Women in Aviation International, Girls in Aviation Day, and the September Hangar Doors That Are Reshaping the Pilot Pipeline

Women in Aviation International runs Girls in Aviation Day each September across hundreds of locations worldwide, placing young people ages 8 to 17 inside real hangars alongside working pilots, mechanics, engineers, and air traffic controllers. The event is now in its second decade, and it connects directly to a workforce shortage that is actively affecting regional airlines, charter operators, and flight schools today.

What Is Women in Aviation International?

WAI was founded in 1994 around a straightforward observation: women were dramatically underrepresented across every sector of aviation - the flight deck, the maintenance hangar, the engineering floor, and the executive suite. That gap was not going to close without deliberate infrastructure.

WAI built that infrastructure. Annual conferences that became professional networking pipelines. Scholarship programs spanning flight training, academic study, and professional development. Mentorship networks connecting established professionals with women entering the field. Today WAI has chapters on every continent, has distributed tens of millions of dollars in scholarships over its history, and its annual conference draws tens of thousands of attendees from dozens of countries - one of the largest professional aviation gatherings in the world.

What Is Girls in Aviation Day?

Girls in Aviation Day launched in 2014. The premise was direct: get young people into a real aviation environment - not a museum exhibit behind safety glass, not a school technology fair, but an actual airport with actual working professionals spending a Saturday morning answering questions.

WAI chapters coordinate globally so the event happens on the same weekend across hundreds of locations. That synchronization creates a shared cultural moment rather than a collection of disconnected local events. It generates media coverage no single chapter in a mid-sized city could produce alone. In recent years, tens of thousands of participants have shown up on a single Girls in Aviation Day weekend at locations across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, and dozens of other countries.

What Happens at a Girls in Aviation Day Event?

The format varies by chapter, but the core structure is consistent. Young attendees get real access to real aircraft: sitting in cockpits, touching controls, reading the instrument panel up close, hearing directly from the pilot in the left seat about where they have actually flown.

Well-organized chapters add simulator stations, maintenance demonstrations, and career panels. Flight schools, universities, and technical programs are typically on hand to answer the practical question most young attendees are actually asking: how would I get here from where I am now?

The career breadth is intentional - not just pilots. Mechanics. Air traffic controllers. Aerospace engineers. Dispatchers. Aircraft painters. Not every young person who walks into that hangar will become a pilot, and WAI is not assuming they will. The goal is to show the full width of what an aviation career looks like and make all of it visibly accessible.

Why This Matters for Pilots: The Pipeline Numbers

Women hold approximately 8% of pilot certificates in the United States, according to FAA data. At major airlines, the percentage of female pilots is rising but remains well below 20% in most cases. In maintenance and air traffic control, the numbers are similar or lower.

The FAA’s aerospace forecast projects sustained demand for pilots over the next two decades that outpaces the current rate of certificate production. Boeing’s annual pilot and technician outlook has documented the same trajectory for years. The shortage is not theoretical - it is operational right now, affecting regional airlines, charter operators, cargo carriers, and flight schools that cannot find enough instructors.

The math of solving that shortage looks very different when the draw comes from the full population instead of roughly half of it.

The Research Behind the Approach

Research on career interest development consistently shows that direct exposure to real people doing real work is one of the most significant drivers of career aspiration - more effective than video content, marketing materials, or digital outreach.

When a 12-year-old spends time in a hangar with a working commercial pilot who looks like her and treats her questions as completely legitimate, something shifts. The abstract idea that aviation might be for someone like her becomes a specific, visualizable possibility. That shift is what WAI is engineering with this event. It is much harder to produce through a screen than through one conversation in a hangar on a Saturday morning.

The History Behind the Gap

The underrepresentation in today’s cockpits did not happen by accident.

Harriet Quimby became the first licensed female pilot in the United States in 1911 - just eight years after Kitty Hawk. Bessie Coleman could not get flight training in the United States due to combined race and gender restrictions. She went to France, earned her license in 1921, returned to the United States, and became one of the most celebrated airshow performers of her era - a direct symbol of possibility for communities aviation had explicitly shut out.

The Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) flew every type of military aircraft in the U.S. inventory during World War II. Over 1,100 women completed ferry missions, tow target missions, and test flights on newly manufactured aircraft before handing them off to combat crews. They were not granted military status during the war. Congress recognized them as veterans in 1977 - 33 years after the fact.

Patty Wagstaff became the first woman to win the U.S. National Aerobatic Championship in the unlimited category, winning three consecutive times in the 1990s. Tammie Jo Shults became nationally known in 2018 when she safely landed a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 after an uncontained engine failure at altitude - textbook airmanship under pressure that made every major newspaper in the country.

These are individual examples. WAI is specifically working to make individual examples unnecessary. The goal is not one celebrated exception per generation. The goal is for the numbers to reflect the population - thousands of women flying and working on engines and managing airspace, unremarkably, because the pipeline has been producing them for years.

How Girls in Aviation Day Fits the Broader Outreach Landscape

Girls in Aviation Day is not the only youth outreach effort in aviation. The Experimental Aircraft Association’s Young Eagles program has introduced millions of young people to their first airplane ride since 1992. AOPA runs its own outreach and scholarship initiatives. These programs are not in competition - they are working on the same fundamental problem from different angles.

What Girls in Aviation Day does that some other programs do not is apply intentional, specific focus on a demographic that has been systematically underrepresented. Many chapters welcome all young people with an interest in aviation. The name reflects where the primary emphasis is, not a restriction on who can attend.

WAI Scholarships: Beyond the Event

WAI administers over 100 scholarships annually, ranging from flight training grants to academic awards to professional development funding. The range is deliberate - not everyone pursuing an aviation career follows a four-year flight school path. Some are earning an airframe and powerplant certificate. Some are studying aerospace engineering. Some are entering the FAA’s air traffic control hiring pipeline. WAI has programs that map to all of those paths, reflecting the same philosophy as Girls in Aviation Day: aviation is a wide world, and the full width of it should be accessible.

What Pilots Can Do

WAI chapters organizing Girls in Aviation Day are almost certainly looking for volunteer pilots. The ask is simple: show up, be a pilot, and let young people near an airplane. Answering questions about actual flights to actual destinations is more effective outreach than any prepared presentation.

Flight schools that connect with the event get motivated young people in their orbit at the right moment. Attendees who decide to pursue training after Girls in Aviation Day have already made a real decision. They are not casual inquiries.

For anyone without a local chapter connection: wai.org has the chapter locator, event calendar, and volunteer sign-up.

Key Takeaways

Women in Aviation International, founded in 1994, has distributed tens of millions of dollars in scholarships across flight training, academic, and professional development programs, with chapters on every continent.
Girls in Aviation Day, launched in 2014, brings tens of thousands of participants into real hangars each September at hundreds of locations worldwide - placing young people ages 8 to 17 in direct contact with working aviation professionals.
Women currently hold approximately 8% of U.S. pilot certificates; projected pilot demand over the next two decades makes expanding the pipeline an operational priority, not just a social one.
The event covers the full breadth of aviation careers - pilots, mechanics, engineers, air traffic controllers, dispatchers - because the workforce need extends across all of those roles.
Volunteer pilots, flight schools, and anyone with an airplane can participate or connect through wai.org.