Gender quotas are wrong says Australia’s first woman airline pilot, Deborah Lawrie. She believes gender quotas are discriminatory and devalue the achievements of those who get the job.

“I believe it’s wrong. They’re attacking it from the wrong end,” she said. “They need to go to the other end, and encourage women to get in the industry in the first place. By virtue of getting more applying, you’ll get more who are competitive with the guys.”

Lawrie is a trailblazing figure, having won her place in the cockpit by triumphing in a 10-month legal case against Ansett, which then refused to employ woman pilots at all.

“The best person should always be selected for a job,” said Lawrie. “And I think quotas devalue the ones who get the job through merit.

“So, if you say you’ve got to have 50 per cent guys, 50 per cent females, you are discriminating against the guys who might have been more qualified, over women who are less qualified.

“Plus, the women who are already there, who reached all the entry prerequisites, they feel devalued. They think, ‘Oh well, it didn’t matter if I wasn’t good enough or not, I would have got in anyway just because of my gender.’”

Instead, she said airlines should work harder to encourage school leavers to get interested in the industry. Currently many girls don’t think of it as a potential career.

“If there was more emphasis on it being a possibility as a career for a female, you’d get more applying anyway,” she said.

However, Lawrie also thought great progress had been made and pilot selection had “improved out of sight” from when she struggled to get her break.

“I would have just walked straight through the door with the qualifications I had, without any problems whatsoever,” she said.

Lawrie’s comments are interesting as most of the Australian industry has embraced ‘targets’ for their cadetship programs in particular – though many would argue there are different definitions, interpretations and blurred lines between what constitutes a ‘target’, ‘goal’ or a ‘quota’, and how they are implemented.

Now-defunct Tigerair was the most prominent advocate of targets and gender diversity.

At its end, Tiger’s female representation in the cockpit stood at 8 per cent, making it among the highest in the world.

However, brand CEO Merren McArthur said the figure was “nothing to crow about”. She transformed her all-male top team into one with a 60–40 split and set, and surpassed a target of ensuring 50 per cent of recruits on its cadetship scheme were female.

In 2017, Qantas committed to a goal of at least 50 per cent in its pilot cadet intake being female in a decade’s time.

However, chief executive Alan Joyce also said the airline would work “at the grassroots level” to encourage girls and women into studies that could lead to a career in aviation.

“We just need to reinforce the message that girls and women belong in technical jobs,” he said. Qantas was last reported to have hit 5 per cent of its pilots being women. That is higher than the often reported world average of just 3 per cent.

Finally, in 2018, Virgin said it was planning for a 50:50 gender target for its 2019 cadetship program.

Lawrie represents one of Australian Aviation’s most iconic figures. During 10 months beginning in January 1979, Lawrie battled through five separate legal cases to force Ansett to end its policy of refusing to employ women pilots.

In that time, she had her family planning intentions questioned, was told women weren’t strong enough to fly large aircraft and was even informed that menstrual tension could hinder her performance.

She became Australia’s oldest female airline pilot, too, when she flew with Tigerair, before being made redundant when the brand was discontinued.

Article from: Australian Aviation

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Qantas Founders Museum newest display features original wall panels from one of its retired 747-200s stored in the Mojave desert boneyard to recreate the aircraft’s 1970s upstairs lounge.

The custom-made replica will showcases the 1970s first-class hangout where 15 first-class passengers could drink a cocktail or smoke a cigar.

The airline said fabrics and bold colours of the decade have been “meticulously recreated” to match the originals.

Accessed via a swivel staircase, the exclusive retreat was eventually phased out in 1979 and replaced with business class seating.

A Walk down Memory Lane

Qantas Founders Museum CEO said, “We are excited to be able to showcase this new exhibit within the Museum. It will be able to take aviation and travel enthusiasts on a walk down memory lane for generations to come.”

Qantas donated funds raised from the 747 retirement joy flights in 2020 to help cover installation costs for the installation. The new display will feature in the main exhibition hall.

It will feature alongside the original 1970s uniform and onboard products from the era. These including menus, silverware and crockery.

The attraction itself, only reopened on 1 July 2020 after shutting earlier in the year due to coronavirus restrictions.

The ‘Luminescent Longreach’ new light show exhibition projects a 3D animation across 635 square metres of a Boeing 747. The project’s design was the result of an 11,000-hour creative process. The show tells the history of Qantas using 3D animation, projection mapping and 360-degree immersive sound.

The end of an era – 747

Qantas sold its last 747, VH-OEJ, along with five others to General Electric in 2019. Its last-known location was in the Mojave Desert boneyard.

The airport, technically IATA: MHV, is located within the Mojave Air and Space Port. It has been storing aircraft since the 1970s.

The location is preferred by airlines for storage – either temporary or permanent – because the 49-degree temperatures prevent rust and precipitation can be as low as just 130mm a year.

