Why do airlines have such large gender pay gaps? And whose is the biggest?

Ryanair outed itself as the airline with the worst gender pay gap this week, with men earning on average 72 per cent more per hour than women.

The Irish carrier sits atop a pile of companies in the aviation sector each boasting chunky discrepancies between the median earnings of men and women. Its mean gender pay gap is 67 per cent.

In terms of median differences, Jet2 had the second highest at 49.7 per cent, followed by Tui (47.3 per cent) and EasyJet, 45.5 per cent. British Airways’ figure was much lower, at 10 per cent, though its mean score was 35 per cent. FlyBe has a median gap of 41 per cent, while Thomas Cook Airways has a 43.9 per cent gap, and Virgin Atlantic 27.2 per cent.

At a glance | Airline gender pay gaps

The airlines all met the government deadline for submitting their gender pay figures, but how does the aviation sector compare to the rest of the UK?

More than 10,000 companies published their data, with the median pay gap running at 9.7 per cent, placing all the above airlines in the bottom half of the table.

The median figure gives the level of pay that separates the top half of earners from the lower half.

Why do airlines have such large pay gaps?

The airlines’ percentages will all be largely affected by the dramatic imbalance in the gender ratio of the world’s pilots.

“Like all airlines, our gender pay in the UK is materially affected by the relatively low numbers of female pilots in the aviation industry,” a spokesperson for Ryanair said.

“In recent years, the number of female pilots applying to Ryanair has increased and we are committed to developing this welcome trend. It is a feature of the aviation industry that more males than females choose to enter the pilot profession.”

And though Ryanair is hardly a poster airline for gender equality (remember the cabin crew calendars?), it has a point.

Female pilots by airline

How few female pilots are there?

Figures are forever changing and difficult to collate across the world, but Air Line Pilots Association International reckons that of nearly 60,000 pilots across 34 airlines, 5.18 per cent are female. The Federal Aviation Administration in the US believes 4.36 per cent of all airline pilots in the US are women. The CAA says 4.77 per cent.

According to figures from the International Society of Women Airline Pilots, there are only small variations in the percentages of female pilots at the world’s carriers, with most employing between three and six per cent.

Ryanair was not included the research but it is believed eight of its 554 UK-based pilots are female, that’s 1.14 per cent.

Announcing its pay gap, British Airways revealed its bonus pay difference is 19 per cent in favour of women. It said its workforce was 46 per cent female, 54 per cent male.

The flag carrier said: “British Airways has been recruiting female pilots for more than 30 years and the percentage of female flight crew at the airline is six per cent, double the national average of around three to four per cent.

“The airline recognises that there is a gender imbalance within its pilot community and is working to address this in part through greater visibility of its female pilots to inspire the next generation.”

In 2015, EasyJet launched the Amy Johnson Flying Initiative in a drive to double the number of female new entrant pilots to 12 per cent over two years. It has now set a more ambitious target of 20 per cent by 2020.

Revealing its pay gap in January, the airline said: “The overall gender pay gap figure at easyJet is over 50 per cent, but this gives a false impression.

At a glance | How to become a pilot

“This is driven not by unequal pay for women at easyJet but by the massive gender imbalance in our and aviation’s pilot community. Like all airlines pilots make up a large proportion of EasyJet’s employees, they are paid more highly than our other communities and, most materially, 94 per cent of them are male.”

In January, new chief executive Johan Lundgren said he would take a five per cent pay cut to match his salary with female predecessor Carolyn McCall.

Thomas Cook Airlines, which celebrated International Women’s Day by operating an all-women flight from Manchester to Gran Canaria, said 9.2 per cent of its female employees were in the upper pay quartile.

“In the UK there is a gender imbalance across the airline aviation industry,” said the airline. “The fact that 95 per cent of our pilots today are men has a big impact on our gender pay gap.

“We are doing all we can to recruit more women into these roles and rise above the national average.”

Why are there so few female pilots?

“I’ve been asked where the captain is,” EasyJet pilot Marnie Munns recently told Telegraph Travel. “You’re looking at her, I say.

“Outside the cockpit is when you feel it more. Passengers do make comments. It’s normally extremely positive, but you do get the occasional ‘well done for landing, it was actually really smooth’, delivered with surprise,” said the 41-year-old, who is helping to lead a charge by the budget airline to encourage more girls and women to become pilots.

Munns said that the perception of being a pilot as a male occupation has preventing more women from entering the profession.

“Society has conditioned us into thinking that only men will be interested, but it’s nothing to do with gender,” she said.

The situation is far improved from it was 50 years ago.

When Yvonne Pope Sintes became Britain’s first female commercial airline captain in 1972, having worked her way up from air stewardess, she was told by a male pilot that if a woman ever joined his airline he would resign.

Judy Cameron, Air Canada’s first female pilot in 1978, said that she was interviewed by a female reporter on starting her role and was asked how she would manage to fly while coping with “the ravages of pre-menstrual tension”.

She says she was also told how “cute” it was that she had become a pilot, and that one time a man noticed her on the flightdeck and said: “Huh, a woman pilot. Well, at least it keeps them off the roads.”