Bonny Warner’s life is multifaceted. She is a United Airlines captain, a three-time luge Olympian trying to make the 2002 Winter Games in bobsled and mother of 3-year-old Katy Simi.
“Being a mother is the most important thing for me,” Warner said. “I am not going to put that at risk.”
Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the United States, in which two United planes crashed after being hijacked, Warner has piloted six flights and flown as a passenger on four others.
She did all of that voluntarily. When last week’s events unfolded, Warner, a San Francisco-based Boeing 737 captain, had been on leave since July to train for the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.
After two days of thinking what she could best do to help, Warner decided using her skills could be more important than her initial choice, giving blood. She called United and asked to be reactivated.
“I’m a pilot,” she said Friday from Calgary, during a break in bobsled training. “United had planes and passengers scattered everywhere. I could not only help with that logistical situation but make a statement that it is safe to fly.”
Warner, 39, made that decision after getting information from the airline and the Airline Pilots Association about how the system has changed. She is not permitted to discuss that information.
Her husband of five years, firefighter paramedic Tony Simi, encouraged her to get back in the air.
“I told her, `Go do it,”‘ Simi said from their home in Discovery Bay, Calif. “She needs to do it for herself and to support her friends and co-workers.Bonny wanted to be part of the solution. You can’t go into a hole to hide.”
So many other pilots had the same attitude, Warner said, it is unlikely she will be needed to pilot another plane before Oct. 1, when she intends to go on leave again to concentrate completely on her sport. Between now and the Olympics in February she plans to be an airplane passenger a couple of dozen times, both domestically and internationally, to fulfill training and competition commitments.
Women’s bobsled is making its Olympic debut in Salt Lake City with the two-woman event. Driver Warner and brakewoman Vonetta Flowers, a former track athlete, were the No. 2 U.S. sled last season. They tied for third on last season’s World Cup circuit.
“Both things, doing well at the Olympics and flying, are important for America now,” Warner said. “I got a message from a U.S. Olympic Committee sports psychologist saying, `Just focus on your responsibility. Don’t feel you have to do well for your country.’
“But United and the Airline Pilots Association sponsor me. They need me to do well.”
Warner, in her 12th year as a United pilot, said the airline did not ask her to speak out in an effort to get good publicity for a battered industry. Upon receiving the first interview request, she asked the airline for clearance to speak with reporters.
She said airline officials told her only to “use your best judgment.”
“If I hadn’t gone back to work,” Warner said, “I would have felt I was shirking my responsibility and wouldn’t have trained as well.”
Warner, who pilots mainly short-haul routes, was impressed by the behavior and the attitude of the passengers on her flights early this week.
“These were flights short enough that people could have driven, but they didn’t,” she said. “They had made the assessment it was safe to fly based on less information that I had as a pilot, which assured me it was safe to fly. I thanked them for helping us reclaim America.”
Warner knew some of the crew members who died in the Sept. 11 hijackings. As the wife of a firefighter paramedic, she feels a bond with the rescuers who lost their lives at the World Trade Center.
“If Tony had been in New York, he would have been one of the first into that building,” she said. “That’s his job.”
With her seniority at United, Warner thought her job would not be affected by United’s decision Wednesday to cut 20,000 full-time positions. “I may not be a captain when I come back,” she said. “I will be what I will be. By my not flying after October, it may help another pilot stay on the list. The important thing is we retain pilots.”
Warner, a Stanford graduate, competed as a luge slider in the 1984, 1988 and 1992 Olympics, with her best finish a sixth. She returned in a bobsled, a switch Warner compared to going from a sports car to a Mack truck, to try for an Olympic medal.
Now the effort has another purpose.
“Because of my job I consider myself in a different position,” she said. “My duty is to train hard. I feel I have a sense of responsibility to my co-workers and maybe to all of America to do well.”
