Getting off the ground

Since early last year we have known amidst some consternation and anguish that the national air carrier employs more than 520-odd pilots for its 32 running aircraft. Call it extravagant if you will or simply that Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) is an accommodating employer, whatever the case it is a top-heavy arrangement. There seems to be limits to its generosity though. The national carrier, for all its claims of being an equal opportunity employer, is not known to hire enough women pilots. The few that have succeeded in breaking the glass ceiling and ensconced themselves firmly in the pilot’s seat were seen as trailblazers but far, far too few than we would like to believe.

Against this background it would be more than a welcome change for the national carrier to enforce a Lahore High Court-recommended quota for women following a petition filed by a female pilot. Through a ruling issued on Thursday, the court said it would like PIA to reserve a 10 per cent quota for women cadet pilots. The petition was filed after the sole woman candidate for the job of cadet pilot saw her chances vanish into thin air when the airline suddenly reduced by half the number of cadet pilots it wished to employ under an open merit policy. Since the recruitment process prescribed a 10 per cent women’s quota the court was convinced that anything less would be a breach of Article 27 of the Constitution.

This may be a sensible approach but it fails to address a perennial issue for the airline industry: there are just too few women pilots out there — not only in Pakistan but also in the rest of the world. In North America, for instance, women make up just 5 per cent of a vast pool of pilots.

While it may be entirely possible to implement a quota for women cadet pilots in PIA, it would be much harder to enforce one for more experienced women pilots in the local airline industry. This has a lot to do with the unappealing circumstances surrounding a flying career.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 7^th, 2018.

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