They are called signing rooms. These are workspaces at airports where pilots and flight attendants gather before starting their work day. Curiously, these groups do not usually refer to what they do as “going to work”, but instead define it as “going to fly”. The flights are prepared at firms, both in terms of the technical aspect as well as the onboard service and security. These professionals then transfer to the plane for their flight with a vehicle on the runway or by walking through the terminal.
If you look at a random full crew during these trips, you can quickly come to a conclusion by distinguishing their uniforms: that of TCP, or passenger cabin crew, a historically female profession, is today fairly gender balanced . However, piloting remains a distinctly male job position: in Europe, according to the Eurocockpit association, women commercial pilots make up only 5% on average. According to data from the airlines in Spain, the data is corroborated: of the Binter Canary Islands pilot workforce, 4% are female aviators. At Vueling this figure is 4.5%; in Iberia, women make up 6% of its pilots and Air Nostrum, which proportionally has more, with 7.5%.
“I wanted to be an aviator the first time I went to the United States as a child. I saw a female pilot talking on the phone in a JFK cockpit. That uniform on her was a reference that I will not forget and I wish she knew that I became an aviator because of her”, says Lourdes, who flies CRJ regional jets, mainly between the Balearic Islands, the Peninsula and the Canary Islands. Lourdes believes that today there is no lack of references, but that it is a vocational issue. “It is not a matter of education, but of interest in this field. A few decades ago, it may have been seen as strange for a woman to work in a markedly male job. Now I think it no longer makes sense to talk about this”, he concludes.
In the same line is Savina. This airline flies long-haul routes and crosses the Atlantic several times a month piloting an Airbus A330. “I would say that women pilots, both in my case and in the case of those I know, we like the fact of flying and in general maybe we don’t have as much passion for the technique itself, as I see it happens to them” he indicates . “I think it’s the kind of life that allows you to be a pilot. We like the flight, the trip and I would say even the romanticism that accompanies piloting a plane beyond the mechanical. It’s another way of understanding this profession”.
Both Savina and Lourdes agree that women are increasingly valued and accepted within the sector. They do not feel strange in this world, nor do they notice that they attract attention either in the cockpit or at the airports. They consider that the stereotypes have been overcome, although the Airbus pilot makes a reflection: “I think it is currently less normalized to be a homosexual man and a pilot than to be a woman and a pilot”, she points out.
There is a sector of professional piloting that has nothing to do with that of airlines, in which fixed schedules and agreements order professional and personal life. Aerial work is a very different world, as Silvia, an experienced aviator specializing in large fire-fighting helicopters, explains.
“In Spain, we are about 40 professional helicopter pilots and we basically dedicate ourselves to emergency tasks such as fires, medical transport or rescue. It’s very, very vocational, even though it’s hard,” he explains. “We like doing it, but not the working conditions: we are away from home for a minimum of 20 days, sometimes more, and almost always at distant bases. There is no flexibility and the treatment of our group is becoming very dehumanizing. These conditions do not make this profession attractive”, complains this pilot, who sees family reconciliation as very complicated for both men and women, although even more so in the case of women due to maternity.
“It’s a very serious issue: 12-hour shifts with many days in a row, a lot of uncertainty… either the operators put their batteries in and improve our living conditions, or there will be a lack of pilots, whether women or men”, indicates
In the learning part we find an exception in these percentages. We see this at EAS Barcelona, ??a benchmark in the training of new pilots that currently manages above-average numbers. Between the three annual promotions and different modular courses, the school usually has 80 future pilots a year, although of its staff of flight instructors only one is a woman “Among the different courses, this 2023 we have 30 women between our classrooms in Spain and the Maldives, in addition to flying in our 16 aircraft from Sabadell airport”, says Jorge, head of education at EAS.
