Wow! So many views, yet another thread about female pilots (why?).
Pandora, I have to say that I agree with pretty much everything you have said.
There are a number of things which have come up over the last 3 pages to which I might throw in a few comments.
c3% of ATPL holders are women. c2% of pilots in UK airlines are female. So if all these airlines are giving preference to women applicants, why isn't this percentage higher?
Can anyone name a single UK airline that gives unfair preference to female applicants?
The airline I work for still rarely recognises its female pilots. They have yet to introduce uniforms for female pilots (we wear the men's fit), and I still get memos, e-mails etc. addressed "dear gentlemen". I guess I should assume they don't apply to me then
It has been shown that women are better at multi tasking than men (probably comes from all that cooking practice, eh?
)
As for accidents, well let's see, there was an example quoted saying that women always go by the rules not common sense. Recently I was reading about one of the early Comet crashes, the pilot could have got airborne had he thought, but he stuck rigidly to the rules and ran off the runway.
Just one example maybe, but there are loads more.
One recent one that springs to mind - two male pilots take off and discover they cannot raise the gear. They decide to continue to another airport, some distance away. Part way through the flight they realise they are using quite a bit of fuel. Instead of landing at the airport that they are close to they decide to fly over a mountainous area to another airport. The aircraft runs out of fuel, the pilots just manage, by luck, to glide it to an airport and by some miracle no one is killed. The two pilots sat there, watching the fuel flow out, and didn't think that maybe the aircraft would use more fuel with gear down than without. Now, imagine if that had been two female pilots. They would have been seriously bombarded with insults from the general public, newspapers and pilot community in general. But of course they were male. It didn't even make the papers.
It is difficult to compare women pilots against male pilots. Everyone is different. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. Some men are particularly good at communication. Some women are particularly good at flying.
The only time rubbish like hormones, strength, women drivers, etc. comes up is when men bring it up in forums like this one.
Maybe I am lucky but 99% of the Captains I fly with are great, we get on really well, they have no qualms about letting me get on with flying the airplane and making decisions and they tell me that they like to fly with me.
I also fly as part of an all female crew fairly regularly and we get no end of !!!!! from passengers. We put up with this on a daily basis. Considering I am as qualified as a male pilot, I went through a selection process, in which I beat 96 male applicants, purely on my own ability, I pass my 6 monthly checks with no problems, and did my training in the minimum time, I think it is unfair that passengers constantly question my ability and my "right" to be in the flightdeck based on my gender.
That is the one thing you chaps out there are lucky to not have to deal with every day at work.
Of course, I am always diplomatic and polite, even when they are being downright rude to me. I feel it is their ignorance that is the problem, not mine.
We don't have it any easier or any harder than men.
So why do we need threads like this one?