Cairns women of all ages are joining the growing ranks of female pilots who fly for enjoyment and a career.

The three hours of exhilaration and terror during her first solo cross-country flight is easily recalled by Captain Maria Johnstone.

“I was just 16 and it was a great flight, from Archerfield to Kingaroy and Gympie then back to Archerfield,” she says.

Maria has been hooked on flying since then and continued to become Virgin Blue’s first woman pilot in 2001. She travelled overseas from Cairns a couple of times as a teen and on one trip was lucky enough to visit the flight deck of a 747.

“I was mesmerised by the view and all the instruments. That was it, I was hooked.”

This prompted Maria, now 37, to start flying lessons during the Christmas holidays between Years 11 and 12.

One other flight, memorable for all the wrong reasons, was a charter not long after she gained her commercial licence.

“I thought it was only going to be a day flight to west of Rockhampton. But it turned into three days with no change of clothes and I had just lent my last $5 to my boss for lunch.”

While Maria hasn’t had any resistance from male pilots, she says she has received a few strange looks and comments from male passengers. 

“On one of my first charter flights I was waiting on the tarmac in Rockhampton for a gentleman who I was going to fly out to Middlemount,” she says. 

“I was standing in uniform next to our aircraft, a Cessna 182 (small four seater). When he walked up, I asked him if he was ready to go and would he like to get in and he said: ‘I’ll just wait until the pilot gets here’,” Maria laughs.

“My husband is a pilot too, with Qantas and he is my biggest supporter.”

Another flight that holds great memories for Maria is when she returned from maternity leave with Virgin Blue and took her daughter who was then 18 months old and her mum away with her on a work trip.

“It was great,” she says. “It was a bit of a travelling road show as they followed me around for three days between Brisbane, Adelaide and Sydney.”

A short potted history of Maria’s flying career includes work at the North Queensland Aero Club from 1990 to 1994 where she was the chief flying instructor between 1992 and 1994. 

After that she worked in the Northern Territory, Impulse Airlines in Newcastle and Tamworth and National Jet Systems in Rockhampton and Perth before finally joining Virgin Blue in 2001.

Cairns is Maria’s favourite destination. “It’s such a beautiful place but the main reason is I get a chance to visit my sister, Fran, and my gorgeous nieces Grace and Pearl and nephew Oscar when I overnight there,” she says.

She says she doesn’t have any plans to fly internationally as she prefers to be at home as much as possible.

Unfortunately now, Maria says, security restrictions do not allow visitors to the flight deck during the flight, so other aspiring pilots will not get the same opportunity she had as a teenager.

“I haven’t been an instructor now for about 12 years but, on the whole, instructing was actually a lot of fun and very rewarding. The desire for people to learn to fly spans all ages and all walks of life.”

Most people can be taught, she points out, it just takes some people longer than others and then they can only fly in certain conditions.

“My mother, for example, had her first solo flight at the age of 64. One of the challenges of instructing is to try to remain calm and patient at all times, even when the student is (inadvertently) trying to test all the boundaries of what a light aircraft can actually do,” Maria says.

Virgin Blue public and media relations manager Amanda Bolger says they have 28 female pilots within the ranks and growing.

“It’s not uncommon to have a flight where the entire crew, including both pilots and all the cabin crew, are female and vice versa with an all-male crew,” she says. “I’ve seen people actually stop the female crew as they are walking through the terminal and ask to take their photo. Pilot paparazzi.”

 

 

Australian Women Pilots’ Association

With more than 500 members nationwide today, the Australian Women Pilots’ Association began with just 35 women in 1950.

These 35 charter members of all ages and flying experience met at Bankstown Airport in Sydney.

They became the core of a nationwide network which today, as then, aims to assist women to achieve their goals in aviation.

Now there are more than 104 members in Queensland with 10 of these from Far North Queensland including Karumba and Thursday Island.

AWPA is an entirely voluntary organisation to encourage women to gain flying licences of all types, either as a hobby or profession and to promote training, employment and careers in aviation.

It also aims to maintain pilot networks in state and local areas where women in aviation can meet and exchange information as well as assist in the future of aviation through public interest, safety and education.

 

 

 

 

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