Female pilot and co-pilot?
 

I've been on numerous commuter airline flights in the US on which both the pilot and the co-pilot were women, but have never been on a "real jet" flight where that was the case. Anybody experienced this?<BR><BR>And no, I'm not trying to lead up to a joke about women drivers, and I'm not a troll, and I personally couldn't care less whether the people who are flying my plane are men, women, or hermaphrodites. I'm just curious as to how common an occurrence this is on US airlines.

It's not that common, because most of the US airline pilots come via the military. The USAF is slowly increasing its ratio of female pilots, but it's a slow process. The US civil requirement for airline pilots waxes and wanes, and it tends to be first hired, first fired. Right now, there's about 400 good airliners, sealed-up, sitting in the desert in Arizona (I believe) that weren't there a year ago.<BR><BR>I'm like you--I don't care who's flying as long as they're qualified. Most of the time I don't know. The aircrew does tend to be more visible on commuter flights, so any departures from a specious "norm" tend to be more obvious.

My wife is a pilot for Continental. She estimates that she has a female co-pilot about 5% of the time. It does vary a bit by airline and airplane, however. At Continental, at least, there are more women flying 737s than other types.

Had a woman pilot on a flight from Las Vegas to San Francisco, smoothest landing I ever had. Co pilot was a male. The next leg to Arcata we had another woman pilot.

I actually thought t he same thing -as last year I was on a flight from Kennedy (NY) to Montrael, Canada and had my first female pilot!