Qantas and Jetstar are marking International Women’s Day 2024 (Friday 8 March) by planning, dispatching and operating three domestic flights with all-female teams.
From the pilots, cabin crew, engineers and airport ground team, to the dispatch coordinator, duty and load controller in the Qantas and Jetstar operations centres, the flights will be run entirely by women.
These flights aim to highlight the amazing job opportunities at Qantas and Jetstar, and the important role women play in the aviation industry.
Qantas will operate QF401 Sydney to Melbourne departing at 6:00am with Jetstar operating a return flight from Sydney to Gold Coast taking off at 7:10am (JQ402 Sydney to Gold Coast and JQ405 Gold Coast to Sydney).
Historically, most roles in the aviation industry were geared towards men. Pilots, engineers and managers of airlines were mostly male, with women mainly in cabin crew and airport service jobs.
While a lot of work has gone into improving this balance in recent decades – helped by many trailblazers across the industry – there is still a long way to go.
Globally, men make up around 96 per cent of pilots and 97 per cent of engineers. At the Qantas Group pilots are 93 per cent men and engineers are 96 per cent men. We are working hard to address this imbalance through targets to increase female representation in these workgroups and other initiatives.
“I’m really proud to be operating this flight on International Women’s Day to represent some of the amazing women who work in Australian aviation.
“Aviation offers incredible opportunities for women, whether it’s in the cabin, the hangar, or the flight deck. It’s my great hope that young girls will see us walking through an airport terminal or onboard an aircraft and consider a career in aviation.” Qantas Captain Camille Macpherson, said.
“I absolutely think that more girls and women should consider becoming a pilot, it has given me the opportunity to travel and meet amazing people.
“If piloting an aircraft isn’t for you, then aviation is such an enormous industry and there are places for women everywhere,” Jetstar First Officer Sophie Connolly, said.
“It’s really important to us that we get more gender diversity into all of our operational roles. It’s good for our culture, means our workforce is more representative of our customer base and also means we can draw from the biggest talent pools.
“Becoming a pilot takes years of training and increasing the number of female pilots isn’t going to happen overnight. It’s also not something that generally starts after university, it starts in school. We need to encourage more girls to select STEM subjects that support a technical career.
“We’re expanding our outreach into schools to promote aviation as a career, which hopefully results in more girls choosing subjects that put them on track to join us in the cockpit or hangar in the future.”
