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The purpose of this paper is to examine cultural sexism in the UK aviation industry through the experiences women commercial pilots have encountered with their male colleagues and management.

Interviews were carried out with 20 women commercial airline pilots: 17 women were currently airline pilots, or were previously airline pilots and resigned and three women were flying instructors. There were nine different UK airlines for which the women airline pilots worked.

Women pilots face cultural sexism where their male colleagues expect them to be different based on their assumptions about women in general but expect their female colleagues to adapt to the current social and cultural system in the UK industry.

Further research is needed to explore ways to combat cultural sexism. Limitations include a focus on UK airlines only, plus the methodology relied upon women who were open to discussing their experiences rather than a random sample of pilots.

Research in this paper highlights how change is needed to produce a more inclusive culture to improve the working culture for women pilots and to appreciate the diversity that women bring to organizations.

This paper provides insights into an under researched area of women's employment and the existence of cultural sexism.

Only 5 per cent of commercial airline pilots worldwide are women and women who enter the profession may experience negative attitudes and differential treatment on account of their gender. Although a growing body of research has focussed on the experiences of women pilots once they are hired, there is a need to examine women’s experiences during their initial (ab initio) training when their personal and professional identities are being developed and contested. Drawing on empirical fieldwork of the experiences of both women and men ab initio pilots undergoing training at two UK-based Flight Schools, this chapter reveals that women cadets not only perceive elements of their professional identities differently from men but that they actively adopt a range of strategies to negotiate potential conflicts between their developing personal and professional identities. The chapter makes a theoretical and empirical contribution to existing studies of gender-dominated professions and offers recommendations to Flight Training Schools and airlines who are seeking to encourage more women to enter the airline pilot profession.

Pilots of commercial airlines comprise generally ex‐military pilots and pilots with purely civil craft experience. There are four major configurations of a cockpit crew based on the composition of the pilots holding the two positions of captain and first officer. The hypotheses of this study are that the team composition will contribute to different teamwork characteristics in terms of teamwork harmony, teamwork conflict, and crisis handling. The hypotheses propose that these characteristics derive from the differences in background, work experience and the training conditions of these two distinct types of pilot. Scheffe’s post hoc statistical results support two of these three hypotheses, i.e. teamwork conflict and the handling of crises. The implications of these findings for management and training are discussed further.

In the aviation sector adversity faced by female pilots stemming from stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination are well documented. Such adversity in the workplace can cause occupational stress, which may be greater for female pilots, and this influences individual resiliency, impacting job performance and wellbeing. Resilience may be a mitigating factor for coping with occupational stress and individual resilience can be factored into an organisation’s resilience as a whole. When organisations face challenges, there is a need for resilience in order to survive and adapt during disruption and adversity. Resilience with respect to employee and workplace contexts includes both personal resources among the employees as well as workplace resources that are connected to the workplace and organisational environment. As resilience continues to emerge as part of a human capital management strategy, the need to understand the role of the workplace is magnified. For aviation, understanding resilience can potentially inform organisational interventions to address the known occupational stressors and workplace adversity to increase employee performance and well-being. The role of workplace adversity and perceptions of workplace resource availability including supportive environments are discussed in relation to how they influence employee resilience specifically in the aviation industry. The aim of this chapter is to define resilience specific to employee and workplace contexts, introduce personal and workplace resources to influence employee resilience, and discuss the role of occupational stressors specifically for women in male-dominated career fields such as aviation.

The commercial airline is an extremely competitive, safety‐sensitive, high technology service industry. People, employees and customers, not products and machines, must be the arena of an organisation’s core competence. The implications are vast and pervasive affecting no less than the organisation’s structure, strategy, culture, and numerous operational activities. Completed by 13 respondents (executives), this audit presents a series of select findings of a human resource management audit carried out in 2001‐2 and contains extensive data on airlines from nine countries from around the globe. The conclusion drawn from these three bodies of work is that, with the exception of a handful of high performing airlines, the industry as awhole continues to function as per a traditional, top‐down, highly divisionalised, industrial model of operations and governance. This model is manifestly inappropriate in such a highly knowledge‐based service market as the airline industry. HRM expertise in general and recruitment and selection as well diversity and equal opportunity in particular are required now, more than ever, to spearhead the strategic development of a customer‐centric, learning‐oriented workforce that is capable of adapting quickly to the strategic goals and change imperatives facing the airline industry.

The implications arising from the underrepresentation of women and inequality of female participation in leadership and senior management positions continues to challenge many sectors of the economy and transportation, including commercial aviation. Although concerted efforts have been made to introduce initiatives encouraging women into senior leadership roles, change is slow and women remain underrepresented on Senior Management Teams (SMTs) and the Executive Committees of commercial airlines and airports. Globally, and prior to the COVID pandemic, only 3 per cent of airline CEOs were women whilst women held 8 per cent of airline CFO posts and 3 per cent of COO posts (Silk, 2019).

Air transport’s apparent inability to recruit and retain women in top leadership positions poses a serious challenge to the sector and the global economy as a whole. This chapter argues that lack of gender diversity will inevitably hinder the expansion of the sector and pose a significant challenge by failing to capitalise on the skill set of women. The aim of this chapter is to examine women’s representation and progression within the UK aviation sector with a particular focus on airports.

One of the main difficulties in operating a service for the public is that the public, though very much in evidence individually, may collectively be an unknown quantity. When the service is one offering business and commercial information the difficulties are compounded. The field is fluid, the literature extensive and its acquisition complex. Much of the material quickly becomes out of date. Furthermore, the seeker of business and commercial information has, or may have, many strings to his bow and the part played by any single formal information set up is not obvious.

This paper aims to present the analysis of introduction of single engine turbo-prop aeroplane class in terms of certification specifications and flight crew licensing regulations.

Following the results of flight testing and additional performance and sizing calculations, the proposed class was placed among the existing aeroplane taxonomy in terms of performance, flight loads, mass penalty, fuel economy and several other factors. Concerning small air transport initiative, the new class was tried to be placed as a starting point in commercial pilot career.

The paper points the potential market for single engine turbopropeller aeroplanes and lists today obstacles in wider introduction. Therefore, remarks about required change of regulations and requirements for design process, as well as for crew licensing, are underlined.

The results of the study would be helpful in preliminary design of a new low-power turboprop aeroplane, as well as during tailoring the certification specifications.

The approach presented in this paper is a detailed extension of an original idea presented by author for the first time during Clean Sky/small air transport workshop.

Describes a research project that explores differences in values between male and female flying instructors. Hazardous attitudes and practices in aviation have been attributed to masculine values associated with the flying culture. Data were collected from male and female flying instructors and their approaches to resolving instructional dilemmas were compared. Findings were used to predict whether female instructors were likely to shift the culture towards more feminine values, or whether the culture was likely to shift the values of the female instructors. Finds evidence of female instructors being less analytical in their view of instructing, and more achievement oriented than men. Suggests that female instructors are reacting to existing masculine culture rather than promoting feminine values.