Little has been reported as to exactly what General Electric Co plans to do with the Qantas 747s.

The Final Journey of the Last 747

VH-OEJ’s final journey in July 2020 included an emotional take-off to the tune of I Still Call Australia Home.

First-leg captain Sharelle Quinn flew the aircraft over Sydney’s CBD, Harbour and beaches before heading to the HARS Museum. There she dipped its wings in a final salute to the first 747-400 housed at the attraction, VH-OJA.

Then, unexpectedly, Quinn drew a 275-kilometre x 250-kilometre Qantas Kangaroo in the sky.

Hundreds of thousands of Twitter and Instagram users shared Qantas’ official post of the stunt, with many more likely to have also shared similar pictures and animations of the journey.

When it finished, VH-OEJ climbed to cruising altitude and headed for Los Angeles, where it touched down at 1:23pm after 15 hours in the air.

The two final trips followed three special flights for customers departing the week before in Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra.

Proceeds from those ticket sales were donated to the HARS Aviation Museum in NSW and the Qantas Founders Museum in Longreach, Queensland. Both currently have 747s on public display.

Aside from Qantas, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and KLM all announced plans to fast-forward the retirement of their 747s.

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There’s not too many aviators left with Ron Dickenson’s kind of logbook. He’s 91, and has been a pilot since 1944.

Now, it seems his flying career could mark the rise and fall of general aviation in Australia.

Across the country, tiny airstrips are at risk. Sixty-one per cent of small aerodromes ran at a loss in 2014-15. Fast forward to 2020 – COVID-19 and the following recession and the future looks grim for smaller airstrips.

With expenditure expected to rise by 48 per cent in the next decade, the numbers don’t look good. But there was a golden age of Australian aviation and Mr Dickenson was part of it.

The Golden Age of Aviation

When he received his first pilot licence, it simply read: “Licence to fly flying machines.”

“We did anything. There must have been regulations for the airlines, but they didn’t seem to apply to private planes,” Mr Dickenson said.

“I used to do aerobatics over our home in Kew [in Melbourne]. Mum would come out and she’d wave a towel or a sheet, then I’d fly back again.”

But security and safety considerations have put an end to these fun-filled days of aviation. The sky is no longer what it was.

In 1944, Mr Dickenson began his training in the air force. At that time the military was where the development of most new planes and aviation technologies took place.

Today that’s not necessarily the case — with hybrid and electric planes being developed by the private sector.

Some are already on the market, but these short-range planes need an aviation ecosystem in which to operate. This means small airfields to land at.

Local Councils Now Control Many Small Airstrips

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Federal Government handed over the control of hundreds of tiny airports to city councils. This scheme known as ALOP, the Aerodrome Local Ownership Plan.

ALOP came with the caveat that the councils were not permitted to sell, lease or dispose of the aerodromes without the written consent of the secretary of the Department of Transport.

To some councils, this gift looked more like a burden, because it’s the council that now needs to find the funding for runway overhauls, landing lights and fencing.

The airfield at Kempsey on the mid north coast of NSW is a striking example.

In a recent judgment involving a collision between a kangaroo and a landing aeroplane at the airport, the judge found in favour of the plane owner.

The Kempsey Shire Council was liable for the cost of a new propeller worth almost $200,000.

The judge said the council knew about the kangaroo problem and should have put up a fence, which would have cost $100,000.

The council argued the money could have been better spent elsewhere and is appealing the decision.

The Battleground: Development vs. Aviation

The Australian Airports Association suggests as many as 50 per cent of Australia’s regional airports may be operating at a loss each year.

Many local councils can see more revenue in selling the land to real estate developers.

On Melbourne’s outskirts, airports like Geelong, Philip Island, Pakenham, Berwick, Wallan, Welshpool, Melton, Moorooduc and Labertouche have all gone this way.

The situation is not much better in NSW or Queensland.

In remote Australia, where cars are simply not an option, the problem of airport closures is not so bad.

Under the terms of ALOP, councils were legally required to keep airports as airports, but some have been mothballed prior to sale, forestalling any challenges.

This is how the situation in Kempsey could be heading, as well as in Gympie, Queensland, and in the Victorian towns of Mildura and Yarram.

What does the community and aviation stand to lose?

Aviators like Mr Dickenson are having to explain to the wider community how small airport closures affect them.

The benefits of tiny airports are harder to define than those of their large counterparts because they don’t measure passenger movements or represent regular flying schedules.

Small airstrips are needed for postal services, water bombing activity, air ambulances, the SES, police, tourism, crop dusting, survey planes, flight training schools and simple connectivity.

General aviation has long been a home of ideas, where knowledge, experience and innovation have helped drive the future of flying forward.

In Europe, tiny airports are being used to develop new environmentally and economically efficient aviation technologies.

But that culture is absent on Australia’s increasingly deserted small runways.

Article courtesy of the ABC.

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