According to data from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, at the end of 2023 there were 167,711 private pilots — those who hold a license to operate a plane for noncommercial use. Of that number, just 14,192, or 8.4 percent, were women. (Globally, that number is estimated to range 4–6 percent.)

The private aviation industry includes individuals or businesses that own airplanes, as well as charters and fractional ownership companies, in which several co-owners share cost and usage. Each requires a private pilot, who may only fly the plane or may be responsible for also handling maintenance and paperwork. Each offers different opportunities and challenges, and today’s women aviators are pursuing different career paths to shatter the proverbial glass ceiling at 40,000 feet.

© Angela Lawson

Angela Lawson, a United Kingdom-based private pilot in business aviation, had been fascinated with flying since she was a teenager, asking for flying lessons for birthday and Christmas presents. She attended Southampton University and became a secondary school teacher; but after she and her husband had children, she found she didn’t want to go back to teaching. “I had always wanted to fly, but it was just a case of getting the money together to train,” she said. “By that stage we had a house that we could remortgage.”

Lawson got her private pilot’s license at age 30, followed by her instructor rating, and leveraged her teaching experience to give lessons at the local airfield where she learned to fly. After stints as an instructor at a flight simulator company and as an air ambulance pilot repatriating the deceased and flying injured passengers to the hospital, she received a job offer from a business jet operator in Belgium. “They picked me up because I had the right type rating [certification to fly a specific kind of aircraft], which I gained while working at the sim company.”

She started out flying the Dassault Falcon 2000, a two-engine jet from the French producer with a range of 3,602 miles, and eventually moved to the Falcon 7X, which has three engines and a much larger range — 6,847 miles. A few years after joining the company, Lawson was tapped by a high-net-worth individual for whom she had flown periodically who decided he wanted a designated crew; this year marks 11 years as a senior first officer with the same employer.

Compared to working for a commercial airline, which may offer less autonomy and more rigidity, schedule-wise, Lawson appreciates the control she and her copilots have over where they stay, what they do in their down time, when they take a commercial flight to reposition, and even sometimes where they land if weather or other issues arise. “We’re in contact with the boss, so we know his schedule and roughly what’s going to come up in the future,” she said. On the flip side, she’s beholden to that schedule. “When the boss wants to fly, you’ve got to do it. There’s no one to cover you if you get sick, and you can only negotiate time off when the boss has time off.” Still, she calls working for a nice owner “the pinnacle of private aviation.”

“The experiences are completely different from the airlines,” said Alexus Tuel, a private pilot who’s second in command on the Embraer Legacy 600. “I enjoy not lugging around my luggage through airports a few times a day, utilizing the FBOs [fixed-base operators] and going straight to the plane.” She originally set out to become a mental health therapist and moved to the Phoenix/ Scottsdale area after graduate school to be closer to family, where her uncle wanted a flying buddy. “I caught ‘the bug’ when we were flying over the Phoenix Bravo transition at night,” a dramatic Visual Flight Rules corridor over Sky Harbor Airport midfield at fairly low altitude.

She took her first flight lesson, got her license, and took a job flying cargo at Castle Aviation in Ohio, where she obtained her SIC for the Saab 340B and VFR captain on the Cessna Caravan; her current role also includes flight planning and performance data. She said paperwork and staffing are the least attractive duties, as her small company has fewer pilots, and logistics can be tricky for getting subs to the airport. “My schedule frequently changes, not just destinations but also start and end dates for rotations because of coverage issues,” she said. “I try to remain flexible, but it’s frustrating when you’ve already made plans.” Still, she loves the variety of destinations — her favorite was a four-day layover in Canouan, an island in the Grenadines.

© Amber Brierly

Amber Brierly, a New Zealand-based pilot who’s worked in both commercial and private aviation, prefers the elevated level of
service in the latter. “In private aviation, the focus is on providing a bespoke travel experience tailored to the client’s needs, including direct access to destinations that might not be easily accessible via commercial routes,” she said.

Brierly studied aviation management at Massey University in New Zealand with the goal of becoming an air traffic controller, though testing difficulties thwarted her efforts. She was inspired to continue her trajectory after an internship at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. She worked as a customer service representative at an FBO in Scottsdale, Arizona, specializing in private jets, followed by a position in sales and marketing at its Orlando headquarters.

