re: Women Pilots

When I was a younger pilot, I really didn’t like female pilots, mostly because of hiring preferences. I saw female pilots with the same experience as me get interviews with major airlines while they threw my resume in the trash.

But I’ve flown with numerous female captains and a few first officers now that I’m a captain, and they’re mostly very good pilots.

One poster mentioned something about women not being able to handle stressful situations well and that kinda concerns me. All the flying I’ve done with female pilots has been normal flights with no problems or emergencies.

I have a friend who’s a captain also and he was telling me about an emergency he had with a female first officer. I can’t recall what the emergency was, but he said she froze and was absolutely of no help during the emergency. He was basically doing everything by himself. After he took care of the problem he asked her what the hell happened to her and why she froze and she started crying. When they got to the gate, she started really sobbing and saying, “We could have died! We could have died!” He wrote her up and she had to go get additional training. Don’t know if she was allowed or wanted to fly again.