Transport committee  I'd argue that they're still not seeing it enough. I think it needs to start at the elementary school level and then progress to, say, high school guidance counsellors. They need educating. There are a lot of misconceptions out there. One is that you have to be a math whiz to b

Transport committee  You have to be able to do simple addition and subtraction. The other is that you have to have perfect 20/20 vision. That's also not true. I think the problem is that we're just not getting young kids interested early enough, and I'm a perfect example. I had to go back to scho

Transport committee  One of the biggest burning desires for any airline pilot was to be able to have their family back in the flight deck again. If you can't trust your children or your spouse, really who can you trust?

Transport committee  It's really a pity that this can't be addressed. We have NEXUS cards. We have various security things. I'd like to see that change.

Transport committee  That is a concern. You spend all of this money and then find out that you are medically disabled. It's fairly stringent to get a class 1 medical, so maybe there should be some sort of a parachute clause, an insurance that you can pay into, whereby if you lose you licence medicall

Transport committee  It's expensive to operate an airplane. I was just going to say, speaking to some earlier questions, that there are low-cost solutions too. Just being able to watch an airplane take off and land, there's no place in Toronto where you can do that. Vancouver has a great observatio

Transport committee  I've heard that from some people who are training some of the newer pilots. I can only attest to my own experience. I did do the northern experience. I flew up north for a year and I did pump gas on a DC-3. I did roll fuel drums. When Air Canada hired me, I went to my interview

Transport committee  The shortage is at the beginner level. It's at the private pilot, the commercial pilot level. Once you're with the airline, the airline has its own internal training program, and they've quite successfully recruited many retired pilots to come back and teach simulator. That's a

Transport committee  It's a cyclical industry. Maybe they are for now. I've seen it go up and down.

Transport committee  I wish I could answer that as an airline executive, which I am not. It's an interesting question. One of the members of the audience today works with a foundation called Elevate, and they're studying right now why women don't look at aviation as a career for economic security. Th

Transport committee  I suppose not.

Transport committee  My experience is airline. Generally, people don't leave an airline career. Once you start on the seniority pathway, the progression is pretty much assured as long as you can pass your check rides. This is just conjecture on my part, but I'm thinking that if you're starting out,

Transport committee  Thank you for this opportunity to speak today. I was the first woman in Canada to fly for a major airline when I was hired by Air Canada in 1978. After 37 years and more than 23,000 flying hours, I retired from the airline as a Boeing 777 captain three years ago. The biggest c