What is it like to work in an airline? The story of six women in the aviation industry

And you, what do you want to be when you grow up? This question that adults usually ask any boy or girl so happily, has had almost pre-established answers for a long time. footballer for them. Nurse for them. Pilot for them. Ballerina for them. Children answer it almost automatically, thinking about what they see there and there, without being very aware that there will come a time in their lives when they will have to ask themselves that question.

Between May and June, Baccalaureate students have to make the decision about the studies that may not mark their professional future, but the next few years of their university life. There the answers will depend on tastes, hobbies, abilities, but stereotypes will also appear and referents will resonate.

They may have a clear choice or they may end up being part of that significant percentage of Spaniards who decide to change their studies during their first year of university. Others give their first choice a little more space and take a little longer to turn their career around. It’s happening.

After a while you are clearer about what you want -or simply what you don’t want-, you know yourself better and you know what your abilities are. You also know more about the market and, before you, a range of professions that you were unaware of before opens up. There are the culprits of the transfer from lawyers to psychologists, from doctors to veterinarians and from engineers to businessmen.

In the case of Julia Scharbach, Commercial Strategy Specialist at Vueling Airlines, the change in professional direction has been something natural. This Austrian came to Barcelona to study a master’s degree and here she stayed. She began her professional career in marketing and in that same branch she joined Vueling. But as she discovered herself professionally, she realized that she could do well in other areas.

At the airline they knew how to identify that talent and versatility and offered her a position in the Commercial Strategy department, a position that, due to its new and different nature, was a challenge for her but, at the same time, “is a way to get out of your zone of comfort and allows you to develop as a professional”, he tells us.

Emane Chriki, Vueling Duty Manager, on the other hand, discovered her true passion because she did not get the cut-off grade to study the Degree in Public Relations, Marketing and Advertising. That didn’t paralyze her, “I didn’t want to take a gap year and I didn’t want to study a career that didn’t convince me, so I started the higher degree in Travel Agencies and Event Management which allowed me to do an internship at the airport. That’s how I discovered this world and I said to myself, I want to retire here”.

She joined Vueling in February 2022. In one year, Emane has risen to become Duty Manager, a position from which Vueling’s daily operations are managed at Barcelona airport in coordination with all departments and which It also acts as a bridge with the airline’s headquarters.

And he has done it from scratch, without having previous experience in the sector, because “at Vueling, if they see a person qualified to develop that job and who wants to, they allow them to grow within the company and continue learning, they train them to that it continues to grow and it is something that I really like, to see that they are committed to young people ”, he acknowledges.

Emma is not the only one. Yolanda García, Fleet Support Engineer, is an aeronautical engineer from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and entered to do her first internship at Vueling, where she currently works in the maintenance department as part of a team in charge of supervising and ensuring the good condition of the aircraft. aircraft technically.

Here she has been taking advantage of an opportunity that she herself confesses “surprised me, because in my department there are many profiles older than me and who have a lot of technical knowledge and experience. Being trusted that she was fresh out of college motivated me. Also, that after being an intern they hired me, they allowed me to move from department and pushed me to continue growing by setting new challenges for myself ”, she relates.

One of those challenges was being on the team that had to return to circulation all the planes that had been stopped during the Covid-19 pandemic. Achieved “and the feeling that stays with you is ‘I could do it'”.

Share that memory with Isabel García Álvarez, Director of Operations Planning

Keep learning, professionally and personally. She has been working in an eminently male sector for years, and remembers: “when I was in the other airlines, there were many more men than women, but the truth is that I didn’t care because I’ve always been more result-oriented, but recently, doing a IAG course, (International Airlines Group, group of airlines to which Vueling belongs) I have begun to realize subtle things that make a difference between men and women”.

Those things are, for example, the impostor syndrome that, on some occasions, appears and makes her remain in the background. Today she has female references close to her who encourage her to recover her place, also in the most literal sense. That is something that one of the department heads with whom Julia works also does, “during a meeting, the women sat a little further back at the table and she told us no, that we should take our place at the table and That helped me awaken my conscience”, he confesses.

Elisabeth Calleja, a cabin crew member, noticed these female references when she was 16 years old and felt the crush on what is now her profession. At that time she was studying outside of Spain and came and went by plane. On board, sitting in her seat, she “was the type who never fell asleep and always watched. She was aware of what the flight attendants were doing and, once I finished my studies, it was clear to me. I did the course and had the opportunity to join Vueling. I started at the age of 19 and 8 years later I’m still here. I like to say that I have matured together with Vueling”.

Almost a decade of travel in a profession that she did choose by vocation and that, despite the stereotype, is also suitable for men, “it is true that if you look back in the past, only one female crew member was visualized and there was hardly any men, but it is becoming more egalitarian. Here girls and boys do the same work and the passengers see the same thing”. This is another way to break down micromachismo.

It is no coincidence that the parity discourse is so normalized in a company in which the management committee is practically equal – there are 40% women – and there are 45% women in management positions. Data like these were a great push for Sandra Hors, Vueling’s Chief Communication Officer, to say yes to the company, “for me, being part of an organization with these figures is a source of pride.”

Not only the numbers moved her. Accustomed to working in predominantly masculine environments -before linked to the world of football-, she found in the airline a space to develop as a professional and “a company that seeks to identify talent and promote it regardless of your gender”, explains Sandra, who points out that This is a value and a philosophy that she is proud of, also with regard to the new generations that are looking for an opportunity.

Because it wasn’t always like that. “Years ago, one of my first managers told me: ‘you have two problems: you are young and you are a woman,'” referring to how she had to fight to find a place in the world of work. “Although there is still a long way to go, I think that very important steps have been taken and this now allows me to think that if things like this can work against me when it comes to joining a company, then I am the one who does not want to be part of that organization”, she adds.

If we ask her what she would like for the future, she is clear: “that my daughter lives equality”. Equality so that girls stop being surprised when they see that their plane is flown by a woman who also tells them that they can do it too. So that when that girl is asked what she wants to be when she grows up, she can answer a mechanic, an engineer or whatever else she wants.