00:03I think one of the biggest factors that's contributed to having so few women in aviation
00:06comes down to showing people what's possible.
00:09Blue ramp, JetBlue 2142, cleared for takeoff.
00:18When I show up at work, I don't feel like my job is any different because I'm a woman.
00:22And in reality, we're all there with the same qualifications, the same certificates
00:26to safely bring our passengers to their destination.
00:30My name is Danielle Voss, and I'm a commercial airline pilot for a living.
00:37So on a typical workday, I tend to show up at the airport later in the afternoon or the evening
00:42and fly to Europe overnight.
00:45Certainly one of the challenges of being an airline pilot is that when you're at work, you are away from
00:49home.
00:50Generally, what I like to do is spend three days on the road, followed by a couple of days at
00:54home between each trip.
00:55I felt fortunate that my husband's also an airline pilot, so he did understand the schedule.
01:00And he's away from home just as much as I am.
01:04Oftentimes, people think that family planning might inhibit females from becoming airline pilots.
01:09My argument against that is that men have families and they've been pilots.
01:13So why can't women?
01:17So this is the Airbus, the A320 and A321 series.
01:20This is the plane that I fly.
01:22I fly this airplane out to the West Coast, down to the Caribbean, as well as from Boston over to
01:27Europe.
01:29So in my flying career, I've accumulated over 6,500 hours.
01:34Over 3,500 of those hours have been here at the Airbus and the A320.
01:40As far as the career path goes, at the majority of major airlines, you do become a first officer and
01:47then work your way up to the captain's seat.
01:49When I did start in this industry, the pay scale was different than it is today.
01:54Starting out, I only made about close to $30,000 a year, whereas today I'm in a much better situation.
02:01Here at JetBlue, pilots do make six-figure salaries.
02:04Starting out, you will be in the $100,000 range.
02:07And long term, as a tenured captain, you can be looking to make upwards of $350,000 a year.
02:18All right, into the cockpit.
02:27There's a lot of circuit breakers up here.
02:30We have fire, hydraulic, fuel, electric, air conditioning.
02:38We have our APU controls as well as the lights.
02:43This is the seat where the first officer sits.
02:45This is where the captain sits.
02:48On these boxes below, this is where we program the flight plan.
02:51Also where we control our radio communications and frequencies so we can communicate with air traffic control.
02:58As you can see, it can get pretty bright up here.
03:01So it's important to always have sunglasses, wear sunscreen.
03:05But we also have a sun visor to help us on those sunny days.
03:16The first time I was ever on a flight, the first initial takeoff, I instantly fell in love with the
03:22aircraft, the power, the look out the window, the fact that everything was getting smaller.
03:28I can't remember a time when I was younger and traveling that I saw a female pilot, but it was
03:34still something I knew that I always wanted to do.
03:37One of the biggest frustrations is that sometimes even at the airport, even in full uniform, people will see me
03:44or meet me.
03:45And there's the assumption that I can't possibly be the pilot.
03:51There was one time actually just last week here in the terminal where I went to go get some food
03:56and one of the other workers in the airport saw me and asked if I was a flight attendant or
04:02a gate agent.
04:03And when I replied that I was a pilot for the airline, his eyes popped out of his head.
04:08He said, I've never actually met a female pilot before, but it really made me realize what an impact I
04:14can make just day to day being in the airport.
04:19Only about 6% of U.S. commercial airline pilots are women.
04:23I think the more women pilots are out there, the more exposure we have, the more young girls will see
04:29us and the more they know what's possible.
04:31It doesn't happen frequently, but there have been times I've actually been paired up in an all female crew.
04:36We tend to call this an unmanned flight.
04:41There is a lot of pilot terminology or pilot lingo that we use in aviation.
04:44In addition to the phonetic alphabet, we'll use words like affirmative or negative, meaning yes or no, as well as,
04:53um, you want me to do that again?
04:57The feeling of flying is hard to describe in words, but for me, it's the feeling where you know you're
05:08in exactly the right place at exactly the right time doing what you're supposed to be doing.
05:15Thank you, Refinery29, for joining me on today's flight. I hope you feel inspired to join me in the skies.
05:25Before I take you to the cockpit, quick fun fact that pilots don't actually have a bathroom up there.
05:30We use the same bathroom here as the customers do.
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