Boys outnumbered! 12 of the 13 students in Leading Edge Aviation’s latest intake alongside a Diamond DA40 NG training aircraft. Photo: LEA
More than half of the next intake of student pilots at Oxford-based Leading Edge Aviation are female! Out of the 13 students on Integrated LEAP course 007 starting their training this week, seven are female.
Not only that, LEAP 007 is also the first course being taught using the new 2020 EASA ATPL syllabus and is also the biggest course, in terms of student numbers, yet run by LEA.
“The new course, LEAP-007, is a huge milestone,” said LEA’ s announcement. “This is the first time since Leading Edge’s inception that a course has had a majority female composition.”
The British Women Pilots’ Association (BWPA) report that globally only 5-6% of commercial pilots are female, with similar percentages in the General Aviation field.
Leading Edge says it hopes to set an example of equality to other companies both inside and outside the world of aviation. Half of the company’s board of directors are female.
Andy McFarlane, Chief Executive Officer, said, “At Leading Edge we believe gender should not be a barrier to training, we’re committed to delivering high quality training to students regardless of gender, background and race.”
Dickie Hughes, Chief Theoretical Knowledge Instructor, added, “The Ground School Instruction team has worked extremely hard to redesign the ATPL teaching programme inline with the EASA 2020 syllabus. I am confident our instructors and students will rise to the challenge and continue to deliver excellent results.”
