Taking to the skies: Women of Aviation Worldwide Week on now

114 years later, less than 6 per cent of pilots in the world are female. As Poynting discovered on her introductory flight, she is set to become one of the next generation of women pilots and that thought appeals to her.

“The fact that is a very male dominated field kind of made me want to do it more,” she said.

The young teen has nearly 30 flight hours and it has completely changed her view on life’s little problems.

“It kind of makes everything very insignificant when you’re that high up and everything is really, really small and also, it’s really pretty,” she said.

“You might think that Saskatchewan’s just flat and boring but when you look at it from a different perspective, it makes it so much cooler.”

For Rae Hoflin, flying was a life-long passion. While still in high school, she had ambitions of flying helicopters.

“I was going to pursue a very adventurous career and I thought it’d be great to get into aviation,” she said.

After learning of a program in British Columbia, Hoflin was met with disappointing news during the enrollment stage: the route to becoming a helo pilot was financially prohibitive.

“Back then I think it was two years – yeah, two years you needed, and it was close to $100,000,” she said.

“At 16, 17 that completely shattered my dream of ever pursuing that career, so I turned my eye to other things and went back to school.”

Now, 20 years later, her dream of flying is once again upon her. This time, within reach.

Rae Hoflin during a flying lesson. (Submitted Photo/Rae Hoflin)

“There was just the right people that had come into my life and I was in a right spot and I said ‘You know what, I want to actively pursue this and this is something I want to do,’” said Hoflin.

“I had everything lined up and got the thumbs up and away we went.”

According to Landon Hordal, class three flight instructor and agricultural sprayer pilot with the North Battleford Airport, while he’s not sure why there aren’t as many women in the industry, he is seeing a shift around the flight schools.

“I don’t think we’ve really had many women come through this school before me and this year now I have two of them,” he said.

Pilot shortage

In a time when there is a severe shortage of pilots in the industry, Hordal said companies will need more people in the cockpit if the industry is going to continue as it had in the past.

“They need to hire a certain amount over the next 10 years to fill all the seats. You know, there’s a high demand for air travel, cargo, a lot of things are done by air and there isn’t enough people going through it,” he said.

In a report from Oliver Wyman, a management consulting firm based out of New York, pilots took early retirement during the pandemic, the mandatory retirement age of 65 shut others out and they forecast that by 2032, North America will face a shortage of roughly 30,000 pilots.

“It’s quite an easy program to get through if someone wants to be a pilot,” said Hordal, adding it does take discipline and drive.

“You can really get into it and there’s a ton of jobs out there.”

According to Janet Keim, president of the Saskatchewan Aviation Council, the province is doing well when it comes to women in aviation.

“Definitely women in the cockpit, definitely women in maintenance, and women in all the other areas of aviation, ‘cause I mean it’s no different than any other business,” she said.

“You need people running logistics, you need people running dispatch, you need people in various parts of your business.”

Based in Saskatoon at the Mitchinson Flight Centre, Keim, who has roughly 15,000 flight hours and over 50 years of being in the industry, spent much of her career training and testing the next generation of fliers.

“I think over these years certainly more and more girls have started to realize that a career in aviation is something they can do and something they want to do,” she said.

The history of flight in Saskatchewan goes back to the years of World War II when airports in communities like North Battleford and Yorkton were built and established as Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) training schools in 1941 under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. Following the war, veterans started opening training schools. Mitchinson opened in 1946 and others soon followed. Although not all the entrepreneurs who came home to establish the schools were fighter pilots, Keim said they were a part of the air service in some capacity.

“[They] came back and started their own flying schools and their own charter operators and their barnstorming – they were still barnstorming a little right?”

A view from the top: Landon Hordal captures another spray plane above the clouds. (Submitted Photo/Landon Hordal)

Poynting is currently training in a Cessna 150 but has plans to enter the Aviation Diploma at Mount Royal University next year to continue her path to becoming a commercial pilot.

“It’s all around but I get all of my ratings through them and so it’s like my night rating, my commercial, all these things and then right off the hop basically right after I get out of university, I should be getting a job,” she said.

To earn more flight hours, the teen said she plans on working at a smaller company as a bush or float plane pilot before applying to commercial companies.

“I do, long term goal want to end up at West Jet or Air Canada or something of that sort,” she said.

Hoflin, who is also training in the Cessna 150, said her support system has given her the opportunity to jump in the plane regardless of the fact she was nervous at first.

“There has been some challenges absolutely [as] with all things,” she said.

“For me to say going through different careers and university and all (these sorts of things) in life, this has been the most challenging thing but the most rewarding.”

At the moment, Hoflin doesn’t have any plans to switch careers and said her experience in joining the flying community has been “great.”

“Everyone has been so wonderful, so supportive and if I needed help, everyone’s been there,” she said.

The flier explained that it’s a community and the instructors have years of experience as bush pilots or commercial pilots, but they are giving of their time and expertise.

“They always started with a Day One too, right? So, the empathy they have towards us students coming in is amazing.”

The passion of flight

Hordal said his two students are taking to the sky with passion, focus and dedication and they expect to take their tests sometime this spring.

“The bug bit them,” he said, noting they were nervous in the beginning.

“You’re leaving the ground right? You’re defying gravity so who knows what’s happening, you’re in a little tin box but once you get up there…that’s when people…figure out something in them that they didn’t know was there.”

Watching both progress at the rate they have been, Hordal said they are role models for other women fliers coming up in the industry. He explained that he has hope that if women are interested in flying, they’ll make their way to a flight school.

“We don’t care who it is, most pilots you talk to, they love – if someone’s interested – they’ll go out of their way to bring them in,” he said.

Meanwhile, Keim said it’s always been that way regardless of whether someone is in the cockpit or ground crew.

“It’s a big industry but it’s a small industry,” she said, noting women are already making strides as industry leaders.

“I don’t see anything but this continuing, let’s put it that way.”

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julia.lovettsquires@pattisonmedia.com

On X: jls194864

by Julia Lovett-Squires

Taking to the skies: Women of Aviation Worldwide Week on now

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