Olympic skier Bonny Simi worked as a sports reporter for ABC's KGO in San Francisco, then took three introductory flying lessons at Palo Alto Airport in a Cessna 152. She built flight hours while reporting, eventually chose aviation over a higher-paying news job, and became an airline captain at United.
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So, as I mentioned, one of my goals. So I ended up competing in the Olympics in 1984 in Sarajevo, Calgary and Albertville. And one day I was just about to graduate finally from Stanford, and the local TV station ABC News, KGO up in San Francisco, came to interview and said, so, what are you going to do when you graduate? Now? I was majoring in communication with a focus in broadcast journalism. Why? Because I had written when I was 14 years old that I wanted to work for ABC TV. Also because I couldn't take Physics 51 because I was always gone winter quarter, and I couldn't get away from it. I think it's still called Physics 51 Engineering. And I wanted to be a civil engineer, but I couldn't do that one. So I majored in communication because he didn't require physics 51. But I'm standing there in front of the camera, and the guy says, what are you going to do when you graduate? And I said, I want to work for ABC tv. Will you hire me? And he said, sure, no kidding. He was a Stanford grad. And he said, why don't you cover some stories? Because I was just. This was in 87. I was just headed to the 1988 Olympics, and they allowed athletes to do stories. So I was going to file some stories from Calgary. So I just sort of reached out and did it. Now, I could have completely failed, but fortunately he liked the stories and KGO liked the stories. So as soon as I graduated, they hired me full time. So I worked in San Francisco for ABC tv, and I enjoyed it. I was in the evening news doing everything. I did sports, everything but football, baseball, basketball, and so covered recreational sports and Olympic sports and all that kind of stuff. And while I was there, I started thinking about flying. Why? Why? Because I rode when I was 14 years old. And so I went down to the Palo Alto airport. I didn't know anything about aviation whatsoever. I just knew that I wanted to try it out. I was not thinking about being an airline pilot. I was in my career. My career was in television. So I simply went because I wanted to learn how to fly. Now, I suppose if I thought about it and said, well, I want to be an airline pilot. Oh, I can't be an airline pilot because there aren't very many female airline pilots, and that will be really hard, I probably would have done it more because I just like to knock down barriers. But I literally just want to learn how to fly. And it's one of those things I tell people now, if you leave today, and you write down that you want to learn to fly as one of your goals. I just tell you, go to the airport, take three lessons. After three lessons, you'll know if you want to continue it. Three lessons. The first lesson is pretty scary, all these dials and gauges. But over time. So I took my three lessons and I learned that. And that's Cessna 152, Palo Alto. And I remember getting in the cockpit on the one on the left, picture on the left, thinking, it is so confusing, so many dials and gauges. But I became so passionate about it. And I actually began thinking about becoming an airline pilot while I was at the TV station. Now, this is one of those other career moves and career things to think about. You can do some things in parallel, because if you do some things in parallel, it does de risk it a little bit. So I was working at the TV station while I was building my hours. It takes a long time to build the hours to become an airline pilot, and you don't make much money. And so a great way was to do it in parallel. So I was doing corporate flying here in the Bay Area while I was working at the TV station. A couple years went by and I got a phone call. It was a Saturday, Saturday. And I was teaching some students that Saturday. And the tv, but the news director, the same guy who'd hired me, called and said, I need you to come in to do a story. It was going to be a slow news day, and I was going to have to cancel all of my students. So I thought about it and I said, look, I was going to make 100 bucks for teaching that day or 500 bucks to do the story, evening news. And I said no. The reason I said no is because of the passion. I realized at that moment that my passion was around aviation. And I firmly believe that you need to follow your heart. So that is when I continued and I decided I would strive to be an airline pilot. Applied to United at the time and eventually was hired.
