“I don’t notice whether it’s a man or a woman or what. All I see is a captain.”
So says Private Stockdale, played by Andy Griffith, in the hilarious military spoof, “No Time for Sergeants.” The comment is made after a male colonel and a female captain enter the mess hall of the military installation where Stockdale is making his sergeant’s life a living hell.
This was in 1958. The idea of equality goes back a ways.
I mention this brilliant piece of work for a reason. Pardon me for taking a blatant stab at sexism, but the first part of this column is for the boys. And yes, I mean boys, not men.
The distinction between boys and men, at least in my mind, has more to do with maturity than height, weight, or age. So, allow me the latitude to speak slowly, in a clear voice, to the many boys who occupy the right seat of training aircraft. They are the testosterone-soaked CFIs so many of us work with.
Further down this page I’ll get to the women. Maybe not in a form that would qualify as equal time in the sense the FCC would find acceptable, but this one’s all about improving the success rate of the 51% of the population we’ve done such an exceptional job of excluding from the cockpit for so long.
That’s a worthy goal in my estimation.
Boys, and I’m talking specifically to the CFIs and the wanna-be CFIs who guard the gates to the Empire of Aviation: You are, by and large, relatively young, fairly inexperienced professionals who have the power to shepherd new pilots into the club or bar the door.
You can do this intentionally or unintentionally. Either method is undesirable, but let’s consider the unintentional for the moment, turning it intentional and, hopefully, creating a better outcome in the process.
When a female human being comes to you for flight instruction, their hope is that you will teach them to fly. That’s simple enough. It’s obvious. It’s their stated goal. They’re willing to pay for that service. And they do.
Let’s take them at their word, shall we? Regardless of what’s happened in the past and what you thought was acceptable behavior, I’d like to encourage you to put on your big boy pants and provide that exact service. Teach them to fly and fly well. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Now, and I can’t believe I have to write these words out for the benefit of those who are so naïve or self-absorbed they haven’t had this realization yet, many of these women harbor a secret fear. What they fear is you. More specifically, they worry about you, their CFI, hitting on them during their lessons.
Learning to fly is a challenge. Each of us who flies knows that. Each of us who instructs has vivid memories of aspects of the process we had to struggle through. Now, consider what it might be like to try to clear those hurdles with a CFI sitting inches away, pestering you with comments, questions, innuendo, and invitations that have nothing at all to do with the maneuver or knowledge you’re trying to master.
This is known in the aviation world as a distraction. In polite society it’s considered rude. In a business sense, it’s highly unprofessional. No matter how you slice it, it’s a bad thing.
Most CFIs are male. That’s just the truth of the situation. A significant number of them are young. There is no aspect of flight instructor training that teaches the poor male CFI to override our natural inclination to pursue an attractive female at all cost. Yet override that impulse we must. At least, if we want to be taken seriously in our profession, to advance when opportunities present themselves, to avoid potential drama and lawsuits that could occur should our inability to restrain ourselves while at work become actionable.
Their fear, and it is an entirely reasonable fear based on their own past experience and the experience of others, is that you will hit on them in ground school, in pre-flight briefings, during the flight lesson, and in post-flight debriefs — essentially making each flight lesson a slog where they’re forced to fend off unwanted attention.
Here’s a hint. Don’t welcome your female students by telling them how pretty they are. Don’t comment about how nice they smell or what a lovely outfit they’ve got on. Treat them like flight students. Be Private Stockdale.
That may be difficult at times, but please, for the love of aviation, focus on the work and not on what you may perceive as desirable mating opportunities.
In the coming years an increasing number of your students will likely be women. Treat them with respect. It’s at least possible you’ll see them again. Perhaps they’ll be in the left seat then too, but wearing four bars to your three. Should that occur, it would be best if they held you in high regard, rather than disdain.
In closing, as promised, I have a word or two to share with the women. When selecting a flight school and a CFI — and yes, you should be selecting them — be an active participant in your training. Interview flight school personnel. Have a cup of coffee with your proposed CFI to see if you’re a good fit. Talk to other students, ideally female students, to get their take on the service being delivered as opposed to what was offered.
And should your CFI greet you one day with an unwelcome comment about how you look, or smell, or make him feel…shut that down quickly but professionally. Perhaps, “Let’s just work on this lesson and leave the personal stuff out of it,” would be a perfectly reasonable response.
In the unfortunate case that your CFI continues to act inappropriately, don’t quit. Rather, meet with the chief flight instructor and ask for a change of instructors. That’s not rude, or whiney, or bitchy. That’s a normal request when a CFI and student aren’t clicking.
