The most qualified person should get the job. Stable approaches and smooth, correct and timely responses to emergencies are certainly metrics to consider but they are not the only ones. Still, I like what this tiny study shows.
Race, religion, sex, etc, should never be considerations for hiring. Not in America.
Last, did this study finally answer the question, “What is a woman?”? I ask a serious question.
Females […] are now excepted in the profession.
Excepting them would be unacceptable.
Like most of the other commenters, I find the results of the study interesting, but not very relevant to real world flying. The size of the study (number of participants) is too small to draw any meaningful conclusions. But more importantly, it appears that each participant was a single individual in the simulator, rather than a team. What really matters in the real world is how effectively two pilots work together to manage routine tasks and/or emergency situations. Do two men function more effectively than a pair of women? Or, does a coed crew beat either same sex pairing? In a mixed grouping, does it matter if the pilot is male and the copilot female or the other way around? Answering those questions is far more relevant and could lead to ways to modify procedures that would benefit the increasing number of mixed cockpit crews.
KentM, is that your new nom-d’emesis here on AvWeb? We’ve missed your thoughtful insights.
Perhaps not, but I think such research should be very relevant to real world pilot HIRING.
Thankyou.
Interesting.
(But photo caption is contradictory - ‘flying’ or just ‘sitting’ without fastening shoulder belt?)
Poe’s Law surely applies here! Can people truly be that dumb?
The other factor that detracts from this “study” is the low time. These people are at the very beginning of their flying experience. So it introduces a significant variable - training. How long, where, what seasons, by whom on what aircraft? All very subjective but they all have a significant impact on a pilot’s abilities. What if the women were all/mostly from affluent families - lots of very good consistent training on good quality equipment in a short period of time? I started at 14 in Canada, in the early spring, working for 2.85$/hr. So weather played a factor, my ability to get enough money, it was an uncertified program, taught by hobby instructors if you will.
This, as it stands, is click bait playing on those that support or oppose DEI. I flew military just as women came in - many struggled, a few excelled. They were given extra time and attention and breaks their peers did not get. In the commercial world I saw good & bad pilots of both sexes. The women predominantly had easier more glamorous paths (a broad generalization).
We kicked off 2025 with two “non-stable” approaches in a CRJ that lead to one being turned into beer cans at YYZ and the other dragged a wingtip at LGA. Each was done by one of our Venetian aviators. In the B737 simulator they no longer turn off both A & B hydraulics for full manual reversion because our Venetian aviators don’t have the upper body strength to keep the blue side up.
Right. And she’s also “flying” the airplane with: 1) Several blank flight displays; 2) No one in the left seat (doesn’t look like a cockpit for single-pilot ops); 3) Taxiway centerline markings visible thru the windscreen.
Some of the methodology might be useful, but not the conclusions with respect to sex differences. The small sample size and low power means the study is not generalizable.
Well I can give my 2 cents as a researcher who does lots of statistical analyses. After a quick look at the paper itself, I think it’s clear these results should not be trusted. I think the study suffers from serious methodological flaws, in addition to being drastically underpowered.
On the front end, it lacks ecological validity. They ostensibly claim to be comparing men and women in emergency situations under high stakes. However, sims are certified for flight dynamics, not for reproducing stakes, fear, and consequence. In the box you know you’re safe, your job/life isn’t on the line, and there are no passengers to worry about. Thus, there are no stressors or pressures really being applied that would equate to a real emergency situation.
Statistically, they are seriously underpowered by small sample sizes. They only have 10 participants of each sex. In the text of the study they calculated post-hoc that they have no power to detect reasonable effects. What’s more, in such an underpowered study, you are almost guaranteed to overestimate the effects when you find statistical significance (and in some cases they go in the wrong direction of the true effects). Also, their sampling method is not random, but participants are recruited via convenience, which makes results un-generalizable even under large samples. To be fair, they do basically outright state that their results are meaningless in regards to generalizability. This means that the study actually cannot tell us anything about sex differences in piloting at all (something missed by the news reports on this). What the study CAN do is serve as a basis for future study design or hypothesis generation, but it cannot offer any conclusions.
There’s also several methodological problems. For example, when evaluating performance in the emergency scenario, they excluded 3 emergency crashes (2 from women, 1 from a man, leaving 8 women and 9 men) and then compared completion time among the survivors. So they essentially dropped 2 of the women’s worst outcomes. This is called “survivor bias”. A proper analysis would treat a crash as a worse outcome than a slow landing and also analyze time-to-completion with “failure” as an event itself, not delete them from the analysis. Especially with such a small sample, one participant’s performance can dramatically affect the group’s average. I strongly suspect dropping the 2 failing women almost certainly inflated their average scores, making this analysis unreliable.
Another thing they compare is situational awareness, but these ratings are self-reported by the pilots, not measured by the researchers. You can see why that estimate will be biased.
The methodological flaws would need to be addressed even with larger samples, but nevertheless the low power here means the results should be taken with a grain of salt until replicated with better sampling and study design. To be fair, the authors mention these caveats and limitations explicitly in the text, but of course news outlets and editorials do not.
Given it’s limitations, I don’t think we learn much about sex differences from this study.
Thanks.
Media types lack sense.
Media are sensationalist, often biased.
The study needed two additional groups to be valid, men transitioning to women and women transitioning to men.
The US is not ‘god-based’, the Founders were at most Deists - believed in supernatural causation but that humans could not influence it - iow prayer does not work.
The US is based on individual rights to a substantial degree, that was the fundamental change from Britain.
We all know that female pilots achieve peak performance by wearing the right shoes, utilizing the right headset and carrying the best aviation handheld radio.
Especially in exquisite high net worth environments, products offered by affilliate content, can enhance safety tremendously.
How can it be a legit study if the pilots male or female self reported their scores? Sounds like a waste of time.
Here’s my take. Keep in mind I’m recently retired military and international airline pilot, aircraft systems instructor and writer, with just under 19,000 flying hours. There is absolutely no aptitude correlation to gender according to scientific studies at NASA and other agencies (after decades of intense study). In my experience, approximately 30% of new pilot trainees don’t belong in the program (this includes male, female, white, non-white, etc…humans are humans). Another 60-65% are average, and the remaining 5-10% are extraordinary. These top 5% come in every sex, color, and social background…if you’ve seen the newest Top Gun movie, I think they got the mix right. One of the best pilots I’ve ever flown with was an African American male in the Air Force, and my best friend from my service days, another female pilot, was better than anyone in the squadron. One of the best copilots I ever flew with in the airlines was African American(and ended up being a chief pilot), and the few other female pilots were generally good to great. Sadly, there were also minorities that were not sterling…BUT in no greater percentages than the white males. This was before the big push to have a quota…what is now known as DEI. I will say that almost to a person, the minorities I flew with back in the 80’s were excellent…this being because we all HAD to be better to be considered even half as good. That doesn’t exist any more and the ones that don’t belong in the cockpit (that presumably cut the line because of their minority status) reflect poorly on the many other minority pilots that DO perform at top levels. And they are there, doing their jobs well and without any whining or drama, but get dissed because it’s assumed they got their jobs because they are minorities. So, that is why I feel the modern DEI movement, while having good intentions, is only hurting those it was designed to help. And it definitely has safety ramifications. The answer is not quotas. The answer is to give prospects from underserved communities the opportunity to train on the same level as those more fortunate, and when ready and properly trained, THEN they can and will compete on a level field, and excel. That is my humble opinion.