Madam, – Allow me to add my congratulations to Capt Gráinne Cronin on completion of her career in Aer Lingus (“Permission to land: first woman Aer Lingus pilot retires”, Home News, May 26th). I do have to question one detail of the article you published, in which it is stated that Aer Lingus was the second airline in Europe to recruit women pilots, following SAS in 1961.
In 1967, I went to fly for Skyways of London. One of my colleagues there was senior first officer Gillian Cazalet from Wicklow.
In early 1972, I was a line training captain with Dan Air, based in Newcastle. I don’t know when Yvonne Sintes joined Dan Air, but it must have been sometime in the mid-1960s, because she was then the most senior first officer, having flown the De Havilland Comet 4 and other types for some years. Her turn came up for promotion to captain. The last stage of her training was to fly five sectors in the co-pilot seat and 20 as captain under supervision.
She flew all of those with me on scheduled routes from Newcastle in March 1972. When we landed after the last of those sectors on March 14th, I signed off the final report to show that she had satisfactorily completed the required training. We were met by a row of photographers and reporters. I was delighted to be able to tell them that Dan Air now had Britain’s first woman airline captain. She had shown all the skills and airmanship required, including an impressive display of skill landing in Bristol under adverse weather conditions of low cloud and strong gusting wind.
We were not impressed by the article in the next day’s newspaper about “handbags in the cockpit”!
Ms Cazalet also came to Dan Air in 1972, and I carried out the line-check flight to certify her competent to fly the company aircraft.
Dan Air had three other female pilots with whom I flew on the BAC 1-11 and Boeing 727s. They all became captains in their turn. They all performed the same duties and were paid the same rate as the men. The only gripe I have is that pilots were not permitted to continue after the age of 60. While the ladies could then draw the state pension as well as our company retirement plan, we unequal males had to wait another five years for ours!
If Aer Lingus was not the second airline to employ women pilots, it should now be recognised for its foresight in promoting one of them to the high post of chief pilot and director of operations. I’m sure Capt Davina Pratt will appreciate the importance of the efforts of all her captains to operate efficiently in these difficult times for airlines. – Yours, etc,