Here’s the good news. If both the CFI and the student can commit to these simple steps, success rates and overall satisfaction will rise for the occupants of both seats. That‘s good news for everyone involved.
I’m eye-rolling at some of the comments here offering a whiny “well, *I’ve* never seen/heard/experienced that, so it can’t be real!”
Anecdote isn’t evidence, boys. Do better.
This reads like an out of touch get off my lawn article. While there may be good intentions, grouping all young male CFIs is similar stereotyping that the article seems to condemn. Let’s focus on aviation and flying and not lower women in the profession as those who can’t take care of themselves.
With all due respect, Jaime, but women have been involved in aviation since the Wright brothers (their mother helped put cloth on the wings of the Wright flyer). You have the first black woman, Bessie Coleman, to receive a pilot’s license in the 20’s and then there is Jackie Cochran, head of Women Airforce Service Pilots, Amelia Earhart, and dozens of women in the WASP squadron. One of those women created an airport here in North Texas and conducted training from that airport until she was in her nineties.
There are thousands of stories like these through the years so please don’t make it sound as though women have been excluded from aviation over the years. It’s not true, but women are now wholly convinced they are just as capable as men to be in aviation so now we are seeing many more women getting involved in aviation than ever before.
They don’t need any help from us men because they are quite capable of getting involved on their own. I train a lot of pilots here in North Texas and I can tell you I see more and more women getting into aviation, but I don’t treat them any differently than their male counterparts because being a pilot takes certain skills and mindset. My job is to instill both in anyone who has a desire to be a pilot. I welcome anyone who wants to enter the incredible career of aviation.
There’s a checkride pilot around here who is a sweet, demure, grandmotherly type who has every rating known to the FAA and is likely rated in UFOs as well. I occasionally had to warn some of the more testosterone driven students not to be deceived by her appearance. I told them that appearances notwithstanding, if they dared to give her any static or screwed up even slightly in the check ride, she would promptly chew them up and spit them out, probably while the airplane was still at 10,000 ft AGL. Most of them listened, a few did not – and regretted it.
As a retired, aging and part-time CFI, maybe this explains why I’ve had outstanding successes teaching young, female students — one of whom currently is a Naval aviator (aviatrix). Yeah, I see you’re good-looking, and so are my adult daughters. It’s a warm day, so go ahead and wear your shorts in the left seat. Let’s just be safe so I can get home to my wife of the past 49 years. Thanks Jamie, maybe this is my new specialization. I’m way too old to dream of a airline career anyway …
I began flight instruction at age 40 in 1981. That’s later perhaps than average, and I was married, so my fear was less about being “hit on,” and more about being yelled at or bullied, or made to feel that I didn’t belong in the cockpit. That’s what the general public’s view of senior pilots was at the time. My primary instructor and all after were friendly and professional. Only occasionally were there instances of “mansplaining”: assuming that because I was female I must not know how a reciprocating engine works, They were fine once they knew I understood mechanical things, and maybe they learned something about judging qualifications based on gender or other unrelated characteristics.
I later went on to run the FBO where I had learned to fly. I had to let go only one flight instructor who didn’t understand how to behave with a female student (he referred to a nearby monument, an obelisk, as a giant phallic symbol). I tried unsuccessfully to hire a female CFI, as I felt there might be potential female students intimidated by their assumption of what a male instructor would be like. Meanwhile the fellas did a great job, and I was proud of them, ranging from a newbie right out of Embry Riddle to senior military pilot instructors.
I cherish my relationships with my pilot brothers and sisters, who for the most part treat each other with respect. For those fossils who don’t, it’s their loss.
Jamie, most of your stuff is usually spot on but this silly article is nothing but crap; stick to what you really know and stop trying to be a psychologist! I have taught many students to fly or qualify to operate aircraft from the J3 to the B767 some of which were females but never encountered any situations similar to what you just described!
I guess I fail to see any battle of the sexes in the cockpit. As a student pilot, my CFI was female. That was 46 years ago. It wasn’t a big deal then. She wasn’t beating her chest about being a female teaching a male, and quite frankly, as a student pilot, I just wanted an instructor that wanted to instruct, and she fit the bill. Our chromosomes weren’t really involved. The fact that there are more men than women flying has more to do with the desire to fly than men keeping women out of the cockpit. Sure, there are some troglodytes out there yet. And there always will be… of both sexes (or however many sexes the government chooses to define this week)
JS,
Thank you for sharing a story that illustrates the point of this article. You had a flight instructor who acted professionally. She didn’t introduce any extraneous issues to the process. And as a result you were both successful.
If all CFI‘s acted similarly imagine how beneficial it would be to general aviation as a whole.