The Sky's The Limit

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Osterman, 55, joined Frontier Airlines four years ago and makes sure the infrastructure is in place for the Denver-based low-cost carrier to keep expanding. (Frontier is one of the few airlines that have added cities since Sept. 11.) She negotiates leases, strikes deals with contractors and supervises all the airline's construction projects, including the new headquarters building completed last year.

Osterman comes from a family of engineers. She grew up on a farm and has always been fascinated with how things are put together. Some of her most interesting work experiences, Osterman says, come from sitting around the negotiating table and watching the jockeying that goes on between large airlines and smaller competitors for everything from airport space to baggage-system access. "Once when another airline doctored some figures and presented them in public, I didn't shout or even object," she says, recalling a wrangle about an airport issue. "I waited until after the meeting and bluntly told [the executive] that we would be getting the real figures before we went forward. We got what we wanted."

A colleague jokingly refers to Osterman as the Black Widow for her stealthy effectiveness. She concedes that she makes it a priority in meetings to read her counterparts' body language and mood. "I'm not sure if that's a female way of doing things — it's just mine," she says. "I'm just working out how to get what I want."

KAREN LEE
CREW RESOURCES MANAGER, UNITED PARCEL SERVICE
Thirty-six years after she first earned her pilot's license, Lee still gets excited when she talks about flying. She is one of the few women certified to fly aviation's biggest bird, the Boeing 747. "It's a pilot's ego plane," she says. "I still get a thrill out of cranking it up and taking off for distant places."

And what places she has been — learning to fly at 17 on a small grass strip in East Stroudsburg, Pa., moving to fly for Shamrock Airlines in Puerto Rico in 1972 because no U.S. airline would hire a female pilot, and in 1978 becoming the first woman pilot hired by Trans World Airlines, then the most glamorous airline going. (Her dad worked there as a pilot. Her mom was a housewife.) Lee was hired by United Parcel Service in 1985 to help expand its air-shipping fleet, and is now the first woman to oversee the company's 2,527 pilots. She has also directed the adoption of new technology to reduce runway collisions — one of aviation safety's most serious threats.

Lee, 51, says the rules of acceptance have been simple for her. "As pilots, we are graded by our compatibility with the person we're flying with, by our professionalism and abilities as pilots," she says. "The grades are given out regardless of race and gender. It's satisfying to see that women in the cockpit are now unremarkable within the pilot world." She doesn't think she approaches her job differently than a man, except perhaps in one respect. "I'll admit when I don't know something," she says, laughing. "I'm not sure some of my colleagues would think that's a career-enhancing style."

COLLEEN BARRETT
PRESIDENT AND COO, SOUTHWEST AIRLINES
Some male executives at other airlines still treat her like the secretary she once was, but Barrett can afford to ignore them. Her company is profitable; theirs are not. "I'm much more concerned about what our customers think about us and how we're treating them," she says. In Barrett's 30 years in and around the executive suite (starting as a legal secretary in 1967 for Southwest Airlines founder Herb Kelleher), the results have been spectacular. Southwest is the only major U.S. airline that didn't dip into the red last year, continuing its 29 years of consecutive profitability.

That record is due in large part to an employee culture that Barrett, 57, is credited with nurturing. The divorced grandmother and Willie Nelson fan has devoted her life to Southwest and still tries to read every customer letter the airline receives. As the self-described "mother hen" of the carrier's 35,000 workers, she encouraged a family atmosphere long before it became fashionable. Birthdays, anniversaries and other significant events in an employee's life are noted with a card from Barrett's office. The airline has endured only one strike in three decades. Employee morale is boosted not only by the airline's sense of fun but also by its profit-sharing plan, an industry first that started in 1974; workers own about 10% of company stock.

Barrett keeps the door to her modest, windowless office at Southwest's Dallas headquarters open. She spends several weeks a year meeting with employees in the 58 cities served by the airline. And, of course, she always flies coach. Southwest does not have first class or business class on its planes. Her photo appears in a feature called "Colleen's Corner" in the in-flight magazine, and she's slightly uncomfortable when recognized by passengers — even though most approach her to praise the airline. Some industry veterans question her influence, given her lack of interest in the financial side of the business, but Barrett has always maintained she is the heart, not the head, of the airline.