Last Flight a First at American

Esther Horn earned her wings.

The Dana Point resident, who didn’t start flying until she was 29, marked a milestone Wednesday night when she became the first female pilot at American Airlines to leave the cockpit because of the mandatory retirement age of 60.

A captain on American’s 757 and 767 jetliners, Horn ended her career by touching down at John Wayne Airport in Orange County after a flight that originated in Las Vegas and stopped at the Dallas-Fort Worth home of American, a unit of AMR Corp.

Federal regulations require commercial pilots to retire when they turn 60.

Horn always had dreamed of flying. But as a single mother in her late 20s, she was working as a manicurist when she took her first flying lesson for fun. She made her first solo flight from Torrance Airport in 1971, received her private pilot’s license the next year and joined now-defunct Western Airlines in 1979. She then went to AirCal, which was bought in 1987 by American, now the world’s largest carrier.