Who's Going to Fly Your Plane?
A new study finds that women pilots might actually outperform their male counterparts.
Remember that ridiculous trope about women being bad drivers? Well here’s some food for thought.
A new study conducted at the University of Waterloo in Canada found that women pilots might actually outperform their male counterparts in high-pressure flight situations.
“We can’t assume that because two pilots are looking at the same things, they will react the same way. Our study shows that women may be better at keeping control and making decisions in stressful flight scenarios,” said Naila Ayala, lead author of the study and postdoctoral fellow in Waterloo’s Multisensory Brain and Cognition Lab.
The research also found that despite male and female pilots having nearly identical visual attention patterns and flight experience, female pilots tend to make fewer flight control errors when stress levels increase.
To be sure, the sample size was small: The researchers used a high-fidelity flight simulator to study just 20 experienced general aviation pilots—10 women and 10 men—who were flying through a series of both typical and emergency situations. But the research, as Ayala says, is nonetheless important in that it pushes back on common stereotypes and myths about women’s abilities in male-dominated professions.
According to Women in Aviation International, a non-profit, women currently account for just under 11% of all professional pilots.
“Understanding how different people perform under pressure helps us build better training programs for everyone, safer cockpits, and more inclusive aviation systems,” commented Suzanne Kearns, associate professor and director of the Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Aeronautics.
“At a time when the industry is facing a pilot shortage, tapping into the full potential of all pilots, regardless of gender, is more important than ever.”
