United Airlines will celebrate 100 years of service in April, but it has another milestone to celebrate for women in aviation.

In a video posted to Instagram Sunday, the airline shared the story of Boeing 787 captain Chresten Wilson, who this year will became the first woman to hold the top seniority position among the airline’s 18,000 pilots.

In the video, she’s introduced to a gate area full of passengers waiting to board one of the airline’s flights to Melbourne, Australia, by the flight’s first officer, Lori McGibney.

Female aviators have been a small part of United’s pilot roster since the airline hired its first woman pilot in 1978, but they have slowly grown in the airline’s ranks.

Why Seniority Matters

Holding the “number one” seniority position means that Wilson has been at United the longest. Airlines use seniority to award base and aircraft assignments, as well as schedules. Pilots with more seniority have the earliest pick of their preferences, and top seniority pilots have maximum control over their schedules, with the ability to tailor them to their exact preferences. The most junior pilots are simply assigned whatever is available.

Captain Wilson began her career as a Flight Engineer on United’s DC-10 aircraft. Over the years, she served as a First Officer on the Boeing 737, Boeing 747, Boeing 757, and Boeing 767, and as Captain on the Boeing 737, Airbus A320, Boeing 747, and Boeing 777 before taking on her current aircraft, the Boeing 787.

“When I was 12, my Mom and I were driving by United’s flight training center in Denver, and I looked at her and said ‘I’m going to be there some day.’” she says in the video. “There were no woman airline pilots when I was 12, but that was my focus, and I made that happen.”

It’s not just women that had traditionally been barred jobs at the U.S. airlines. While cockpits remained a male-only domain for decades, many airlines limited cabin service roles to women. Some airlines that did hire men to serve in their aircraft cabins even limited them to supervisory roles, with significantly better pay and benefits.

In her book Up In The Air: The Story of Life Aboard The World’s Most Glamorous Airline former Pan Am flight attendant Betty Riegel tells about how in the 1960s, supervisory purser roles at the airline were only open to men, and female “stewardesses” (as they were then called) were dismissed if they got engaged or pregnant.

One of the last airlines to limit flight attendant roles to women was Southwest Airlines, arguing that female sex appeal was an integral part of their branding and promotional efforts. Southwest was forced to hire its first male flight attendants in the 1980s after it lost a federal civil rights lawsuit.

It’s worth noting that in the heavily unionized airline pilot workforces, women have one equity that has proven elusive to women in other industries: equal pay. Seniority rules also determine pay rates, so female pilots earn the same as male pilots with the same length of tenure.

Ranks of Women in Aviation Slowly Growing

In the video, Captain Wilson acknowledges that she was entering a male-dominated role, and decades later, that largely remains true. As of 2024, 7.5% of United’s pilots are women, and that’s one of the higher percentages for a U.S. airline. In 2025, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 93% of all aircraft pilots in the United States were men.

Some carriers outside the United States have a higher proportion of female pilots. Air France reported in 2024 that just over 9% of their pilots were women.

United hired its first female pilot, Gail Gorsky, in 1978. Gorsky retired from United as a Boeing 747 captain.

When it opened its proprietary flight school in Arizona in early 2022, 80% of the first class of pilots were women or people of color—better than the airline’s stated goal of ensuring half of the pilot candidates going through the program belonged to those groups.

While United has had female pilots continuously since 1978, this is the first time a woman has held the most senior ranking. The milestone is an elusive one, and not every pilot reaches it during their career. The FAA mandates that airline pilots retire at the age of 65, so a number of pilots reach this threshold before they can reach the top spot on the seniority list.

Mandatory retirement can also mean pilots who reach the most senior spot don’t have much time to enjoy it before they must also retire.

For Captain Wilson, the women in aviation—particularly those in United’s pilot roles—were a source of inspiration. “I need to give a shout-out and a big thank you to the women who came before me, who broke through in this very male-dominated career, and paved the way for me to be able to be here.”

Source: Forbes