Asia: Travel boom forces airlines to seek more women pilots

Sophia Kuo says she still hears the whispers as she walks through international airports in her EVA Airways Corp. pilot’s uniform: “‘Wow, we have female pilots.’ ‘How does she fly an airplane?’ ‘She must be really smart!”’ More than eight decades after Amelia Earhart’s solo flight across the Atlantic, women like Kuo, a 35-year-old co-pilot on the Taiwanese carrier’s Boeing 747s, remain the exception in the cockpit. Only about 5% of pilots globally are female, according to Liz Jennings Clark, chairwoman of the International Society of Women Airline Pilots. And just “a tiny” percentage of them are captains. Now, airlines are being forced to balance the scale because a rapid escalation in air travel in Asia may leave the industry desperately short of pilots. The region is transporting 100m new passengers every year, said Sherry Carbary, VP of flight services for Boeing, which assists airlines in training new pilots. To fly all those aspiring new middle class, Asia is going to need another 226,000 pilots in the next two decades, according to Boeing. “There is such an enormous demand to meet the growth that the gender bias will have to be pushed aside,” Carbary said.<br/>Some carriers are trying. Vietnam Airlines Corp., based in what the International Air Transport Association forecasts will be one of the world’s 10 fastest-growing aviation markets, is creating work schedules that take into account demands of family life. UK-based EasyJet Plc has set up a scholarship with the British Women Pilots Association to underwrite the costs of training women pilots. Recruitment advertisements increasingly feature women. Even so, it takes a long time for someone to gain the training, knowledge and experience to fly an airliner. Women recruited today on legacy carriers wouldn’t be ready to take charge of a plane for 12 to 15 years, said Clark, a captain with Transavia, a subsidiary of Air France-KLM Group.<br/>