How Do You Encourage More Girls into Flight Schools?

Please see below a few pointers from female flight training students on how you can potentially encourage more girls, and women to engage with a flight training organisation.

Ensure women / girls are adequately represented in all materials

The importance of this is often overlooked, women notice when they aren’t represented; this can often reflect the culture they can expect to experience at the school. Actively involving women in all forms of media and using gender inclusive language will advertise you as a more welcoming and conscious environment.

This includes the posters and display materials inside the flight school/ Aero Club! 

Introduce potential female students to current female students

Hearing an anecdotal experience from someone you can relate to is much more meaningful. This will also provide girls with the confidence to ask more specific questions regarding any concerns they may have.

Celebrate women!

Make a point of celebrating occasions such as ‘Girls in Aviation Day’ and ‘Mother's Day’ on social media. This is also an opportunity to offer discounted flight vouchers! 

Highlight the milestones of female students. This encourages female students currently in training and provides real role models for aspiring future pilots.

 Encourage girls to involve their friends

Entering a male dominated environment can be intimidating for young women, bringing their friends along for their discovery flights or for hour building will help to ease this and make the experience more enjoyable.

Retaining Women in Flight Training

Flight training offers a unique classroom environment of 1-1 intense learning. With this style of teaching, it’s important to ensure that the lessons are adapted to bring the best out of each individual student. 

Historically flight training has been designed for men and male cognitive thinking. Although there are active changes being made to change this, it still impacts some areas of flight training. There is often no realistic fix for these issues, however, by considering them and making small adaptions, we can maximise the potential and increase the retention rate of female students.

Due to the low percentage of female pilots many have no female peers to discuss any concerns or issues with. The environment within flight schools can be incredibly competitive; by educating female students about the issues they are likely to experience, it can help them understand why their experience may differ from their male peers.

Ergonomic engineering design is most often based on an average of the 5th-95th percentile of user data. In modern aircraft this accounts for the wider population, however, many older aircraft are designed from ‘Milspecs’, a data base created from the 1950's U.S. Air Force applicants. This database was predominantly male, therefore female data fell into the <5% category and was not accounted for.

Most light training aircraft fall into this older category of aircraft. This can negatively affect Women’s visibility inside and outside of the cockpit as well as the comfort. Although there isn’t much we can now change about the aircraft design, it’s worth taking some additional time with female students to find a seat position that is comfortable and practical. Also consider the use of additional equipment such as cushions.