Carole Hopson: The Inspiring Journey of a Late-Blooming Pilot
Flying under the radar isn’t an option for Carole Hopson. As a Boeing 737 Captain for United Airlines, based mere minutes outside of New York City, the 62-year-old African American pilot — one of the eldest black female aviators in the tristate — is as striking as the roughly 100,000-pound plane she reins.And in the age of anti-aging, a time fraught with Botox-obsessed teenagers avoiding wrinkles, and billionaire biohackers syphoning Gen Z blood for fear of getting older, Hopson’s gone full-throttle in pursuit of her sky-high dreams despite the year on her birth certificate, landing the gig with United on November 6, 2018, at age 58. Ahead of her sixth anniversary at the helm on Friday, Hopson told The Post she’s honored to be among the rising 40% of folks over 50 making bold career moves in her second act. “I always wonder if the 25-year-old me would be proud of the woman I am today. And the answer is yes,” said a smiling Hopson from the cockpit of her aircraft, parked at its home in Newark Liberty International Airport. She dazzled in her midnight blue uniform, embellished by four gold stripes on each sleeve signifying her senior rank, along with a traditional peaked pilot’s cap adorned with gold oak-leaf braids.Carole Hopson has made history as one of the oldest black female commercial pilots as a Boeing 737 Captain with United Airlines. Tamara Beckwith/NY Post“I even remember myself as a four-year-old, lying in the grass with my grandmother, looking up at the planes flying in the sky,” the native Philadelphian, now living in northern New Jersey, continued. “I’d think to myself, ‘Oh my goodness, that’s just something I have to do.’”“And now, I get to live that dream every day.”But staking her claim on the friendly skies was certainly no breeze. Money, marriage and motherhood all took priority over Hopson’s aviation aspirations, making them virtually unattainable for years. But now, the aircraft commander is on cloud nine.Operating a Boeing 737, revered as a top-of-the-line commercial jetliner, takes specialized training, said Hopson, who was forced to become proficient in Mach numbers, high-altitude aerodynamics and the plane’s many intricate systems for the job. Then, of course, there’s handling the thrust, managing the yoke and monitoring the dashboard of screens, lights, dials and gauges while transporting hundreds of passengers around the globe. But to the married mom of two sons, ages 23 and 21, it all seems to come as second nature. The New Jersey transplant kept her dreams of becoming a pilot under wraps for over 30 years, thinking they’d never come true for a young girl from Philadelphia. Tamara Beckwith/NY PostThe little daydreamer-turned-dynamo is in the roughly 5.7% of female pilots who hold Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) certificates, the highest level of pilot certification, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). She’s an anomaly in the male-dominated field. It’s an esteemed industry comprised of approximately 93% men and 7% women, with gents earning a reported 26.6% more than gals. Moreover, Hopson is in the 1.6% of female aircraft pilots and flight engineers who identify as black, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Luckily, numbers — be it her age, including FAA regulations requiring her to retire in three years at age 65, or scant gender and race statistics — never clipped Hopson’s wings. Not even the six-figure salaries she abandoned as an executive at the NFL, Foot Locker and L’Oréal could deter the go-getter on her decades-long, turbulent journey to the flight deck. “My first time flying was orgasmic,” Hopson recalled of her initial takeoff in 1992 at age 28. She cruised the clouds in a Piper Archer (PA) aircraft — a low-wing plane weighing less than an SUV. The euphoric ride came courtesy of then-boyfriend, now-husband Michael. He surprised her with gift certificates to a flight school at Teterboro Airport during their second date at his Manhattan apartment. “I was ready to quit my job and become a pilot on the spot,” laughed Hopson, then a crime reporter at The Bergen Record. “But Michael advised me to create an exit strategy. We figured flight training would cost around $150,000. So I started saving.”Hopson spent years traversing the choppy winds of prejudice due to her age, gender and race. Tamara Beckwith/NY PostBut after marrying Michael in ‘96, ditching their NYC rent for a mortgage in the suburbs, and welcoming their