{"id":6651,"date":"2019-01-24T01:13:20","date_gmt":"2019-01-24T01:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/could-women-solve-the-global-pilot-shortage\/"},"modified":"2019-01-24T01:13:20","modified_gmt":"2019-01-24T01:13:20","slug":"could-women-solve-the-global-pilot-shortage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/could-women-solve-the-global-pilot-shortage\/","title":{"rendered":"Could women solve the global pilot shortage?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Media caption<\/span>‘The perception was women didn’t fly aircraft’<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Claire Banks is about to fulfil her childhood dream of flying planes for a living.<\/p>\n

After almost a decade as a physiotherapist, her aviation career is now ready to take off.<\/p>\n

The 36-year-old from Lancashire in the north of England has just been offered a job as a pilot by UK carrier EasyJet, joining a small but growing number of women around the world flying commercial aircraft.<\/p>\n

Once seen as a very male job, Claire says that attitudes have thankfully changed over the past two decades.<\/p>\n

“On leaving school it [becoming a pilot] wasn’t really an option for me, there was very little information, and the perception was that women didn’t fly aircraft,” she says.<\/p>\n

“But the industry is now working hard to change that perception, and they’re making the career accessible to absolutely everybody.”<\/p>\n

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\n Easyjet wants 20% of all its new pilots to be women by the end of next year
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With the global aviation industry warning of a shortfall of pilots as demand for air travel rises strongly,<\/a> recruiting more women could go a long way to solving the problem.<\/p>\n

Worldwide air passenger numbers are expected to increase by 6% in 2019, to a record 4.59 billion,<\/a> according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA). Looking further ahead it predicts that levels could reach 8.2 billion by 2037, led by demand in China, India and Indonesia.<\/a><\/p>\n

Boeing, the world’s largest plane-maker,<\/a> says that if passenger numbers do rise to that amount, an extra 635,000 commercial pilots will be needed over the next 18 years.<\/p>\n

At the moment just 5% of airline pilots are women, according to the International Society of Women Airline Pilots (ISWAP).<\/p>\n