ABSTRACT

Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) statistics state that there were 5,319 men and two women employed as professional airline pilots within the UK commercial industry in 1974 (see www.caa.co.uk/airlinestatistics). The latest statistics indicate that out of 17,056 commercial pilots, 740 are women, numbering just over four per cent (CAA, 2008). 1 These numbers are comparable with other countries; evidence suggests that in Australia, Norway and South Africa, female pilots make up between three and four per cent (Mitchell et al., 2005). The low numbers of female airline pilots has meant that aviation organisational culture has been slow to change. Some airlines have introduced recruitment drives aimed at women by deliberately advertising in women’s magazines such as Cosmopolitan. However, contemporary images on the World Wide Web still use men to advertise the role of airline pilots. 2 Furthermore, despite adopting positive policies and procedures to address these low numbers, the industry remains dominated by ‘masculine beliefs, values and perceptions’ (Mitchell, Kristovics and Vermeulen, 2006, p. 36). Moreover, one of the factors which women complain about is the lack of real role models (Walker, 2003), but with low numbers of female pilots, it is hard to find real role models and without role models, it is harder to encourage young women into commercial flying as a career.