“This is your captain speaking. We’ll be flying today at 33,000 feet today …”
It dawned on me today that, in all the flights I have ever taken, I have never heard that spiel from a female voice.
Not only have I never flown on a major airline with a female pilot, I don’t believe I’ve ever even seen or heard of a female pilot flying one of the big commercial jets.
Why isn’t there equal opportunity in the friendly skies, and why don’t you hear more of an outcry about this?
“You should tell the truth, expose the lies and live in the moment.” - Bill Hicks
I’ve had a female pilot once. It was surprising to hear a woman’s voice say, “This is your Captain.” How sad, huh?
Also, a friend of mine was on a flight once where the female captain announced her gender and position on the airplane and that if anyone had a problem with it they could leave. He said a couple of men actually got off the plane.
There are women pilots and flight crews. I have actually met female captains and crew. However, they are certainly a minority.
One important source for commercial pilots is from military flight crews. Until recently, women have not been eligible to serve at all as pilots and crew, and their military representation is still disproportionatly low.
Other means of aquiring the necessary flight experience to qualify for any crew positions are difficult and expensive.
He’s the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armor, shouting ‘All Gods are Bastards!’
Perhaps women are properly represented. What I mean, is that it could be that very few women WANT to be commercial pilots. I doubt this is the case, but I just wanted to throw that out there. I don’t believe that each race, sex, gender, etc. should be represented in every job based on their percentage make-up of the general population without taking into account who WANTS the job (and is qualified to have it of course).
BTW… I have flown on two commercial flights that have had female pilots. Both instances were within the last year, so perhaps it is becoming more common.
Most people don’t know this, but the pilot of the ValueJet that crashed in the Everglades (because of the oxygen generators) was female.
Not to get too political here, but I believe the media totally ignored this because they felt just mentioning that the pilot was a women would be the same as them saying “and that’s why it crashed”, which is pretty ridiculous.
SingleDad wrote “One important source for commercial pilots is from military flight crews. Until recently, women have not been eligible to serve at all as pilots and crew, and their military representation is still disproportionatly low.”
This isn’t true. As least as long as 50 years ago the military used women to fly military airplanes, although not in combat.
YEAH, the WASP’s were disbanded even before the end of WWII. They did not continue to serve as pilots or aircrew for the next 40 years, but were basically ignored by the Air Force. (The Navy story is very similar.) http://www.wasp-wwii.org/wasp/resources/timeline.htm
The jet that lost most of it’s roof in Hawaii about 10 years ago had a female co-pilot, the plane was able to make a safe landing after that disaster. I suggest reading the book Takeoff by Bonnie Tiburzi the story of one of the first female airline pilots.
Flying jets takes a lot of hours. The best way to get the hours is to fly in the military. You get to fly, you deal with bureaucracies, and you get paid for it.
A female friend of mine was a helicopter pilot in the Gulf War. She said there was a lot of antagonism toward female pilots, beginning in flight training. After flying in the war, she went to a conference at her base back in the U.S. She was singled out by the speaker who said, in effect, “You’ll never be a pilot because you are a woman.” This was after she and other women had been flying missions.
This might be a factor when it comes to women flying commercially. The women in the “front office” have had to go through all of the training, whether military or not, as their male counterparts; plus they’ve had to overcome male prejudices. I haven’t seen the anti-female attitudes in the General Aviation world (the only kind of flying I’ve done), but when women compete for jobs with “red-blooded Amurrikin aviators” perhaps some testosterone-pumped wunderkind thinks “You’d actually consider hiring a woman instead of me?”
I’ve flown on commercial aircraft that were flown by women, and others that have been flown by men. I never detected any difference in the abilities of the person behind that little locked door.
Hail Ants - I don’t know about where you live, but around here it was never any secret that the ValueJet pilot was a female. Every news outlet, print and electronic, did interviews with her parents, siblings, and friends ad nauseum as well as documenting her training and credentials. I don’t know of anyone who believes the cannisters exploded because the pilot was female.
Sig! Sig a Sog! Sig it loud! Sig it Strog! – Karen Carpenter with a head cold
NASA has three female shuttle pilots and one commander. There is talk of the possibility of some all-female missions next year. Because of the scarcity of female subjects for space medicine research in the first 30 years of the space program, NASA feels they have a lot of catching up to do to learn the effects of long term weightlessness on women. http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/space_women990412.html
Rush Limbaugh made some sly anti-female comments about the value-jet crash when he found out the pilot was a woman. A typical cheap shot. Another female pilot of note Patty Wagstaff 3x national air aerobatic champion, her plane is in the National Air&Space Museum.
In 1988, I shot a series of PSA’s ( Public Service Announcements) called “When I Grow Up”. One of them featured the pilot of the very first 767 to land in New York City regularly. It was at LaGuardia ( which shocked me, because of the very short runways…). I don’t remember HER name.
Cartooniverse
If you want to kiss the sky, you’d better learn how to kneel.
There are lots of reasons why there aren’t that many female pilots. First, young girls aren’t usually encouraged to get into aviation. Second, the road to an airline pilot’s job is tough, and often involves a lot of dirty physical labor (a lot of pilots build their hours flying cargo planes into the bush, doing flight instruction, and small charter work. It’s not glamorous, and a lot of it requires significant physical strength). Third, there was a lot of resistance to female commercial pilots 10-20 years ago. There really isn’t anymore, so expect to see a lot more females in the airlines in another 5-10 years as the current crop graduates upwards.
My Private Pilot flight instructor was a woman, and she was the best instructor I’ve ever known. My wife’s a pilot. So I have some familiarity with the subject.
