WHY WE NEED FEMALE PILOTS
EXPERT OPINIONS & STUDIES
In an emergency, the most critical behavior in a cockpit, the balance is that a female brain can more rapidly gather and interpret all the data while the male brain can more accurately evaluate the primary malfunction – but there is always a sequence of malfunctions, so which brain is better? Neither. What is better is having both brains in the cockpit…
Armstrong, Erika. “Do Men or Women Make Better Pilots?” Disciples of Flight, 16 Feb. 2017, disciplesofflight.com/better-pilot-men-or-women/.
Women were eight percent faster than men when switching between multiple tasks—a necessary skill when flying a plane and reacting to the unexpected situations that might cause an accident.
Moss, Rebecca. “Why Graceful, Type-A, Adrenaline-Junkies Make the Best Pilots (and Tend to Be Women).” ELLE, 11 Oct. 2017, www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a14523/female-army-helicopter-pilots-are-safer-flyers/.
Diverse teams are simply smarter. Working with people who are different from you may challenge your brain to overcome its stale ways of thinking and sharpen its performance.
Diverse teams may outperform homogenous ones in decision making because they process information more carefully.
Rock, David; Grant, Heidi. "Why Diverse Teams Are Smarter." Harvard Business Review. March 19, 2019. Accessed May 08, 2019. www.hbr.org/2016/11/why-diverse-teams-are-smarter.
Girls are still being told it [piloting] is not really something they do... We once saw the same with doctors and veterinary surgeons but now more women than men train in those professions.
Choat, Isabel. “Why Airlines Need More Female Pilots to Take to the Skies.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 8 Mar. 2017, www.theguardian.com/travel/2017/mar/08/why-airlines-need-more-female-pilots-to-take-to-the-skies.
There are a lot of advantages to aviation as a long-term career because of its flexibility and the equality with which we are trained and paid. Unlike a lot of careers the pay scale is transparent: we are paid the same as men. It’s also very accommodating with flexible working patterns.
Choat, Isabel. “Why Airlines Need More Female Pilots to Take to the Skies.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 8 Mar. 2017, www.theguardian.com/travel/2017/mar/08/why-airlines-need-more-female-pilots-to-take-to-the-skies.
If demand for flights continues to grow rapidly, men alone cannot provide sufficient pilots.“The fact is that if you ignore half of the world’s population, we’ll never get there,” said Angela Gittens, director-general of the Airports Council International.
Spero, Josh. “Aviation Industry Urged to Attract More Female Pilots.” Financial Times, Financial Times, 7 Aug. 2018, www.ft.com/content/437d28a4-9a34-11e8-9702-5946bae86e6d.
Approximately 60 percent of those who earn a student pilot certificate never earn a higher pilot certificate (e.g., private, recreational, or sport). And many more drop out before ever obtaining a student pilot certificate—placing the overall dropout rate at an estimated 70 to 80 percent.
APCO insight. “The Flight Training Experience - A Survey of Students, Pilots, and Instructors.” AOPA, AOPA, Oct. 2010, https://download.aopa.org/epilot/2011/AOPA_Research-The_Flight_Training_Experience.pdf