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| EasyJet wants 20 percent of its new cadet pilots to be women by 2020 |
When a stricken Southwest Airlines jet was expertly landed after an emergency descent in April, saving 148 lives, it was a surprise to some that a woman was at the controls.
Role models
remain few and far between for women wanting to enter the cockpit, rather than
serve the onboard drinks, despite a huge shortage of pilots worldwide.
"So
often we're shown men as pilots, and women as cabin crew. This could be sending
a message to young girls that if they want to work in aviation, it can't be as
a pilot," according to the British Airline Pilots' Association.
But things
are finally starting to change and a few airlines are trying to redress the
gender imbalance.
Europe's
biggest budget carrier easyJet, under an initiative named after pioneer aviator
Amy Johnson, wants 20 percent of its new cadet pilots to be women by 2020.
Today, just
three percent of professional pilots worldwide are women, according to the
International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
The UN
agency estimates that passenger numbers will double over the next 20 years, and
that airlines will need to recruit 620,000 pilots to keep up with the demand.
Tammie Jo
Shults is one of those few women.
Shults, one
of the first female fighter pilots for the US Navy, performed heroics in safely
bringing down her Southwest Boeing 737 after an engine blowout.
One passenger
died in the incident.
'Top Gun'
machismo
According
to retired captain Kathy McCullough, "having someone in the spotlight
who's a lady who does a great job just points out that it can happen and does
happen and isn't really that much of a surprise".
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Just over 5
percent of the global total of pilots are women
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Nevertheless,
McCullough said after Shults hit the headlines that her generation of female
pilots were still waiting to pass the baton to another.
"Until
we reach a tipping point, which is supposedly 20 percent, I don't think we'll
see much in the way of a change," she told National Public Radio.
The
"Top Gun" machismo attached to aviation runs deep.
Neither
does commercial flying lend itself to a work-family balance, giving
organisations such as the ICAO and the International Society of Women Airline
Pilots an uphill challenge to entice more women into the profession.
The society
says just over 7,400 pilots flying for commercial airlines are female, or 5.2
percent of the global total.
United
ranks best with 7.4 percent. Ironically Southwest, Shults's employer, has just
3.6 percent.
It is not
just employment practices that the International Society of Women Airline
Pilots has to confront but passenger prejudices as well, according to former
chairwoman Liz Jennings Clark.
Mistaken
for cabin crew
A captain
with Dutch low-cost carrier Transavia, 55-year-old Clark likes when possible to
come out of the cockpit and say goodbye to her passengers at the end of a
flight.
But she
said that many still hand their litter to her, mistaking her for cabin crew.
Girls who
want to grow up as pilots still lack role models, agreed Sophie Coppin,
diversity officer at the French Civil Aviation University in Toulouse.
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A few
airlines are trying to redress the gender imbalance as more women become pilots
|
Among both
students and their parents, "there is a conscious or unconscious
suppression" of the idea of women as aviators, she said.
About 15
percent of the student pilots at the French university are women. Double that
figure are training as air traffic controllers, another sector suffering an
acute shortage of entrants.
There has,
at least, been some progress since 1979 when Shults, 56, was at high school and
attended a careers lecture on aviation by a retired colonel.
The
Southwest pilot said she was the only girl in the class, and he started by
asking her if she was lost.
"I
mustered up the courage to assure him I was not and that I was interested in
flying," she wrote in a book about female military aviators.
"He
allowed me to stay, but assured me there were no professional women
pilots."
EasyJet
wants 20 percent of its new cadet pilots to be women by 2020
Just over 5
percent of the global total of pilots are women
A few
airlines are trying to redress the gender imbalance as more women become pilots.
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