Alaska Airlines makes history with its first all-female, African-American flight crew

Alaska Airlines made history last week with its first all-female, African-American flight crew.
Captain Tara Wright and First Officer Mallory Cave were at the helm of Alaskan Flight #361 last Sunday heading from San Francisco to Portland, Oregon.

'Today is a fun day. We have Mother's Day, and I'm sure there are plenty of mothers on board this morning,' Wright began in her address to the cabin.
She also mentioned that it was her father's 80th birthday which he was spending by 'roaming the countryside in Spain this morning'.

Finally, Wright launches into the main reason why that Sunday is such a special day.
'And finally...you're sharing a pretty interesting piece of Alaska Airlines history this morning,' she said. 'You'll be piloted by two African-American female pilots, for the first time in Alaska Airlines history.'
The passengers burst into applause as Wright joked: 'You're making [history] this morning, whether you're awake or not.'

One of the passengers then asks the women to pose for a photo before they return to the cockpit.

The video was first uploaded to Wright's Facebook page before Alaska Airlines shared it on its social media page.

'History in the flying,' the airline captioned the post, also referencing Bessie Coleman, the first black woman to earn a pilot's license and fly a public flight.

'What Bessie Coleman started in 1921, we continue here,' the airline wrote.
So far, the video has been viewed more than 1.2 million times with more than 23,000 reactions and more than 20,000 shares.

This is not the first time a US commercial flight had been commanded by an African-American female crew.

In February 2009, an Atlantic Southeast Airlines (now ExpressJet) flight from Nashville to Atlanta became the first to be manned by an all-female, all-African-American crew with Captain Rachelle Jones Kerr, First Officer Stephanie Grant, and flight attendants Diana Galloway and Robin Rogers.

According to the Institute for Women of Aviation Worldwide, 4.36 percent of airline pilots in the US are women.

And Sisters of the Skies, a nonprofit organization that helps promote women in the airline industry, claims that there are less than 150 black female pilots in the US who hold airline transport pilot, commercial, military, and/or certified flight instructor licenses.