Emine Saner has written over at The Guardian about the slow adoption of female pilots by airlines. From the article:
When two children, a six-year-old girl and a slightly older boy, visited her flight deck last week, British Airways pilot Aoife Duggan asked if they would like to fly planes too. The boy said yes but the girl demurred, saying: “I think I’d like to be an air hostess – boys are pilots.” A surprised Duggan says: “I was like, ‘No! Come and sit in my seat, wear my hat.’ “
Four decades after the first female pilot started work for a commercial airline, there are still relatively few women sitting in Duggan’s seat. Of the 3,500 pilots employed by British Airways, just 200 are women, yet the airline still employs the highest proportion of female pilots of any UK airline. Globally, around 4,000 of the 130,000 airline pilots are women, according to the International Society of Women Airline Pilots. Fewer still are captains – worldwide, there are around 450.
“Having registered that digital is the busy end of the business, I realised I could do more, and faster, on my own”