She joined the
Boeing company in 1974 as an assistant engineer, but was inspired to fly and began to take lessons in 1977. Around the same time, she attended the
University of Washington to study aeronautics and astronautics, graduating with a
Bachelor of Science degree in 1981. The following year, she was promoted at Boeing to an instructor in the training department. This job involved training pilots in how the aeroplanes functioned and writing parts of the operations manuals. She was promoted to a
test pilot position on October 31, 1985. This made her the first female test pilot employed by the company. Over the next three years, Darcy accrued accreditation on the
Boeing 737,
757 and
767. When she was accredited for the
Boeing 747-400 in 1989, she was the first woman to Captain that type of plane. Her job also involved testing prototype planes, and on occasion, flying them to overseas buyers. She was part of the promotional Asian tour of the
Boeing 777 in 1995, and was part of the team who flew a plane from
Bangkok,
Thailand, to
Seattle in a world record time. Suzanna appears in Season 1 Episode 1 “Flight” of
Bill Nye the Science Guy in 1993 as a test pilot for Boeing. ==References==