PINK
SLIP
ThrIvINg
de SPITe
FurLough
As furlough notices cir- culate like junk mail through the airlines, many pilots are re-eval- uating their career goals to come up with an al- ternate plan. For some,
this is the second or third time they have
experienced a layoff. Not everyone has a
good story to tell about the bloodletting
of the past year, but these women have
managed to thrive in a bleak economy.
“It was heartbreaking,” says Kristina
Huffman, 43, of Seattle, a furloughed
Alaska Airlines pilot. “It just gets you
back to soul searching.” Huffman held
her dream job for less than a year, commuting to Anchorage to start trips. She
rented a “crash pad”—a cheap, shared-rental among airline pilots—and her
debt rose. At most major airlines, first-year pay tends to be low. To save money,
she took an extended leave of absence
two months before her furlough and researched other career options. With an
undergraduate degree in physics and a
graduate degree in radiation oncology
physics, Huffman had 13 years of expe-
rience helping cancer patients with their
treatments before she became an airline
pilot. “The way the economy was going,
huffman
I knew that health care was a stable option.” It made sense to return to it, but
she wanted to hone her management
skills for a future goal of getting an up-per-level position at Alaska Airlines.
Taking a risk, she reinvented herself
as a healthcare consultant who provides
vacation relief for radiation oncology
physicists at various hospitals and clinics throughout the country. “It’s exciting, it’s a challenge. I’m fairly adaptable.
I can come in and figure things out fairly
quickly.” Business is booming and Huffman has paid down much of her debt.
To keep current with flying, she uses an
Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 simulator—
the time is donated by the airline—and
she pays for the instructor.
Continental Captain Lynn Rippelmeyer, 58, of Magnolia, Texas, experienced
her furloughs many years ago, but her
approach to change is useful in today’s
upheaval: “Look at it as a gift. It’s an op-
rippelmeyer
portunity…to open some other doors
that you may have not had the time
to pursue before.” When she got fur-
loughed from TWA as a flight attendant,
she had an introductory flight in a Piper
Cub on floats and it inspired her to even-
tually learn how to fly. Five years later,
she worked at TWA as a 727 flight engi-
neer and got furloughed again. That led
her to a job at Seaboard World, where
she became the first woman to fly a Boe-
ing 747. A year later, a third furlough no-
tice arrived when Flying Tigers merged
with Seaboard World, so Rippelmeyer
moved over to People Express, where
she upgraded to Boeing 737 captain in
just one year. She turned down both re-
by Linda Berlin
call notices and gambled on a startup.
Continental eventually merged with
People Express and there were many tumultuous years, but Rippelmeyer has essentially had a stable flying position ever
since. She lives in base and is home every night. As a single mother with two
sons, 15-year-old Scott, who still lives at
home, at Lucas, who is 20, it’s a perfect
schedule. Her advice is to “find some
way to use it to your advantage.”
gallisath
Karen Gallisath, 53, of Rockford, Illinois, has done just that. This past December, after losing her flying job for a
hedge fund, she landed an ideal job flying executives from McDonald’s, the fast
food chain: “I felt that I had good job security in the position I was in and I also
felt that I had good longevity in corporate aviation. I didn’t really anticipate
the financial collapse last year.” It had
been a goal of hers to get to McDonald’s
after a furlough from United in 2003, but
there were no jobs. This time around,
she checked the company’s web site
to find out whether the chief pilot had
changed and discovered a newly posted
job opening for a captain position.
“The timing was absolutely incredible,” Gallisath said. She sent her résumé online, but the formatting didn’t look
good, so she called the flight department
and asked if she could FedEx it as well.
