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About the Author

BARBARA DORGER

Was born Barbara Osborn August 1944 in Stockton, California. She started with UAL in 1964 as the youngest in her class.

Her Assignments Were:

Chicago – 1964-66
Miami – 1966-67
Denver – 1967-68
Newark – 1968-69
San Francisco – 1969-76
Denver – 1976-78
Chicago – 1978-79
Los Angeles – 1979-84
Washington DC – 1984-92
Denver – 1992-94
Los Angeles (International) – 1994 – 2003

Aircraft flown: DC-6, Viscount, Caravelle, B-720, DC-8, B-727, DC-8 Stretch, B-727 Stretch, B737, B747-200, DC-10, B-757, B-767, A319/320, B-747-400, B-777.

Aircraft flown: DC-6, Viscount, Caravelle, B-720, DC-8, B-727, DC-8 Stretch, B-727 Stretch, B-737, B747-200, DC-10, B-757, B-767, A319/320, B-747-400, B-777.

She retired June 30, 2003 with 39 years of flying. She is the author of Turbulent Skies which describes the highs and lows of her career as a flight attendant. As a keynote speaker, she has lectured about the 9/11 attacks at two “Clipped Wings” events for retired flight attendants. Her articles published on Hubpages.com (under pen name “gg baba”) have drawn over 80,000 reads.

She married Mitch Dorger in 1968 and has two children and four grandchildren.

My Writing Journey

Turbulent Skies

When I started flying in the late summer of 1964, the airport terminals were more passenger friendly. They were less intimidating and definitely not as crowded. There was no TSA or checkpoints to go through, and people could be dropped off and walk directly to their gates. When boarding, many of the airplanes used two jetways: one in the front and one in the back of the airplane. This made deplaning much easier. Often children flew unaccompanied because parents and grandparents were allowed in the gate area along with other non-ticketed people.

By the end of 1972, there had been over 150 planes hijacked in the U.S., with many ending up in Havana, Cuba. To help prevent these hijackings, our government mandated higher security. So in January 1973, metal detectors and baggage screening began. However, the flight crews were allowed to bypass these inspections and go directly to their airplanes. Fourteen years later, a fired US Air ground cleaner boarded a PSA flight with a gun and brought the plane down after killing the crew and the supervisor who fired him (who happened to be a passenger on the flight). The plane crashed in Paso Robles, California. There were no survivors. The very next day, all airline employees had to get new ID badges and get fingerprinted. The days of going directly to the gate for the airline crews were over.

When we were attacked on September 11, 2001, our airline world was turned upside down (as well as other sectors within our country). Twenty months after the 9/11 attack, I was one of 2500 flight attendants who retired in mass after United took a third of our pay and benefits away. Within a 2-month period, I went from thinking I had several more years of flying ahead of me to being a retired person, not yet 59 years old. Because of this drastic life change, my creative side started writing about my airline memories, feelings, and breathtaking disappointment over how our airline treated its devoted employees.
With all these emotions, the book, Turbulent Skies, was manifested. In this first book, I wrote, “Maybe someday someone will write a book about what the flight crews did on the morning of September 11th on the four flights that were hijacked and crashed. Ten years later, I started researching and writing the book The Forgotten: The Flight Crews of 9/11. In writing this book, I also delved into airline history. It is interesting how emotions come to the surface when one goes deep within oneself to find truth. I remember what really bothered me was how the crews flying that day were so ignored in the media. The crew members were described as “plus crew” in articles about the events of the day. Later in that tenth year, I had wings made with the number 33 (which was the total number of flight crew members that perished that late Tuesday morning.

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