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Saturday, March 17, 2012

Women Airline Pilots!

I have to take a bit of an exception to the sentence "female pilots are still rare."

Percentage wise, only 6% of pilots are women (and this percentage hasn't changed since the inception of flight!) but that still leaves several thousand women pilots around the world (albeit 99% of them in the civilized, Western world). Which doesn't mean there shouldn't be more.

From Women's Dish: Women Airline Pilots!
Female pilots are still rare

Just over five per cent of BA pilots are women (the national average is around three per cent). I haven’t suffered from any sexism at work, but it’s a common assumption that because I’m a woman, I must be cabin crew.

You get an amazing view from a plane
In 1997 I was flying from America to the UK when I saw a curtain of shimmering green and purple light below – the Northern Lights. Streaming into them was the two-mile long, golden glow tail of the Hale-Bopp comet.

Well said (above) by Captain Lynn Barton.

The sky has been her only limit

Stephanie (another Women Pilot) Wallach made Alaska Airlines history Wednesday when she hung up her captain’s hat following her final flight. The Medina resident became the first female Alaska pilot to reach the Federal Aviation Administration-mandated retirement age. She turns 60 today.

It was one of many firsts that have highlighted Wallach’s flying career. She was one of the first 10 female commercial pilots, the first woman to pilot a Boeing 727 passenger jet and a founding member of the International Society of Women Airline Pilots.

And another women Pilot Braniff hired had enough credentials to be an airline pilot, the engineer rating was required in the 1970s. It cost $5,000. “That was a lot of money in 1974,” she said. With that rating in her log book, Wallach applied at the airlines. She was the second female pilot Braniff hired and the only woman in training class. Within two years she was first officer on 727s, flying out of New York to South America and throughout the United States.

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