In light of the Southwest Flight 1380 we thought we should cover why airlines don’t have more Women as pilots. Southwest Airlines Pilot Tammie Jo Shults has been widely praised for safely landing a crippled Boeing 737-700 after suffering an un-contained engine failure.
(click the picture to find out more)
This had us thinking why aren’t there more women as pilots. Whilst women make up around half of airlines cabin crews as pilots that number is about 3% women. That’s about 4,000 out of 130,000 pilots worldwide.
United Airlines & Lufthansa have the highest number of female pilots at over 7%, whereas many airlines have much less with Norwegian & Emirates with less than 2%.
Why are there less women as Pilots?
Many women say the cost of flight training expense is a hurdle to becoming a commercial pilot. The other reasons source back to the start of aviation when people saw being a pilot was seen as difficult, dangerous, and a man’s job. Piloting in modern commercial aviation is still difficult it’s regarded now as less of a man’s job.
This has led flight training schools to offer more placements to women to encourage them to take up the role. Now many schools use Trade shows to actively encourage more women to join the industry. The recent events will have have empowered more women to consider becoming pilots. Then this will hopefully encourage airlines to employ more women as pilots in their companies.
