COURTESY DIANNA STANGER
INTHESPOTLIGHT Continued
industry. People think of pilots and main- tenance technicians, but there’s so much more to aviation. You can be a writer, photographer, project manager, marketer. You can enter finance, human resources, govern- ment relations, management, leadership, airport operations— almost every field you can think of. With the exception of flight
attendants and probably those who work in human resources, every industry segment, every career path, has a very large imbalance of gender and racial diversity.
industry is in need of talent. Social media—whether
YouTube or TikTok or Instagram— is important because it reaches kids where they are. We want to start using some of these plat- forms’ influencers to help us engage that next generation. And one of our recommenda-
Sixty-four percent of women currently in aviation had chosen the career by age 20, indicating the importance of exposing girls to aviation early in life.
How do these insights relate to the vertical flight industry in particular? It was pretty clear that rotorcraft represen- tation was lacking on the WIAAB. To me, that’s a huge concern for the aviation indus- try overall.
Commercial airlines get a lot of attention and a lot of press about their hiring needs across the board, and they’re well funded and able to mobilize and hire people at a much higher rate than the vertical flight industry. I’d hate for rotorcraft to struggle the most with getting talent, because there are so many different segments in the industry that need highly skilled and trained workers.
Some massive concerns haven’t been
well addressed within the rotorcraft com- munity alone. Look at maintenance techni- cians, for example. The number of AMT schools with equipment to train students on a helicopter or spend any time focused on helicopters is minimal. Yet we expect these students to get their A&P and get a job with a helicopter operator. Operators want someone who knows
how to work on a helicopter, but if you can’t give students that training within their own schools, how are we going to have
24 ROTOR JUNE 2022
enough technicians in that segment to fix the aircraft? Workforce development is a real issue
for helicopters as a whole. Some operators are making strides creating programming and building recruiting efforts, but the heli- copter industry in general is behind. There’s a real opportunity to create workforce development initiatives industrywide and expand them to attract and retain more women. And we need to gather data. There isn’t
even a way to look up how many female helicopter pilots or helicopter maintenance technicians there are today. The FAA can do a better job of fostering these initiatives by making that data available.
What are the next steps? The WIAAB was dissolved once our report was made public. We’re looking at govern- ment affairs and communications efforts in which the now-defunct board’s members will meet with their congressional repre- sentatives to promote the findings of the report and get buy-in from constituents. In addition, we’re trying to mobilize a commu- nication plan concentrating on social media and advertising to show the public that our
tions was to create a full-time board focused on pushing some initiatives forward. The new, full- time board we’re recommending would be a different group of women, representing different industry segments from diverse backgrounds and professions. We don’t want our report to just sit on a shelf. I’d love to see some connected and active heli-
copter industry women participate.
Any final thoughts? Overall culture is incredibly important, and it’s also incredibly difficult to change. It’s not something that happens quickly, but I think the WIAAB’s findings have been well received. The aviation industry is mobilized in a
positive direction. There’s a lot of energy focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. We have to start having these conversa-
tions. It’s going to take every single aspect of this industry to effect change. If you look at the number of women who are pilots or maintenance technicians or are in the C-suite or any other position, that number hasn’t changed in the past decade-plus. We really have to get bold as an indus-
try, and we have to be serious about it if we want to attract as many people to the aviation workforce as the projections pre- dict we’ll need. We can’t rely on the same old methods
of attracting and retaining talent in this industry.
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