As the two pilots come through the doors at easyJet’s Luton airport headquarters, it remains unusual to see the first – a tall, middle-aged man – defer to the second, a woman, and head off to sort out the paperwork. But the captain today is Marnie Munns, one of the 4% of commercial airline pilots who are female, and part of an even smaller number who have made it to the top rank.

Gender pay gap data has underlined quite how rare a female pilot remains: at Munns’ employer 6% are women – a rate easyJet has doubled for new entrants – while Ryanair revealed just eight of its 554 UK-based pilots are women. Yet Munns, 44, says she only recently grasped how many people thought it was “not normal for women”. A Swiss passenger objected when Munns was flying with a female first officer: “She said, ‘I’m not sure I’m happy with this scenario, two women on a flight deck.’ I thought she was joking – but she was really quite upset.”

The incident spurred Munns into taking part in easyJet’s own efforts to change perceptions, talking to girls in school and helping to launch an aviation badge for Brownies. Surveys of pilots show most men had set their minds on a flying career by 11, but few women before 16.

She has since encountered some other bizarre beliefs – including a debate on ITV with a journalist who claimed that women’s “mood swings and hormones” could make them unsuitable pilots. “It’s a really strange, antiquated question,” says Munns. “In the old days, there was any excuse to stop women doing professional jobs.

“If you are not feeling up to doing the job on the day it is our requirement to tell our employer – but the common cold is a bigger threat than anything else. If you have a blocked nose or sinuses, you can’t fly. We can’t work. But no one has ever said a man can’t do it because of man flu.”

Munns, whose grandfather was a pilot, chose her path young. “My parents used to travel a lot when we were children and used to say, go and see the pilot and see what they do.”



Unable to afford a private pilot licence, Munns went to university and joined the air squadron. Now, she says university tuition fees mean even the £110,000 pilot training costs look more appealing, with a fairly guaranteed job.

Munns works a part-time schedule of nine days of flying per month, instead of up to 18. Speaking to other professional women made her realise, she said, “what is brilliant about this job for women. One said, how come you’re still a captain if you’re only part-time? It dawned on me that if I was at this level in the City, I would have to take a step down. Their perception is you can’t manage. ”

Pilot career progression to captaincy may also avoid some invisible barriers. “It’s not, you’re one of the gang, let’s have you in. Training captains have files on us, that rigorously mark training criteria. They don’t know you – or probably even know you’re female until you turn up.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Marnie Munns was very young when she chose her career as a pilot. Photograph: PR

Coincidentally, I met Munns last month, at the start of a French air traffic controllers’ strike. In a two-hour evening delay on Luton’s tarmac awaiting permission to take off for Toulouse, with flights cancelled all around, Munns delivered a string of stirring updates to keep passengers on board, saying she would get us there, even it was the only plane that would get through. “It was all or nothing, everyone sticking with it. That’s why you need to do the PAs [public announcements]. If a passenger, or even if one of my crew had said, sorry, I can’t, we couldn’t have done it.”

The plane also made it back that night, much delayed, picking up British passengers stranded from other cancelled flights, and Munns and crew clocked off at 2am. Isn’t that the kind of issue that might rule out the job for women (or men) with family commitments? “We all had children. We all had to make phone calls. No one ever asks a nurse about their strange lifestyle. The difference is I get paid a good salary to be able to pay for childcare if I need to.”

Munns, a mother of two primary school age children, whose husband is also an easyJet pilot, adds: “We’ve got a good support network. But it has happened that we’ve had to arrange babysitting for 4am.”

The day of a short-haul pilot is a busy one: Munns reports to base an hour before the flight, gets the paperwork off the computer and briefs the crew. “I make sure they are all fit to fly, what kind of duties they’ve been doing. We’ll discuss any technical issues with the plane. It’s five minutes. Then we get through security, get to the aircraft and start boarding passengers.”

The crew will do up to four flights a day, with just a 25-minute turnaround between them. “That’s actually our busiest time. We’re never really on break. In the cruise you might have five minutes to take a breath, but at the same time you’ll be doing the radios, managing the flight, working out what might be happening down route.”

There are a lot of myths to dispel, she says. “People say, what’s it like working with all men? Well, actually I don’t. And the traditional view of the pilot, living out of a suitcase – I do night stops very rarely. They’re actually quite nice when I do.”