She had taken a Pan Am 707 to to the states after a trip to Europe. “Then somewhere over the middle of the Atlantic we suddenly hit an air pocket, and with a sharp lunge started falling, tumbling hard,” Oliver wrote in her 1983 autobiography, Odyssey: A Daring Transatlantic Journey.
While the flight’s captain schmoozed with VIPs in the first-class cabin, the autopilot had disengaged and the copilot, who was distracted by other chores, didn’t notice. The aircraft rapidly spiraled from 35,000 to 6,000 feet before the captain made his way back to the cockpit and they recovered from the descent.
Oliver arrived in New York only to witness clean-up efforts near LaGuardia, where a Lockheed Electra had just crashed into the East River, killing 65 of 73 on board, and to hear that rocker Buddy Holly had died in an airplane crash that same day.
A hypnotist helped her overcome her fear, however, and after taking a flight in a private plane above Los Angeles in early 1964, Oliver plunked down $625 for flying lessons. She soloed in October of that year, shortly before completing perhaps her best-known acting role.
In the original “Star Trek” TV series pilot she played Vina, an Earth girl who assumed many forms, including a dancing green-skinned Orion slave in the original 1964 pilot, which was reused in the 1966 classic 2-part episode The Menagerie, the iconic “green woman” seen in the credits for the entire run of the original Star Trek
In 1966 she placed second in the Reno Celebrity Air Race.
She departed LaGuardia Airport on September 21 and completed the first legs of her trip in record times. She had received permission to visit the Soviet Union, but delays for training, aircraft modifications and weather pushed her beyond her assigned arrival time. Repeated trips to the Soviet embassy made no difference: The flight was over.
She also became the first woman to train to fly the Learjet, and even flew a few charters in it. In 1968, Learjet asked if she would be interested in setting records flying their jets (single and multi-engine), once she earned the required type ratings.
Later, Oliver received her glider certification (and flew one in a 1973 episode of “The American Sportsman” TV series), was awarded an honorary doctorate of aeronautical science by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and earned her only Emmy nomination for playing one of Amelia Earhart’s instructors in a TV movie.
She was one of the only women directing major TV shows in the early 1980's, and directed an episode of MASH, and Trapper John MD, and set five world records for light planes.
She was in episodes of Magnum PI, Murder She Wrote, The Love Boat, The Streets of San Francisco, Cannon, Gunsmoke, The Wild Wild West, I Spy, The Man From UNCLE, The Andy Griffith Show, Wanted Dead Or Alive (Steve McQueen's tv show) and Bonanza, she was on tv shows from 1955 to 1988.
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