it, along with two other women in her group. In the end, her class of 32 students was whittled down to 17 who successfully completed the training and were commissioned as officers and sent to flight school.
She became the first African-American woman to graduate from the United States Navy Aviation Officers Candidate School and earned her wings of gold in June of 1980 at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, Texas.
In January 1981 she became the first African-American female certified for C-1A aircraft carrier landings on the USS America. Her call sign was “Raven.” While she was the first African-American woman to land on an aircraft carrier, she was only the second woman in history to do so. The first woman was a member of her squadron. A few of her other firsts, of which there are many, include being the first African-American female VIP transport pilot, flight instructor and evaluator.
After 13 years of full-time active duty and seven years in the Naval Reserves, Robinson retired from the Navy– but not from flying. She joined American Airlines as a pilot, and flew for the airline for 17 years. Still, her career didn’t end there. If anything, she has expanded it.
First, she began working, part-time, for Flyright, a company that provides recurrent training to professional pilots from all over the world on FAA approved full motion simulators. Then, in 2014 she established Aviation Camps of the Carolinas (AviationCamps.org), and began taking kids to airports in hopes of introducing them to careers in aviation.
“Like I said, when I saw the air traffic control tower, I didn’t even know that that was a thing. And then when I saw it, it took me five minutes to realize that’s what I was going to do for the rest of my life,” she says. “Teenagers don’t need a bunch of time. They don’t need to be lectured. What they need to do is see stuff.”
Held four times a year, the camp is not just for kids interested in aviation. It covers confidence building, education, and exploring options and opportunities, which provides the direction needed to pursue any career. Robinson also gives each participant a copy of her book, Success Is An Attitude, Goal Achievement For A Lifetime, which she wrote specifically for teenagers to help them understand themselves and how to work with others.
In 2016, Lt. Cmdr. Brenda E. Robinson was inducted into the Women in Aviation International Pioneer Hall of Fame.