In 2021 Brierly decided to pursue a career as a pilot, and now she works part-time for FlightSafety International, serving as SIC supporting clients in their simulator training; she’s also a flight instructor and hopes to be a corporate long-haul jet captain at some point. “The environment is fast-paced, and no two days are the same,” she said. “Additionally, private aviation showcases cutting-edge technology, with many of the newer business jets featuring state-of-the-art systems that even surpass those on
commercial airliners.”

But managing client expectations, Brierly said, especially when demands might compromise safety, can be a challenge. And she often had a difficult time being taken seriously when she was younger, with men at trade shows directing questions to her boss.

Sexism in a traditionally male-dominated field like aviation remains an obstacle — and surprisingly, the misogyny doesn’t always come from men. Lawson recalls years ago while piloting a really sick man to the hospital, his wife said to her copilot, “My goodness, you’re going to let her fly?” Today, ground handling staff often step onto her aircraft, see her sitting there in the flight deck in her uniform and ask to speak to the pilot.

Elayne Humphrey, chief pilot for Cape Fear Aviation Flight Training in Fayetteville, North Carolina, recalls a mother who was uncomfortable with the idea of her serving as the pilot during a discovery flight for her 17-year-old son. While Humphrey hated that ignorance, as a mom herself she knew it was rooted in the woman’s fear (albeit unwarranted) for her son, so she quickly subbed in another instructor.

© Elayne Humphrey

Humphrey is a self-proclaimed aviation geek who grew up in the Washington, D.C., area watching planes land at Dulles and National airports from the back of her mom’s car, but she got her start in aviation relatively late in life. She received a bachelor’s degree in marketing research from Virginia Tech and a master’s from the University of Texas in Arlington. Then she launched a website design business. After she and her husband moved to Fayetteville, she won a flight with the Civil Air Patrol and absolutely loved it. Her husband, however, was less than enthusiastic about the thought of Humphrey taking to the skies professionally, which he deemed too dangerous.

She abandoned the idea until after her kids graduated from high school, then used inheritance money from her grandparents to pay for her training. It was a huge adjustment for the empty nesters.

“I was the wife, the mom, the home cooker, the grocery shopper, the food maker, our kids’ teacher for 14 years,” she said. “And then I basically said, ‘I’m not going to be here when you get home for dinner because now I’m also going to be working ’til five o’clock.’ And so we had to figure it out.”

Humphrey received her private pilot’s license in 2018, and while she had the required number of hours three years ago to pursue an airline job, she knew it wasn’t the lifestyle for her. “At this age, I didn’t want to sleep in hotels, eat bad food, be gone for three nights and be told where to fly,” she said, compared to the “cushy” life she has as a private instructor who also handles the business operations of the small company. “I’m chief flight instructor (CFI), I choose the days and hours that I work now, I oversee my team; but if I don’t want to work on a weekend or choose to take the day off and go personally fly, I can go do that.”

Since getting her license, she’s flown in 72 different aircraft, including her favorite, a Piper Aztec (she owns a Piper Arrow. “I find that women pilots are exceptional; rather than manhandling an airplane, we have a good, gentle touch,” Humphrey said. She’s made it a personal mission to bring in other women students and pilots who, she said, as in other fields, have to work harder to prove they deserve to be there.

The lack of female camaraderie can definitely be a downside to private aviation, Lawson said, whether it’s talking about the stress of managing the needs of small children at home while flying around the world or the difficulties menopause symptoms present while she’s on the flight deck. “You do miss having someone to talk to, someone who gets it.”

Private Facebook groups like Lady Aviators encourage sharing of ideas, advice and concerns of women in the field, while nonprofit organizations like Women in Aviation International offer resources to would-be women pilots including scholarships, mentorships, employment connections and networking. As a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, Brierly sometimes encounters gender stereotypes; she’s found representation and advocacy in organizations such as the National Gay Pilots Association.

While the number of women private pilots is still small, it’s steadily growing. (There were less than 10,000 in 2017.) “The more we speak out and tell people that we are pilots, the better it will get,” Tuel believes. “We need to normalize women in the cockpit rather than avoiding the conversations.” Humphrey agreed, adding empowerment among women in the field is also helping to move the needle. “Support, encourage and connect to one another at your respective airports. And if you’re interested in the field, remember that I started at 48, so it’s never too late. You got this.”