New attitudes and new ways of attracting potential pilots and maintenance technicians, especially female pilots and technicians, are essential if the aviation industry is to meet the soaring demand for key employees, industry training specialists say.
In the United States, about 4 percent of commercial pilots are women — a figure that has been largely unchanged for decades, Colin Rydon, vice president for training with L3 Commercial Training Systems, told the World Aviation Training Summit (WATS) 2018, meeting in mid-April in Orlando, Florida, U.S.
Rydon cited data from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) showing that 4.4 percent of U.S. holders of airline transport pilot certificates in 2016 were women, up only slightly from 3.9 percent in 2011. Over the same five-year period, the percentage of female student pilots remained unchanged at 12.4 percent, and the percentage of female commercial pilot certificate holders declined from 6.6 percent in 2011 to 6.3 percent i…
