She Dares to Travel Podcast Ep 01: She Dares to Fly with Rhea Mackay
According to recent stats from the International Society of Women Airline Pilots, only 5-10% of pilots are women! Woah. On top of this the percentage of female captain’s drops to 1.42%. Being that we’re living in 2020, there’s no way I would have guessed these numbers being so low.
Understandably, these percentages would be low in the 1940’s - 1970’s as women were breaking out of the ‘stay at home’ mom role and there was little opportunity for women to become pilots, but why are they still so low in the year 2020?
On my first She Dares to Travel Podcast, I chat with Rhea Mackay, one of the first female commercial pilots hired on by Westjet and we discuss all aspects of Women in Aviation. She has flown all sorts of aircraft’s and is now currently flying the large Boeing 787 Dreamliner from Calgary, AB to London Gatwick, UK. It doesn’t get any more impressive than that! Couple that with being a mother and figuring out the work/life balance that many women wouldn’t want to tackle with the schedule of being a pilot - but she’s doing it! And it is inspiring.
I was on Westjet’s Dreamliner when they first flew in May 2019 and the plane truly is a dream, it’s comfortable, spacious and if you splurge to sit in Premium or Business class there’s mood lighting and you can wake up to the sound of a Loon….Yes, very Canadian Eh? Not to mention in Business Class you also can get an order of poutine to enjoy mid-flight.
How to even get in to aviation? Especially as a woman? Well, like most ideas, it starts with a dream, and the idea of being a pilot from a young age; my hope is that many little girls will start looking at airplanes saying to themselves that one day they’ll be up in the sky flying that plane - because, Rhea Mackay is proof that with hard work and determination anything is possible.
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