The Fly Like A Girl podcast.
Women pilots further along share first flights, scares, long breaks and the people who kept them flying.
Listen nowFly Like A Girl
Growing the number
of women who fly
for life.
Through cultivating generational female mentorship and unifying women pilots across every discipline.
Listen to the podcast
You got your license.
Then nobody stepped in.
School's done. Your instructor has new students. You're somewhere you've never flown, or learning a new skill, alone, thinking: well, now what?
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You've had great guys in your corner, and still no woman a few years ahead of you to text.
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You know women who've flown here for decades. You don't want to bother them by asking for an afternoon.
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Friends say you're ready for a hotter wing. You don't feel ready, and nobody has said not yet.
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A few years in, someone asks for your advice, and your first thought is: who, me?
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You're working out the craft mostly alone, and it's taking years, while your counterparts seem to progress in half the time.
If any of that sounds familiar, you've found yourself in the Mentor Drought.
This is the
Mentor Drought.
Few women in the sky have had a woman above them to learn from
Women have always been in the sky. They've just never been the majority there. After more than a century of flight, women are still about 1 in 12 pilots. Many are the first in their family to fly.
A few women have flown for decades, and many fly quietly and keep to themselves (often for good reasons). Very few have had the chance to become mentors, and fewer still realize they already know enough to be one. In the US, women are fewer than 1 in 10 flight instructors.
Then there's the Missing Middle: the thin gap of pilots six to fifteen years in, between the 30-year veterans and everyone under five. They’re the ones who could be mentoring right now.
8.5%
pilots are women, across every discipline and country we could find numbers for. About 1 in 12.
4%
Women among airline pilots worldwide, about 1 in 25.
15%
Women in Switzerland's paragliding and hang gliding clubs, one of the highest shares we found.
65%
Growth in US licensed women pilots since 2018, about eight times faster than men.
Most of the energy in
women’s flying goes
into the first flight
In the last few years there's been a wave of scholarships, intro days and women's initiatives, and it's been wonderful to watch. They get women to a first license, and it’s working beautifully. The biggest programs measure success by how many women they bring in.
In the US, women hold 16.4% of student pilot certificates and 9.4% of private ones. Who's counting the women still flying five years later? Nobody, it turns out. No flying discipline publishes retention by gender. And who does she call when she's stuck on the same ridge for a whole season?
Each new group of first-in-family pilots graduates into the same gap, with the same short list of women ahead of them.
Retention is just as important as recruitment.
The real problem
isn't access.
It's mentorship.
Nobody's arguing anymore that the sky is closed to women. What's missing is someone a few years ahead of you, on the hill, who knows your name.
Access produces a pilot. Mentorship produces more pilots.
Mentees often become mentors, and mentors make more mentors. Access will forever be important but mentorship is how the number of women who fly for life keeps growing.
Generational female
mentorship means women pilots who have walked the path mentoring the pilots coming up behind them.
- The first woman in her family to fly becomes one of many women who fly.
- A role model you follow online becomes a mentor you can call.
- Getting women in becomes keeping women flying.
- Flying quietly becomes passing it on.
- Progressing alone becomes progressing safely, with someone who'll tell you not yet.
Fly Like A Girl is for the girls, and for the guys too. Anyone who wants to see the numbers even out is welcome here.
Start with the podcast.
Travel guides.
Guides for women pilots, passed down from the ones who have been a place or two.
Merch.
Wear it to the airfield and watch who asks where you got it.
FAQ
Fly Like A Girl cultivates generational female mentorship in aviation: women pilots who have walked the path mentoring the pilots coming up behind them, so the number of women who fly for life is always growing. It covers every discipline, from paragliding and hang gliding to skydiving and powered flight.
The Mentor Drought is the shortage of women mentors in aviation. Few women pilots have had a woman above them who walked the path long enough to mentor them. Across every flying discipline and country with published numbers, women are about 8.5% of pilots, roughly 1 in 12, and about 1 in 25 airline pilots worldwide. Many women flying today are the first in their family to do it.
No. It's for the girls, and for the guys too. Men are mentors, and plenty of women pilots got where they are with great guys in their corner. Anyone who wants every pilot to have the same shot at flying for life is welcome.
No. Fly Like A Girl isn't a flight school and doesn't offer instruction. For lessons, find a certified school or guide. Fly Like A Girl shares stories and guides from women pilots further along, starting with the podcast.
Some things are easier to talk through with someone who has lived them: being the only woman at launch, imposter syndrome in a male-dominated sport, flying through pregnancy and motherhood, how hormones and your cycle affect flying, and how to pee on a long flight. Anyone can give you a great site intro or ground-handling tips. Some questions are easier to ask a woman who has been there. It's also more fun. Launches with other women tend to feel lighter, with more laughing and less pressure to prove anything.
Probably, yes. If you have lived experience, you have something to pass on to the pilot one step behind you. You don't need to know everything, because every pilot is still learning. Mentoring means showing up, inviting someone along and being honest about what you know and what you don't. Experience also comes with time. A pilot who has flown 10,000 hours over 10 years has lived through seasons, sites and conditions that a pilot who flew 10,000 hours in two years hasn't yet. Mentoring is part knowledge and part the judgment that only years bring.
Start local and ask directly. Join your local club, go to a women's fly-in, and message pilots you admire. Pilots love talking about flying, and most will answer. You can also message anyone you hear on the Fly Like A Girl podcast, or send Fly Like A Girl a message on Instagram @_flylikeagirl. We don't know everybody, but we know a lot of pilots around the world, and we'll do our best to connect you.
Generational mentorship
starts with one
conversation
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