Beverly Burns made history when she took off from Newark Liberty International Airporton  July 18, 1984, for Los Angeles.

That day, flying for People Express, the Owings Mills resident became the first woman to pilot a Boeing 747 jumbo jet for a commercial airline.

Burns had entered the aviation world in the 1970s, when the skies had been a man’s realm since the dawn of flying.

Into the 1980s, there were still passengers who, upon realizing their pilot was a woman, would walk off the plane, according to Peggy Chabrian, former dean of Embry Riddle Aeronatical University and founder and president of Women in Aviation International. She said women pilots weren’t allowed to address the passengers on the cabin public address system because it might scare people.

Burns, now 58, said as a child, she was raised with the expectation to marry a man who would be the primary breadwinner, she said. But Burns liked airplanes, so she became a flight attendant for American Airlines.

A male pilot told her, “Women are too small, too weak and not intelligent enough” to fly a plane. He invited Burns to prove him wrong, she said.

Burns took him up on the dare, but faced further challenges when she started pilot school. At Hinson Airways, a flight school at Baltimore Washington International Airport, Burns was passed on from one instructor to another, going through eight instructors. The head instructor at Hinson didn’t usually teach student pilots himself, but made exceptions when students were a problem in one way or another.

Robert Burns, the head instructor, told her it would probably take about three years to become a pilot. Beverly Burns said she was surprised and relieved because he was the first instructor to take her seriously.

Capt. Beverly Burns graduated from that flight instruction and became a commercial pilot.

She moved beyond the 747 to the 777 when flying for Continental Airlines, and made her final commercial flight in February over the North Pole from Beijing to Newark.

Her husband is one of the primary reasons she’s retiring, she said.

“My husband has spent the last 35 years supporting me in my career,” Beverly Burns said. “The retirement part is really for him.”

Yet Burns isn’t ready to lower her landing gear just yet.

She has written a book about her experiences and is looking for an agent.

“We need to write our own” histories she said, since there’s little in history books about women and their achievements.

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