One in five easyJet cadet pilots to be women
After reaching its target of doubling the number of female cadets to 12% of its new entrants over the past year, the airline has announced it intends to increase this to 20% by 2020.
Based on current numbers, this means easyJet will be hiring 50 new female cadets every year.
It said that only 3% of commercial airline pilots worldwide are women, and only 450 of them are captains.
In October 2015, easyJet announced an Amy Johnson Flying Initiative with the aim of doubling the number of female cadet pilots to 12% of its intake over two years but, with 600 applicants in the past 12 months it hit its target a year early.
The airline has now set itself a more stretching target of ensuring that 20% of new entrant cadet pilots recruited by easyJet in 2020 are female.
Chief executive Carolyn McCall said: "50 years ago almost all professions were dominated by men and over the last five decades there has been significant progress in almost every sector with women entering and attaining senior positions in professions like law, medicine, education, finance and politics.
"However, the proportion has not changed for pilots and it is hard to think of another high profile profession where women are so under-represented.
"We would like to understand why this is and to do what we can to redress the balance. We have been encouraged by the success of our Amy Johnson initiative since we launched it in October 2015 and the results so far suggest that the demand from women to become pilots is there.
"In light of us achieving our first target we have set a new target of 20% female new entrant cadet pilots by 2020. This means that we will be recruiting around 50 annually which will really start to change the face of our industry. This is a long term strategy, which we hope will eventually lead to easyJet recruiting, retaining and developing many more female pilots."
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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