How Woody Fountain became the first Black Northwest Airlines pilot

MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - After serving time in the United States Air Force, Woody Fountain became the first Black pilot for Northwest Airlines. His career took him across the globe, and he's now looking back at his time in the sky.

Fountain is a man born with wings and a desire to use them. From fighter jets to passenger jets, he didn’t just break through barriers, he broke through the skies. 

Discovering a love for flying

Flying was an obsession that, oddly enough, began in a junior high school woodshop with a team of comic book action heroes.

"All the students had to do a project, and the project I did was bookends," recalled Fountain. On one bookend he etched an F-90 jet fighter, the other an F-80. He still has them.

"I kept those just to show how far back I wanted to become a pilot," Fountain said with a nostalgic look in his eyes.

The etchings were copies of the planes from his favorite comic book "Blackhawk".

"Blackhawk consisted of seven pilots from seven different countries, and they went around the world beating up on the bad guys," Fountain recalled with a gleam as if he’d just left the newsstand with the latest edition of the DC comic book series. "And one of them was a Black guy, and he was an African Black, I’m sure back in those days."

Those days represented a different chapter in America. Fountain grew up in Richmond, Virginia, the second youngest of eight children. His father was a postal carrier. It was the peak of Jim Crow and segregation. "I would walk past the white high school to walk a mile to the Black high school," said Fountain about his childhood.

But education was his ticket to success. Most of his brothers and sisters went to college at Virginia State. It’s where Woody thought he would attend as well. His teachers had a different idea when recruiters from Howard University came to school asking them who might have a chance of succeeding at the historic Black university.

"They give you a little test here and there to test your mental capabilities," said Fountain of his meetings with the Howard recruiters. "And I ended up winning the scholarship."

At Howard, Fountain studied mechanical engineering and joined the ROTC. It was during this sophomore year that the professor of air science took the cadets up in a C-47 cargo plane, the same type of plane that delivered allied paratroopers into France on D-Day. It was Fountain’s first time on an airplane. 

He remembers not just the thrill of leaving the ground for the first time, but also his reverence for the man who was at the yoke. The professor’s name was Charles Dryden, one of the original Tuskegee Airmen from WWII.

"That was the first time I left the ground and under the command of a Tuskegee Airman. And that was pretty fascinating to me," said Fountain. It ignited the thrill of flying that never died.

Time in the Air Force

Fountain knew he wanted to be a pilot when he committed to the Air Force. But on his health form before his physical, he made the mistake of checking the box for hay fever. He didn’t suffer from hay fever, and he certainly didn’t suffer from menstrual issues, but figured he needed to check something. He thought he was it was good enough to pass the flight physical, but the flight surgeon had other ideas.

"He said, you have hay fever. It’s on your records now, and because you have hay fever, you’re allergic to something in your respiratory system, and you can’t be a pilot," Fountain still vividly recalled of the flight physical. "I was completely devastated."

But his engineering degree partially saved him. The Air Force recognized his aptitude and sent him to Edwards Air Force Base, the home of its test flight and engineering program.

"All of the best pilots in the world are at Edwards Air Force Base," said Fountain.

Fountain entered Edwards as a second lieutenant. It was standard protocol for the officers and pilots to take a physical each year. When it was Fountain’s turn, the airman administering the physical was also Black. He was envious of Fountain for being an officer, and when he went to search for Fountain’s health records, they were mysteriously missing. Hearing the news, Fountain asked if the airman could give him the pilot physical. He said, sure.

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"He gave me the form and I went straight down to hay fever and checked no!" said Fountain. He was finally on his way to the cockpit.

His good friend Ed Dwight, a Black pilot who was in the aerospace training program to possibly become an astronaut, recommended that Fountain learn instrument flying. He lined him up to ride in a chase plane conducting space research.

"And I would go up there and get in the back seat of the chase plane, and we’d go up," said Fountain. "And I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew I liked it."

He eventually earned his wings and wanted to fly fighter jets. He had the choice of flying the F-4 Phantom II, the versatile supersonic attack fighter flown by the Air Force, Navy, and Marines. But it was 1965 and war was raging in Vietnam. Fountain and his wife had a new baby daughter and the prospect of flying into combat and not coming home was a heavy gamble. So he chose to put off flying fighters in exchange for a four-year flight instructor post in the U.S.

"By 1969, the Vietnam War was not any place for anybody if they wanted it. It was a losing deal," Fountain rationalized. "And reluctantly, I got out of the Air Force in 1969."

Joining Northwest Airlines

His friend Ed Dwight, by this time, had been pulled from the astronaut program and had become a successful businessman. Fountain went to work for Dwight for a while and soon accompanied another pilot friend to an interview with Northwest Airlines. 

Northwest offered Fountain a job as well, but he turned it down. But three months later, he rationalized with his wife that flying passenger planes was better than not flying at all.

"So I called this guy back," recalled Fountain of his conversation with the recruiter at Northwest Airlines. "I said Bob, this is Woody Fountain. He said ‘Woody, how are you doing?’ You offered me a job a while back, and I was wondering if that event is still on the table. He said ‘How soon can you get here?’"

That’s how he became the first Black pilot for Northwest Airlines.

Over time, Fountain filled his flight log with the best jets in the Northwest fleet: the 727, 757, and A320. In fact, Northwest flew him to Toulouse, France, as part of the first American flight crew to train on the new A320s, the first Airbus jets sold to any U.S. airline. But his favorite was the plane affectionately known throughout the aviation industry as the Queen of the Skies, the 747.

"It was a piece of cake," said Fountain about what it was like to fly the huge Boeing jumbo jet. "You’d think something that big and lumbering would be difficult to fly, but it was easy, if not easier than any of the others."

One of Northwest’s 747’s, a plane it called the #601, was the airline’s first jumbo jet and Fountain’s last. When FAA age restrictions forced Fountain to retire in May 2000, the 601 was his last flight. Fittingly, the 601 also soon retired. The nose of the beloved plane is now on permanent display at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

Walking through the Northwest Airlines History Center for the purpose of our FOX 9 interview, Fountain was filled with great pride. "I enjoy every time I come in here," said Fountain with a huge grin. "All of these planes that have red tails on them, at one time, I was a captain on them."

At 84 years old, he still loves aviation and still loves how he got to fly across the globe.

"I enjoy it and would love to go to work," said Fountain of his piloting career at Northwest Airlines. "To go to work was to go fly an airplane. That’s not work."

In celebration of Black History Month, Fountain will appear at the Wings of the North Air Museum at Flying Cloud Airport in Eden Prairie on Saturday, Feb. 17, from noon to 1:30 p.m. The event is free, and the first 20 children under 12 will get a toy airplane. Fountain will appear with Tuskegee Airmen historian Joel Brown.