{"id":439254,"date":"2026-09-17T22:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T22:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/439254\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T22:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T22:06:09","slug":"argyle-pilot-recalls-flying-home-on-9-11-until-she-was-diverted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/439254\/","title":{"rendered":"Argyle pilot recalls flying home on 9\/11 until she was diverted"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Sept. 11<\/a>, 2001, Beverley Bass<\/a> was at the controls of American Airlines Flight 49, a Boeing 777 bound from Paris to Dallas-Fort Worth, when U.S. airspace was closed, and she was ordered to divert to Gander, Newfoundland, Canada. She and her 156 passengers would be there for five days.<\/p>\n

This month, she returned to Gander again. We spoke with Bass by phone from Gander, where she was attending the anniversary reunion.<\/p>\n

\u201cGander always does such a beautiful job commemorating the horrific events of that day and making a beautiful moment out of something terrible,\u201d she told us. \u201cThis is actually our seventh trip back here, so it\u2019s kind of like coming home for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born and raised in Fort Myers, Florida, she came to Texas in 1970 to attend Texas Christian University and never really left, even during the six years she was based in New York early in her piloting career. <\/p>\n

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\"\"Beverley Bass in the mid-1970s, freshly graduated from Texas Christian University. <\/p>\n

\u201cI just love everything about Texas, especially Fort Worth and Texas toast,\u201d she said, laughing. \u201cI guess I\u2019m almost a Texan. I\u2019ve been here so long.\u201d<\/p>\n

For someone with a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 that reshaped American aviation, Bass is refreshingly plainspoken about how she\u2019d like to be remembered. She became the first female captain in American Airlines history, and in 1986 she led the first all-female commercial cockpit crew in the world. Her story helped inspire the Tony-winning musical<\/a> \u201cCome From Away,\u201d where she is sung to life in the show\u2019s only solo, \u201cMe & the Sky.\u201d None of that is how she introduces herself.<\/p>\n

\u201cGosh, I\u2019m just a regular person,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve been a pilot since 1971. I flew jets professionally for 40 years, 32 with American. I\u2019m just a down-home person, but I\u2019d like to be thought of as a great aviator.\u201d<\/p>\n

25 years later<\/p>\n

The instinct to focus on the work rather than the milestone carried her through the hardest moment of her career. When she learned the towers had been hit, she knew she\u2019d have to land somewhere in Canada. What she didn\u2019t have was information. As captain, she had to decide how much to tell a plane full of anxious travelers when even she knew almost nothing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I decided early on is I was going to tell the truth and recognize I didn\u2019t know very much,\u201d she explained. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to create a mechanical problem or make up something I was going to have to undo when I got on the ground, because then I lose credibility. And maybe being a female captain makes you a little more cognizant of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her announcement was spare and steady, and she still remembers it word for word: \u201cLadies and gentlemen, this is Captain Bass. There\u2019s been a crisis in the United States. All of the airspace is closed. We\u2019ll be landing our airplane in Gander, Newfoundland. I\u2019ll get back to you with more information once we get on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the ground, each diverted plane was assigned a local liaison. Hers was Pat Woodford, a Gander air traffic controller. When her crew reached the town\u2019s Comfort Inn, Woodford reached into his pocket and handed her the keys to his brand-new pickup truck.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018You don\u2019t even know me, and you\u2019re handing me the keys to your truck. This is so strange,’\u201d she recalled. \u201cAnd he said, \u2018Well, Bev, where are you going to go? You\u2019re on an island.\u2019 I said, \u2018Well, good point.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Woodford, she notes, is now a lifelong friend. He\u2019s visited her in Texas. The friendships she made in those five days have lasted a quarter of a century.<\/p>\n

The return to DFW Airport brought a different kind of shock. Cocooned in Gander, Bass and her passengers had little sense of how profoundly the country had changed. Some passengers, she said, didn\u2019t want to go home at all, unsettled by the fear of a new America none of them had seen yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did not know, when my family picked me up at the airport, and we drove home, that there was going to be a flag in every single yard that we passed,\u201d she said. \u201cI was speechless. I couldn\u2019t even talk.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Beverley Bass returns to Gander where her Dallas-bound flight was diverted on 9\/11 for a reunion. <\/p>\n

Provided by Beverley Bass<\/p>\n

She was flying again within days. <\/p>\n

\u201cI always say it\u2019s a little bit like getting back on a horse,\u201d she said. \u201cI was never going to let the terrorists ruin what I loved so much.\u201d <\/p>\n

Still, she\u2019s thoughtful about what the country lost. There is now, she points out, an entire generation \u2014 even young pilots at American \u2014 who never knew flying before the TSA, before the checkpoints and the quart-sized bags. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of a shame,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was actually quite nice.\u201d<\/p>\n

These days, home is Argyle, in Denton County, where she and her husband have lived for 21 years. Before that came Colleyville and Arlington. But Fort Worth, she admits, still holds the deepest claim. Next week, her college roommate is visiting, and they plan to return to the TCU campus and revisit their old haunts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole DFW area just means the world to me,\u201d she said. \u201cIt always has.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Sept. 11, 2001, Beverley Bass was at the controls of American Airlines Flight 49, a Boeing 777…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,8386,5177],"class_list":["post-439254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-history-nostalgia","tag-national-spotlight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}