Austrian Airlines Wants More Female Pilots in the Cockpit

As part of its efforts to expand its operations, Austrian Airlines is planning to add 100 fully trained pilots to its staff and increase the share of women in the cockpit.

In the first half of 2018 alone, Austria’s home carrier hired 400 new employees, mainly pilots and flight attendants. “We are pleased that we can offer so many career entry opportunities to experienced pilots and those who still want to become pilots,” said Helmut Haubenwaller, Head of Crew Training at Austrian Airlines.

The job and training offering particularly targets women. Over the last three years, the percentage of female pilots at Austrian Airlines has risen from 3 percent in 2015 to the current level of 5 percent. “This is a positive development, and demonstrates that women are still strongly underrepresented in this profession. For this reason, the declared objective of Austrian Airlines is to have more women in the cockpits of its aircraft,” the company said.

Learning to fly

Furthermore, Austrian Airlines announced more training courses for future pilots in the coming year: four so-called ab initio courses will be offered in 2019, each with 24 training positions for interested candidates without previous flight experience. The requirements demanded of prospective candidates include EU citizenship, a secondary school leaving certificate, a secondary school vocational certificate, or the subject-related university entrance qualification of the country of origin.

Moreover, candidates should be at least 165 cm tall and have an unrestricted passport. In addition, they should have a very good command of written and spoken German and English.

People wearing glasses or contact lenses may only have maximum of +/- 3.0 diopter lenses. More information for potential applicants is available at www.austrianpilot.at.

Austrian Airlines currently operates a route network of around 130 destinations. The company transports approximately 12 million passengers a year and employs 7,000 staff from 58 nations.