Captain Nia Gilliam on Her Memoir "Cleared for Takeoff"

What does it take to climb back into the cockpit after one of the most traumatic days in our nation's history?

This week we sit down with airline captain Nia Gilliam, author of CLEARED FOR TAKEOFF On September 11th, 2001, Nia was a first officer on the runway at Newark when the South Tower was hit, and her plane became the last to take off from that airport. Her memoir braids that morning with the story of a little girl near O'Hare who watched airplanes and wondered where they were going.

We talk about how a writing class, a documentary interview, and a 2022 breast cancer diagnosis finally pushed her to tell this story, and why she says writing was harder than flying a plane. Nia takes us to space camp in Huntsville, to the funeral she skipped school to attend for pioneering aviator Janet Harmon Bragg, and to the moment she met Stacey Harris, the first living Black woman pilot she had ever seen. We get into the pressure of being the only woman and the only Black person in the room, the marriage and motherhood she stepped into while she was still grieving, and the line from her mom that changed everything: safe can be a place to heal, but it's nowhere to live.

We also talk about Sisters of the Skies, the nonprofit Nia co-founded to increase the number of Black women pilots in professional flight decks, and the joy of being called Captain Mom by her son, who is now a pilot too.

Share this conversation with the friend who put a dream on hold and needs a reminder that she's still cleared for takeoff.

"I wasn't the only one who didn't have tidy solutions for what haunted her.” - Captain Nia Gilliam (excerpt from her memoir, Cleared for Takeoff)

Books referenced:

Cleared for Takeoff by Captain Nia Gilliam

The Body Keeps the Score

Connect with Nia:

https://sistersoftheskies.org

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