brood, the visionary’s sights on sailing the skies remained far off in the distance. Hopson, a Columbia University grad, ultimately left journalism for her trio of high-paying roles in corporate America. She took the C-suite positions to bankroll her piloting pursuits, allocating a portion of each paycheck toward her flight training fund in the years leading up to the new millennium.Thanks to her earnings, she was finally able to ditch her last traditional post at L’Oréal in the early 2000s. She attained her flight instructor certificate, the first step in piloting, in June 2001. But the 9/11 terrorist attacks, three months later, came as the catalyst for the 14-year delay in Hopson’s flight plans. “September 11th affected me in every way,” said Hopson, still shaken by the catastrophe, which claimed 3,000 innocent lives. “Flying was no longer open and free. It changed the world, the industry. It changed me.”As the nation began healing from the tragedy, Hopson continued working as a flight instructor at the Essex County and Morristown airports, training recreational flyers and wannabe pro pilots alike. “I was only making $16 an hour, and I only worked when my kids were at school or asleep,” said Hopson, noting the steep pay cut she took after leaving her big-time roles. “But even without a huge income, I was the happiest I’d ever been in life.”Hopson put her piloting pursuits on pause to raise her family, only to first revive the dream in her 50s. Tamara Beckwith/NY PostTeaching, raising her family, and shedding the baby weight became Hopson’s everyday routine for the next decade and a half. Her dreams of becoming a commercial pilot were grounded indefinitely. “I looked up and I was 50-years-old,” she remembered. “But I was still determined to make it happen.”That year she earned her ATP Piloting license, training that graduated Hopson out of the local airspace and into the cross-country domain in multi-engine planes. She then acquired her high-altitude and complex airplane FAA endorsements, which grant pilots specific operational privileges at 25,000 feet and up. With her certifications in tow, Hopson began piloting for ExpressJet Airlines in her early 50s. But as her résumé advanced, so did her age. “My very first airline class, a fellow student saw my birth year on the attendance sheet and yelled, ‘Jesus! Who in the world was born in 1964? Dear God, that was a long time ago!,’” Hopson recalled the cringing incident. As she celebrates her sixth year as captain, Hopson is on a mission to introduce the wonderful world of aviation to girls and women of color in the NYC area and beyond. Tamara Beckwith/NY PostShe was the oldest person in a class of roughly 20, one of two black students and the only woman. It was neither the first nor last jab she’d caught over the years. But she takes them all with sky-high elegance. “Thankfully I don’t look my age, so no one knew it was me,” she chuckled. “But the adversity has been brutal, the ageism and gender prejudices.”“My gender sticks out slightly more than my race,” added Hopson, “but race is right behind it.”“That’s why I’m working so hard to provide opportunity and access to girls like me.”After achieving captain status with United, a process that took several years, Hopson launched the Jet Black Foundation, a not-for-profit organization aimed at enrolling 100 Black women in flight school by the year 2035.She received a grant via Newark’s board of education this summer, empowering her to mentor 15 female scholars, in grades 8 through 11, in the art of aviation. “We’re teaching them how to build and fly drones, the science of robotics, airspace and aerospace,” said Hopson. She plans to assist the teens, whom she lovingly regards as bonus daughters, in enrolling in colleges with stellar flight programs, giving them a leg up for entry-level positions in aviation and STEM after graduation. “It won’t take them the years it took me,” Hopson said, who, despite her nonstop schedule, also managed to author the tome “A Pair of Wings.” The book is inspired by the life of Bessie Coleman, the first African American and Native American woman pilot.“As someone who accomplished the dream a little later in life, I have maturity on my side. I’m adaptable,” Hopson told The Post. “As a mother, I know how to make a plan A, B, and C, both on the ground and in the sky.”“I always tell women, you can have it all. It’s just hard to have it all at the same time,” she encouraged. “And it doesn’t matter when you bloom — it just matters that you bloom.”
