Beverley Bass was flying for American Airlines on 9/11. Her story has become a musical.

Not many people can say they've sat in an audience and watched their entire life chronicled on stage in just four minutes and 19 seconds.

But Beverly Bass can. And she's watched 'herself' perform 'Me And The Sky' a total of 158 times. 

She knows every word to the musical Come From Away, which is set in the week following the September 11 attacks and tells the true story of what transpired when 38 planes were ordered to land unexpectedly in the small town of Gander, Canada.

Watch: A snippet of Me And The Sky from Come From Away, Australia. Post continues after video.

Beverley was one of those pilots, and she looks back on those five days in Gander in 2001 with a mixture of nostalgia and grief. Two of the planes used in the al-Qaeda hijacking were theirs - American Airlines aircrafts. 

"All of us knew somebody who was a crew member on one of our two aircraft. The captain who the hit the Pentagon - he and I lived in the same apartment building when we were hired in New York," Beverley told Mamamia.

But they wouldn't learn of their colleagues' fate until 30 hours later. Instead, they found themselves confined to their own plane for 28 hours on the tarmac of a town with a population barely scraping 10,000.

38 planes landed in the tiny town of Gander on September 11, 2001. Image: Twitter: Gander Airport Historical Society. 

"We landed at 10am on September 11 and officials came onto the plane and said 'you won't be getting off until tomorrow'. We saved the meal service for dinner and passed out blankets and pillows and put movies on. The weather was so beautiful that we were able to open the aircraft doors, and we would invite them [passengers] back to the cockpit. They took turns coming up for a visit," Beverly said. 

When Beverley, her crew, and their 156 passengers were finally let into the terminal at 7:30am the next morning, they couldn't believe their eyes.

"The terminal building was literally lined with tables on every wall, and every table had so much food on it you could not even imagine. But we got off the plane in the morning, and [I realised] that they must have been up all night preparing food. It was my first clue that we were not in a normal place," Beverley told Mamamia.

For the 6,700 strangers who were welcomed into the tiny town of Gander, their experience of the worst terrorist attack in American history was one laced in kindness. It's why it's been immortalised in musical form - starring Beverley as one of the main characters. 

But it's certainly not the only extraordinary experience in Beverley's life. 

In 1976 Beverley became American Airlines' third female pilot. In 1986 she became the first female captain of a commercial plane at American Airlines. Later that year, she captained the first all-female crew in the history of commercial jet aviation.

In 1986, at the age of 34, Beverley became first female captain of a commercial plane at American Airlines. Image: Beverley Bass. 

To get there, however, she had to deal with an industry that wasn't ready to let women into the cockpit. 

When she first started looking for a job, she was told, "We can’t have a woman flying our executives around, what would their wives think?"

"I didn't even know another female pilot. I'd never seen one, I'd never met one. And so I was an oddity at the airport," she told Mamamia.

So when an embalmer who needed a pilot to fly dead people to their final resting place offered her a job, there was no way she was turning it down.

"I went to college in the daytime, and I would fly bodies in the afternoon and evening," Beverley told Mamamia.

"I would fly in that single-engine airplane, and you couldn't fit a casket in it. The body would be on a stretcher with a sheet over it, and the cargo drawer was tiny so you would have to tilt the stretcher to get it in the airplane and then the sheet would fall off and the head would be to my right," she said. 

"I had to climb over their face to get to my seat, so they were kind of right beside me on the trip. I was so excited to be getting paid to fly I didn't care what they put in it."

Beverley says flying is her "comfort zone." Image: Beverley Bass. 

Flying for American Airlines for 32 years was one of the greatest honours of Beverley's life, and in the seven years after 9/11, while she was still flying for them, she would regularly hear from the crew that one of her passengers from Gander was on board, so she'd sneak back to have a chat and reminisce. 

She's been back to Gander six times since those five days in 2001 and has 14 rooms booked in the same hotel - the Holiday Inn - for the 20th anniversary of the attack should COVID-19 allow her to get there in 2021. 

As for the musical about her experience, well, Beverley is adamant you should go and see 'her' on the stage. 

In October 2018, Come From Away became the longest-running Canadian musical in Broadway history, winning more than 50 awards worldwide. It's currently playing in Melbourne and opens in Brisbane and Sydney in March and June, respectively.

One of Beverley's greatest joys is getting emails and messages from young girls singing their own renditions of 'Me And The Sky', usually dressed in their own pilot's uniforms.

From the moment she started working at American Airlines she was told by her colleagues she was a "trailblazer," but even 50 years later she struggles to see herself as that.

"Maybe 50 years from now I will be able to say 'yeah, I was'. But I was just a kid with a dream to fly planes and I was going to make that happen. Fortunately, it worked out in my favour," she said.

"I have such a great life. I am an old woman, I will be 69 in March and I am still flying jets," she added.

Zoe Gertz, who plays Beverly Bass in Australia, with the real Beverly Bass. Image: Supplied. 

"I invited a young man to see the show when it was in DC. He is one of our young pilots at American Airlines, and he was the son of the co-pilot who hit the North Tower. He was 15 when his father died. We in the airline business have what we call the 'lost decade', because after 911 we didn't hire a single pilot for 10 years. He was the first pilot hired after 9/11. He was hired in 2011.

"So if he can see the show and absolutely love it, I don't know how anybody could be more closely connected," she told Mamamia.

Come From Away is now playing at Sydney’s Theatre Royal, and will continue touring to Newcastle, Adelaide, Perth and Canberra. Book your tickets here.

Feature image: Beverley Bass.