Recently I attended a talk by Kate West MBE hosted by FLYER. Previously, she held a talk at PCL in Heathrow, London. THANK YOU to the Young Air Pilots for posting this on their social media! I managed to tune into this at the last minute!

I will give you a summary of the talk and I hope Kate’s journey inspires all of you, especially females looking to get into aviation.

Kate explains how she was always inspired by the big giants and wanted to fly. However, her vision was restricted by teachers who said she won’t be able to become a pilot – this only fuelled her desire even more! Unfortunately, there’s been little change in people’s mindset with females in aviation over the years – for example, a female will mention she works in aviation – often the first thought is cabin crew. Another example relates to one of my friends who is a training female cadet. She mentioned she has experienced a fair bit of prejudice and sexist comments that are often said in a ‘joking’ manner. It always amazes me to hear about this in this day and age – it’s important we collectively do our bit to encourage females and not steer away great talent from aviation.

The aviation industry needs more female role models like Kate. Did you know only 5% of commercial pilots are female? And fewer than 0.9% of type rating instructors are female. Role models like Kate are incredibly important in paving the way for the future generation.

More recently, airlines and organisations have launched initiatives to promote females in aviation. For example, EasyJet vows that 20% of its new entrant pilots will be female. IATA has also launched the ‘25BY2025’ initiative to encourage a great number of females to get into aviation. Their ambition is to increase the number of females into senior positions by 25% by 2025. These are examples of initiatives launched by a single airline and a single organisation to increase the number of females into aviation. Imagine if we all collectively stood behind this – What a force we could become and the change each one of us could make!

I asked a few questions to the panel and Kate. One of these questions was ‘Whats been the most challenging aspect of training? And how have you overcome it?’ as seen above!

Her response was an interesting one. Perhaps I was expecting something along the lines of the obstacles of getting into aviation as a female. Rather it seemed she was incredibly headstrong when it came to being a female in aviation – BUT the biggest challenge was resilience through hardship and overcoming them. She recalled a time when she found a certain task difficult and cried to her mother saying she won’t be able to do it. The next day she mustered the confidence and put in the grind to complete the task. What seemed difficult was not so difficult in the end – what I learnt from this again is the idea of resilience and not giving up despite all odds. Through this journey there are obstacles we need to overcome one-by-one!

I’m really looking forward to the future where we have far more woman in the cockpit. I’m always looking for better ways of working, innovative-led ideas and inspiration. I cannot think of anything better than having more females as captains and first officers. I am really inspired by Kate’s story and I hope this resonates with young people all over the UK. I hope this inspires everyone and shows us all that with a little bit of grit, hard work and resilience you can go a long way. To find out more about grit and resilience – check out my previous post by clicking here

So that’s it – this was Kate’s story! I hope you enjoyed this summary blog of what I took away from the talk. I hope this inspires anyone looking to get into aviation, especially females.

Happy flying.