Opinion: Flight canceled? Stuck on the tarmac? Here’s an answer: more women in aviation


The aviation business has an issue. A scarcity of airline pilots is inflicting a “constraint on capability,” which interprets to canceled flights and delays for vacationers — particularly on smaller airways. There’s extra: In early April, the FAA warned {that a} scarcity of air site visitors controllers is predicted to gum up journey this summer time, particularly within the Northeast. And based on one business observer, the shortage of upkeep personnel in aviation is reaching disaster ranges.

Aviation’s capability woes underline a large business blind spot: Ladies stay largely grounded. Ladies make up lower than 20% of these employed in all aviation jobs within the U.S., a determine that skews that prime solely as a result of so many flight attendants and customer support brokers are ladies. Solely 4.6% of airline pilots are ladies, and aviation mechanics fare even worse, at 2.6%.

The low pilot numbers are particularly discouraging in contrast with ladies’s progress in different skilled fields. In 2021, ladies made up 37.1% of physicians within the U.S., up from 7.1% in 1970. In 2022, 38% of attorneys had been ladies, up from 3% in 1970. General, ladies account for 51.8% of these employed in skilled, administration and associated fields.

What’s preserving ladies out of aviation?

The difficulty is essentially cultural. As a number of of my male colleagues prefer to say, U.S. aviation is “male, pale and off.”

A 2018 survey for Ladies in Aviation Worldwide discovered that greater than a 3rd of ladies within the business understand {that a} “good outdated boy” community persists. Ladies cited “male dominated tradition” as an even bigger barrier to an aviation profession than “household/life/work stability.” And 71% of the survey respondents reported they’d been sexually harassed at work.

“Male-centric” defines virtually the whole lot about aviation and aerospace. The language of laws is gendered; gear and uniforms are designed for males; photographs in coaching supplies depict largely males. The message, in large methods and small, is that aviation is just not a girl’s job.

Even minor makes an attempt to vary the tradition are sometimes resisted. In December 2021, the FAA modified the which means of its acronym NOTAM from “Discover to Airmen” to “Discover to Air Missions.” NOTAMs are updates despatched to all flight crews in actual time about climate or floor situations that might have an effect on a flight. Along with being extra inclusive, “Air Missions” can also be extra correct, however from the male howls of protest that ensued, you’d have thought the FAA was all of the sudden banning males from the cockpit.

So what could be carried out? We will look to a different nation as a mannequin: India.

At 12.4%, India has the best proportion of feminine pilots on this planet, greater than double that of the U.S. One purpose is a nationwide push that started a long time in the past to convey extra ladies into STEM and aviation careers. A program for coaching college students to fly gentle plane has existed since 1948, and lots of corporations and state governments provide scholarships or subsidies to assist ladies earn their wings. Airways in India have additionally instituted insurance policies that assist ladies juggle aviation careers and household life, together with permitting them to fly whereas pregnant, offering six months of paid maternity depart, creating versatile work schedules and providing childcare.

Within the U.S., airways are slowly overhauling employment insurance policies to make them extra pleasant to ladies, however the comparability is telling. Based on one feminine Delta pilot, Delta supplies 12 weeks of paid maternity depart and two weeks of paid parental depart.

Along with enhancing work/life stability points, U.S. aviation should revamp its outreach efforts.

A current examine by the Experimental Plane Assn. discovered that girls who entered aviation had been more likely to turn into at an early age: 29% had been youthful than 10 once they acquired hooked. One other survey by the College of Nebraska discovered that solely 15% of ladies had been uncovered to aviation throughout college. However as a substitute of targeted nationwide outreach and applications aimed toward school-age children, introductory aviation efforts within the U.S. are fragmented, with a whole lot of small and enormous efforts.

The Civil Air Patrol, with its cadet squadrons, is without doubt one of the few nationwide efforts to contain children in aviation; many of the relaxation are applications sponsored by native airports and small museums. Sadly, many rely utterly on volunteers, and most are underfunded, which limits the variety of individuals. As well as, few of the applications particularly goal women and younger ladies.

We’d like an umbrella group to combine the disparate applications, develop particular outreach for women and foyer the business on ladies’s behalf. Considered one of its main duties ought to be elevating sources for sturdy native coaching applications and aviation and STEM scholarships.

We also needs to set a objective: In 10 years, let’s double the share of ladies in all segments of the aviation business the place they’re underrepresented. India has carried out it. So can we.

Final yr, air vacationers logged a document variety of complaints with the FAA. They had been offended about delayed flights and missed connections, hundreds of thousands of cancellations and spending hours trapped in planes that typically by no means get off the tarmac. Till we repair aviation’s “pale, male and off” drawback, the frustrations will solely worsen.

Eileen A. Bjorkman is a retired Air Power colonel and the writer of “The Fly Women Revolt: The Story of the Ladies Who Kicked Open the Door to Fly in Fight.”