Women on the Flight Deck
Since the very beginning of men's discovery of flight women were playing their part in advancing and promoting aviation. There are a number of references to aviatrixes at the beginning of the 20th Century and the French Baroness de Laroche was the first aviatrix to receive an official pilot's license from the French Aero Club in 1910. The American Bessie Coleman was the first pilot of African Heritage (male or female) to obtain a pilot's license in 1921. She moved to France to achieve her goal because the United States were not open to people from a different cultural background.
The 1920s saw the apparition of all women air races in the United States. In Germany Magda von Etzdorf was the first woman to be accepted as co-pilot on a Lufthansa Junkers F13. She was not accepted at the Lufthansa flying school and had to study on her own to pass the theoretical exam. Her contract was limited in time and after 10 months the career of the first woman airline pilot was over. In the United States Helen Ritchey was the first woman to fly as a pilot of a scheduled carrier, Central Airlines in 1934. She was forced to resign 10 months later because she was not accepted in the pilot's union. Helen Ritchey committed suicide shortly after her resignation and Magda von Etzdorf after a crash landing in Aleppo (Syria) on a flight to Australia. In both cases fear of being ridiculed probably an important part in their decision to end their lives.
During the second world war more than a thousand women were flying for the armed forces in aircrafts ranging from T6s to B25s. After the war these women were turned down by all airlines when they tried to obtain a job as airline pilot.
Many people shared the seamen's opinion that women on board would bring bad luck to the ship. The close relationship between aviation and the navy is still evident. The commander is referred to as the captain, aircrafts were referred to as airships or flying boats, Pan Am's callsign was Clipper, on approach at an RAF airfield in the UK in the 1970s the controller asked the pilot to turn to port or starboard. The lore and superstition moved from the navy to the airline industry.
In 1961 Turi Wideroe, a lady from the Netherlands, became the first female airline pilot to fly for SAS. In the United States Emily Howell became the first female airline pilot when she joined Frontier Airlines in 1973. She had to persevere a long time, campaigning for months at the airline's offices in order to be hired. To be accepted by the airline she had to perform a flight check in a simulator, a highly unusual procedure at the time. Emily Howell was the first female airline pilot to be accepted as a member of ALPA and she paved the way for many women. By the late 1970s many carriers accepted women on the flight deck. Slowly but surely women were progressing in the ranks moving to more and more sophisticated airplanes, becoming captains on all types of aircraft from propjets in the 1970s to
the supersonic Concorde in the 1990s.
End of the eighties Luxair hired the first woman pilot. On 11 July 1990 Pia Meyer was the first woman to be promoted to captain by Luxair. In 1996 Camilla Tsan was the first woman to be employed by Cargolux International Airlines to fly the Boeing 747. In 2004 she was promoted to Captain. Today 14 women fly for Cargolux, 4 of whom are captains.
Nowadays women on the flight deck are a common occurrence all over the world and their proficiency is rarely questioned by passengers or peers.
