![Blanche Stuart Scott [Courtesy: Library of Congress]](https://planeandpilot.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2025/09/10a_am2019_blanche_loc_12209u_live.jpg?width=1200&height=800)
In 1910, a woman’s place was thought to be in the home. Sure, there were other careers like teaching or clerical work, but nothing so daring as driving a car or flying a plane.
That is, unless your name was Blanche Stuart Scott. Not content to stay to be a home-maker, Scott would become a terror on the roads and the first American woman to fly a plane.
Born in Rochester, New York, in 1885, Scott far preferred the great outdoors to sewing or any other “appropriate” women’s interests. Her mother, desperate to transform Scott into a proper lady, sent her to finishing school. It didn’t stick, with Scott characterizing herself as a “screwball.”
Scott learned to drive at the age of 13. The Rochester City Council wasn’t impressed with her skills behind the wheel and attempted to ban her from driving. It didn’t work. At 25, she became the second woman to attempt a cross-country drive, starting in New York City and finishing 68 days later in San Francisco.
It was on this first trip that Scott caught her first glimpse of an airplane. It wasn’t exactly love at first sight.“I thought these people flying were idiots, not realizing I’d be doing the same thing three weeks later,” Scott said.
Her drive had caught the attention of a member of Glenn Curtiss’ exhibition aviation team, and Scott was recruited to learn to fly.
In those days, to learn to be an aviator, one would receive a limited amount of ground instruction and then sent aloft to figure it out. Filled with anxiety at the idea of a woman pilot, Curtiss slipped a block of wood behind the throttle to prevent her from gaining enough speed to become airborne.
Unfortunately for Curtiss, a gust of wind would catch Scott on September 6, 1910, and her Curtiss Pusher would become airborne. Reaching an altitude of 40 feet, Scott brought the plane down to a successful landing, thus becoming the first woman pilot in America.
Scott made her debut as a pilot at an airshow in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She would continue to perform in exhibitions, earning the moniker the “Tomboy of the Air.”
Scott continued to push the bounds of women in aviation, starting with flying distances. She started off with a trek of 10 miles on July 30, 1911, then 25 miles in August 1911, and finished with a 60-mile journey later that year.
Scott would move to Nassau, New York, where she became acquainted with Harriet Quimby. While Quimby is credited as the first licensed female pilot in the U.S., Scott, in theory, could have beaten her to the punch.
But Scott would never receive her own license. Scott went on to become a test pilot for Glenn Martin, an aircraft designer, in 1912. She would also continue to fly in airshows, although she was limited in New York due to her lack of a pilot certificate.
To her horror, on July 2, 1912, Scott would witness the fatal airplane crash that killed Quimby.
The accident affected Scott deeply, and she would come to detest the growing infatuation with airplane crashes. But she chose to continue her own flying career, at least until she experienced her own accident in 1912, when her plane’s throttle became stuck.
After taking a year off to recover, Scott returned to flying until 1916, when she hung up her aviator goggles for good. She knew there were only limited opportunities for women pilots.
However, she didn’t give up on aviation completely. In 1948, she became the first woman to ride in a jet aircraft. And in the 1950s, she served as a special consultant for the Air Force Museum.
Scott died in 1970 at 84.
