Clipper Photo/Pan American Airways 

Betty Haas Pfister, a two-time winner of the All Women’s International Air Race, died on Nov. 17 at her home in Aspen, Colo., according to her daughter Suzanne. Betty was 90.

Ms. Haas married Arthur Pfister in 1954.  Before her marriage Betty made hundreds of flights — dozens as a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, during World War II, and many more as one of the nation’s most successful female competitive pilots.  In addition to these, she made many flights as a Pan Am flight attendant in the days when women had a much harder time getting hired as pilots.

Betty's daughter Suzanne Pfister said that after her mom made her first flight, “Mom made a deal with her father that she would stay in school if he paid for flight lessons.”

By the time Betty graduated from Bennington College in 1942, she had logged enough flight time to be accepted as a member of the WASPs — an Army Air Force attachment created to fill the void when male pilots were deployed overseas.

As one of 1,074 WASPs, Ms. Haas Pfister ferried planes from factories to domestic airfields or to ports for shipment overseas. WASPs also towed targets for aerial gunnery practice. Thirty-eight died in accidents. By December 1944, with the war winding down, the women were no longer needed and the unit was disbanded.

Ms. Haas Pfister found work as an aircraft mechanic and, very occasionally, flying cargo planes. In 1948, when hired by Pan American, she became the first stewardess ever hired with more than 1,000 hours of flight time. “She got to travel all over the world,” her daughter said. “But she’d rather have been in the cockpit any day of the week.”