Fewer than 10% of licensed pilots are women in the U.S. and the percentage of women in maintenance fields is in the single digits, according to a 2022 report by the Women in Aviation Advisory Board established by Congress in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Reauthorization Act of 2018.
While participation of women in the workforce has increased dramatically over the past four decades, the percentage of women in the aviation industry hasn’t appreciably changed, according to the report.
In a tight post-pandemic labor market, the aviation industry desperately needs women. Attracting and retaining them is critical to the future of the industry, according to Women in Aviation Advisory Board Chair Heather Wilson.
In a two-year study the board reviewed research on the barriers facing women in aviation, identified strategies to address those barriers and reached consensus on recommendations for change.
“The biggest barrier that discourages women from entering and staying in aviation careers is culture – and it is the hardest to change,” Wilson stated in the advisory board report. “Women don’t feel like they belong. Changing culture requires consistent leadership commitment over time in thousands of large and small actions across government and industry.”
But at the bustling Van Nuys Airport in the San Fernando Valley, women have taken on male-dominated roles for decades.
They are challenging those norms and have been making significant contributions and inroads in the aviation industry.
Kathryn Purwin is a pilot and the chief executive officer of Helinet Aviation Services, a helicopter company based out of Van Nuys Airport. The company has transported more than 11,000 critically ill children to and from Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, and since 1999 its pilots have been on-site ready to fly 24 hours a day, every day, at no cost to the hospital or patients. Helinet foots the bill.
Purwin has been involved in the aviation community for 30-plus years and has flown private jets and helicopters professionally.
When she was attending UCLA and planning to become an attorney, she decided she wanted to fly after taking an airplane trip with a friend.
“I just loved it,” Purwin said on March 29. “I caught the bug and by the time I graduated I was already starting to build up flight time.”
She has given up flying for now but back then she recalls that about 5 percent of professional pilots were women.
“Unfortunately, it’s not like medicine or law,” Purwin said. “Aviation for some reason hasn’t really (attracted women) and I wish I knew why. I would love to see more females in this industry and slowly you are seeing it but way too slowly.”
While Purwin experienced some tension with male counterparts at first she also had support.
“Women are not just coming in the doors,” she explained. “For the most part there isn’t this bunch of resistance to women, it’s just that there aren’t enough (of them) out there.”
As a pilot she experienced a few scary incidents, but thanks to her extensive training, her calm reaction kicked in immediately. Having thick skin can also be helpful.
“You don’t know how you are going to react when it comes up until it actually happens,” Purwin said. “I had an engine failure and had a brake loss on landing. I was able to handle it very calmly. Obviously the adrenaline kicks in after you’re on the ground and safe. I was happy to know I could handle it.”
According to the FAA, aviation careers include engineers, scientists, maintenance technicians, air traffic controllers, flight dispatchers, flight attendants and air safety investigators—as well as customer service, manufacturing, business and operations management, law, finance, information technology, data analytics, communications, sourcing, sales, marketing, government affairs, nonprofits and human resources.
The Van Nuys Airport, with 200-plus businesses on 730 acres and dedicated to noncommercial air travel, is in the heart of the San Fernando Valley and plays a crucial role in the Southern California airport system, serving a variety of private, corporate and government aviation needs.
It’s a base for emergency services such as life-saving medical evacuation, air ambulance and firefighting operations. Nineteen flight schools operate at the airport and directly contribute to careers in aviation. The airport also supports 10,000 jobs in the region and is home to the North Valley Occupational Center’s Aviation Center which offers an aircraft mechanic technician program.
Veriar Collins-Jenkins, senior vice president of charter and aircraft management standards with Clay Lacy Aviation, which was established in 1968 at Van Nuys Airport as the first executive jet charter company in the Western U.S., is an example of being immersed in the aviation industry — but not as a pilot or a flight attendant.
“I’m not a pilot because I had three driving accidents in a row,” Collins-Jenkins joked. “And the thought perhaps of flying would be far too risky for me, for the people on the ground.”
Collins-Jenkins joined Clay Lacy Aviation in 1985, recruited by the man himself — Clay Lacy — and she now leads the company’s global charter services team and oversees service standards for aircraft management and jet charter operations.
She also leads the operational control center with authority over mission interruption response and mitigation.
Collins-Jenkins has more than three decades of aviation experience, deep industry knowledge and exceptional management and client service skills and grew up in the aviation industry — her father was a private pilot and owned an aircraft interior refurbishing shop at Santa Monica Airport.
She would pick up her father’s mail for him, and one day she met a customer service manager at an aviation company in Burbank.
“He offered me a position, and I didn’t want word to get back to my dad that I turned down viable employment — so I accepted the position,” she quipped. said.
Soon after she met aviation pioneer Clay Lacy, founder at Van Nuys Airport of the first jet charter company west of the Mississippi River serving Hollywood’s biggest names, she once again landed an aviation-related job.
“For me, obviously I was honored to be recruited by Clay and shortly after my employment there I was promoted into the charter department,” Collins-Jenkins said.
“The charter department had been traditionally run by men and I was trained by a male pilot. … Based upon the way Clay thought, he was always more about accountability and finding the right person for the position. I didn’t feel like I was placed there because I was a woman. I felt I was placed there because I would do the best job.”
A key issue that she and other females faced decades ago involved salary discrimination. It was a known fact women were paid less for the same responsibilities as their male counterparts.
It took years before her salary equaled the income of men with the same responsibilities, Collins-Jenkins said.
“In the 80’s and 90’s, the mindset was a man had to raise his family. So, he needs to make more money,” she said. “I made less money and I was obviously faced with those challenges with less money, but I was so passionate about my job and the industry, and I think the 39 years speak to itself, as to how much I have enjoyed what I have accomplished and the growth and transition that I have made from my entry-level position to now.”
In the last 15 years, the percentage of private women pilots and women aviation maintenance technicians has increased by just 0.7%, according to the FAA. Another key observation is the few women converting from student pilots to private pilots. In 2020, the percentage of female student pilots was 14%. The percentage of female private pilots was 7%.
Katie Peters, a commercial flight attendant who has her private aviation’s license and lives in Los Angeles, is training at Van Nuys Airport to become a commercial pilot.
“I grew up watching my parents fly,” Peters said on April 1. “My dad was a pilot for the same airline that I’m a flight attendant for, and my mom was a flight attendant — and that’s how they met. And several of my uncles were pilots as well and grandfathers were military pilots, so it’s in my blood.”
As a young woman, Peters was more interested in the arts. Flying wasn’t something she thought of as a career in which she would be immersed for two decades.
“I always had aviation and travel growing up,” she said. “I was very familiar with it and I really loved the lifestyle — and the travel bug was there. A travel bug was in the back of my brain and was kind of poking at me about how to fly. And so after I had a work injury and COVID, I decided to dig out the log books my dad had gotten me when I was 14 years old and put them to use.”
Every pilot has a log book that collects and records their flight hours. Katie Peters’ message to women in key aviation positions is that she is thankful for their efforts as they carve a path for female pilots and for women in all aspects of aerospace.
