Emily Howell Warner, the first U.S. female airline captain, now has a Colorado airport named after her. The Grand County Board of Commissioners this month approved the name change of Granby-Grand County Airport (KNGB) to Granby-Grand County Emily Warner Field, the Sky-Hi News in Granby reported. A native of Denver, Warner, 75, kept a home in Grand County for more than 25 years and kept a Cessna 182 at the Granby airport, the Sky-Hi News said.”I’m just so honored and so excited about it because Granby has always been like home to me,” Warner told the newspaper. “I did a lot of flying up there, and I did a lot of instructing up there.”
Warner, who was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in October, was a flight instructor, commercial pilot, and FAA pilot examiner before she was hired as the first female pilot hired by a major U.S. airline in 1973. Warner had applied for airline jobs for several years before one hired her as a co-pilot. That was Frontier Airlines, which promoted her to captain in 1976. Warner also flew for Continental Airlines and UPS before becoming an FAA inspector in 1990. In 2002, she retired from the FAA as its Air Crew Program Manager for the United Airlines 737 fleet, according to the NAHF.
